[lrvick]

Fast food addiction, free-refill-fueled soda addiction, tobacco addiction, weakly trained near universal use of automobiles for daily travel, and unequal access to healthcare are staples of American culture so I am only surprised the spread is not worse.

This has very little to do with location or genetics and everything to do with education and culture.

[marcandre]

Europeans smoke more than Americans

[magicalhippo]

Depends on country I think. At least here in Norway, after the ban on smoking indoors at public places like restaurants and bars 20 years ago, smoking went way down.

When I visited New York a few years ago I was shocked about how much smoking there was everywhere.

Of course, people didn't quit nicotine entirely, many moving to snus[1] instead.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snus

[Ancapistani]

Interestingly, I haven't been able to find a single study that shows long-term use of snus leads to health complications -- at least, not where snus was split out from smoking and other forms of tobacco consumption.

[pseudocomposer]

I was shocked at the amount of smoking I saw in Copenhagen 3 years ago. And I live in Durham, North Carolina, a historically tobacco city, whose nickname (Bull Durham or the Bull City) literally comes from old tobacco ads.

[magicalhippo]

Yea, then again Danes have been quite liberal with alcohol and such in comparison with Norway, perhaps a common theme there.

But yes, varies greatly between countries. Since it's "only" been 20 years since the ban here, I'm curious to see if the numbers diverge more in the coming decades, or not.

[throwaway290]

Fact. However the top smokers like Serbia also score lower on life expectancy

[spacemadness]

Are you a time traveler? Tobacco addiction hasn’t been rampant since the 90s and it was dying out then. It is certainly not a staple of American culture. Agreed that it’s not genetics. That’s just silly.

[ethbr1]

How old are people who were smoking in the 90s, today?

[lrvick]

Exactly.

I have had multiple people I was close to die due to smoking created health issues in the last decade. Even if smoking is not as prevalent today, we are paying the price for it now.

[Ancapistani]

Eh - "tobacco" addiction is likely on the way out, but "nicotine" addiction likely isn't.

[_DeadFred_]

A cup of coffee and a cig is now a Starbucks milkshake and a chinese disposable battery powered addiction feeding machine putting a cloud of I have no idea what into my lungs. The future is cyberpunk AF.

[andrepd]

> Fast food addiction, free-refill-fueled soda addiction, tobacco addiction, weakly trained near universal use of automobiles for daily travel, and unequal access to healthcare are staples of American culture

Every one of those points is also true in Europe (apart from possibly healthcare), unfortunately. Car dependency and car-centric development is almost everywhere, places like the Netherlands are an outlier. Fast food and ads thereof are also everywhere. Many people smoke. Etc.

[arp242]

> Car dependency and car-centric development is almost everywhere

It's the degree of things. I live in Ireland, in a village of a few thousand people a few km outside the city, what you might call a "suburb" in the US. I don't even have a driver's license. It's rarely an issue and can go about my life by foot. bike, and public transport.

[throw0101c]

> I live in Ireland, in a village of a few thousand people a few km outside the city, what you might call a "suburb" in the US.

Whatever villages that used to exist in the US have been drowned out by car-centric suburbs that were build around them. The 'village' is now the downtown-ish area of the community that tourists go see.

[disgruntledphd2]

> It's rarely an issue and can go about my life by foot. bike, and public transport.

You are a very unusual person then, as the vast vast majority of people in not urban core Ireland have (and use) a car. I live in a Dublin suburb, and we're one of the few married couples that don't have two cars.

[insane_dreamer]

Yes, European families own cars, but they don't have to use them as much as Americans.

There's almost no way to survive in the US without a vehicle, except in a few cities (mostly NYC). You can do without a car in many European cities.

I never owned a car until I moved to the US ~10 years ago.

[arp242]

It's needed a lot less than people think unless you live out in the countryside. While it can be a bit inconvenient at times, in general it's perfectly feasible to not have a car in car-dependent Ireland.

In the US on the other hand, it's needed a lot more.

[ethbr1]

> In the US on the other hand, it's needed a lot more.

A central problem in the US is transit between cities/states.

Since Europe was urbanized at scale long before the US, passenger rail networks were built out.

Most of the US grew with cars, and so that was just never developed.

[disgruntledphd2]

> It's needed a lot less than people think unless you live out in the countryside

Yeah, that's basically what I meant about non-urban core. Like, towns around Dublin are sortof OK, but public transport in the rest of Ireland makes it very inconvenient to have no car (and I've done this and it sucked).

[insane_dreamer]

> Car dependency and car-centric development is almost everywhere, places like the Netherlands are an outlier.

Not anywhere near US levels. Netherlands isn't an outlier. You can get pretty much anywhere in Switzerland with good public transport. Denmark, Germany, Austria, Northern Italy, France, Belgium, all have excellent public transportation networks with wide coverage.

> Many people smoke.

This is the one "healthy living" area where Europe lags the US. But many people in the US vape and I'm not sure it's any healthier.

[throwaway290]

Never been to US but saying car centric development in Europe is similar to US sounds crazy to me. It's not just Netherlands. Vienna, Budapest, Stockholm, Barcelona, Germany and Switzerland... is it really true people in America take buses and trains as often as in those places? and they are also so well maintained? is it just propaganda that public transport in US sucks outside of maybe NYC

[danaris]

It is absolutely not propaganda.

I live in a rural village about 5 hours' drive from NYC. There is no public transport here.

If I drive 45 minutes to the nearest city, I can catch a train—but that train will only take me to a few destinations (primarily Albany, NYC, or Boston one way, or Buffalo, Chicago and points west the other way).

Some cities (outside of major metropolitan areas, which do generally have some kind of rail system) have intracity buses, but they tend to be underfunded and dirty.

[_DeadFred_]

I live in a small (9000) very rural town with low wage jobs (so not a huge tax base) in a reddest of red state and we have our own very nice/clean bus system (it uses bus vans not huge busses). It not impossible in the US, it just depends on if the people of your town care to have it.

[potato3732842]

Same situation where I grew up, blue state though.

NY politics is the problem, not anything else. That whole damn state is just so bleak, nothing gets done without so many pounds of flesh being taken out by so many parties that things just stop getting done.

[danaris]

And yet, somehow, it's still massively better than when Pataki was governor...

At least we are now capable of passing a budget bill less than 5 months late, anyway.

[throwaway290]

Yeah. I just picked random two small villages in Italy 200 km apart and Google maps says 4-5 hr by public transport, yes a few interchanges but you barely need to walk less than 10 minutes total. I remember being impressed with european public transport (after what we have in russia) and this rings true. Then I picked two random Missouri townships 83 miles away and it's 40 min by car and no route at all by any public transport. even if I chose so that both of them are on the same big 4 lane road!

[Ancapistani]

> even if I chose so that both of them are on the same big 4 lane road!

If you've ever been on a Greyhound bus, you'd understand why that's the case.

[supertrope]

Here's a map of the US. https://i.redd.it/2nt3antutz8f1.png Green zones are counties with more than 10% of people commuting by transit.

It's essentially just NYC, Washington DC, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco. NYC is 80% of USA public transit usage!

[OkayPhysicist]

Apparently there's a bus enthusiast in northern Nevada. (I'm guessing the real answer is towns small enough people walk to work)