Healthy lifestyle: pleasure or duty?

July 2024

The first results of the first 100 days of the 100 Healthy Days survey conducted on 4,000 people - 3,000 Italians and 1,000 Danes - described the scenario of the perception and experience of healthy lifestyle with different connotations depending on the country and age of the respondents.

The first 100 days of observation refer to the spring-summer period; therefore, the perception is aligned to the habits and stimuli of the moment. it is important to highlight this because it will be compared, bringing out differences and trends, with the observations that will be made in the next 100 days and concerning the autumn-winter period.

In general, Italians associate the healthy lifestyle with a positive meaning: they identify it with attention to one's own health and well-being, and highlight how close it is to the concept of balance between body and mind and how much it relates to the meaning of contact with nature. Italians therefore translate healthy lifestyle into positive, sometimes holistic behaviour.

However, one in two people believe that the healthy lifestyle also has a downside, because it necessarily implies the observance of rules and control. It is no coincidence that 80 %of Italians who, in general, think they lead a healthy lifestyle indulge in the occasional indulgence, considering rules and control to be the two variables from which to deviate.

The Danes interviewed give a strongly positive meaning to healthy lifestyle. They do not connect it with the idea of rules and controls, but rather with a good lifestyle, which provides more energy and balance between body and mind, i.e. more health. In Denmark, however, only 66% of the respondents claim to lead a healthy lifestyle consistent with the values described above.

Already from this first comparison, the different approach of the two countries to leading a healthy lifestyle emerges: in Italy, the percentage of those who say they adopt it is significantly higher than in Denmark; on the other hand, Italians who opt for this lifestyle choice perceive it as sometimes difficult, while the Danes do not seem to struggle at all.

But what does a healthy lifestyle include in terms of actions?

In Italy, health, well-being and the balance between body and mind - i.e. a healthy lifestyle - translate into behaviour that involves attention to healthy eating (73%) and exercise (72%), understood as sport and movement.

In Denmark, the associations are the same, but the focus on nutrition characterises the healthy lifestyle more (worth 85%), as does taking supplements (33%).

A curiosity: for 62% of Danish respondents, the healthy lifestyle can be traced back to time spent resting and to their hobbies and interests, as sources of balance, while Italians consider healthy and virtuous actions above all increased water consumption (67%) and reduced alcohol use (62%).

Another interesting fact is that respondents in both Italy and Denmark claim to have been following a healthy lifestyle for more than three years. This lifestyle and consumption choice is, therefore, becoming consolidated.

To sum up, for the people surveyed in the two target countries, a healthy lifestyle is synonymous with well-being and is immediately associated with the choice of a healthy diet, as if to confirm the famous phrase of the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach: ‘We are what we eat’.