[lemming]

This is a pretty interesting question IMO. I spent 8 years living in Spain where people are convinced that their diet is the healthiest in the world, but by any "modern" standard is a nutritionist's nightmare: often no breakfast and fatty/sugary if you do eat it, tons of coffee, generally extremely high levels of fat including saturated animal fats, very high in salt and alcohol. Nearly all carbs are white and processed, very few vegetables. Breakfast, if eaten, is normally 10am, lunch at 2pm-4pm, and dinner at 9pm-10pm. No-one sleeps 8 hours.

That said, it does have some remediating factors - generally lots of fish and olive oil and (much) smaller portion sizes than the US. Also my cardiologist here in New Zealand said that they have a much lower incidence of heart disease than you would expect given the above, and no-one knows why. Maybe it's genetic, maybe olive oil is better for us than we currently understand.

Interesting stuff.

[saraid216]

It's also likely that different environments (sun exposure; humidity; food availability; water availability) have contributed to cultural traditions. That may or may not factor into genetic traits.

Because you didn't have enough confounding variables already. :P