Health, fitness and lifestyle

It depends heavily on age. Older people are impressively disciplined: go to any park at five in the morning and you'll find them walking laps, doing tai chi or playing badminton before the heat sets in. Younger adults lean towards gyms, running clubs and, lately, pickleball, which has spread at a ridiculous speed. Diet is the weaker half; the traditional meal of rice, vegetables and fish is actually well balanced, but milk tea and fried snacks have crept in alongside it. As for why a healthy lifestyle is hard to keep up, I'd say the obstacle is rarely ignorance. Everyone knows they should sleep eight hours and exercise. The trouble is that the costs are immediate and the rewards are years away, so a tired office worker at nine at night will choose the sofa every time. City design doesn't help either, because pavements are blocked and commutes are long. Admittedly, some people do use busyness as an excuse, since twenty minutes of walking is within almost anyone's reach. Whether people will be healthier in the future is a mixed picture, in my view. Medicine will certainly keep us alive longer, and wearable devices already nag people into moving more. On the other hand, jobs are becoming more sedentary and processed food is getting cheaper. So I'd predict a widening gap: those with time and money will be fitter than ever, while others live longer but not necessarily better.