My Summer in Spain

By Eletha Flores

Not only did working on the stroke rehabilitation project motivate me to become interested in the health sciences, just living in Spain has opened my eyes to health-promoting ways of life that make up a norm. It has also made me think a lot about the health of American people in comparison.

The first major shock that hit me when I got to Spain was how many elderly people I saw walking around in the street. This sounds normal, but from my experience in the States, well for one thing, people don’t usually go walking around, but on the other hand, I don’t see a lot of active elderly people. I see a lot of people on motorized carts- here too, but less often- and from what I get from television and the news, I imagine a large percentage of elderly life is confined to elderly homes or inside the home in the US. There, I do not frequently see elderly people walking together enjoying the city as if they were no different than their younger fellow citizens. Looking around San Sebastian, however, I notice all kinds of people from all walks of life walking around, ice cream in hand, watching street performers, in the bars, on the beach. Everyone is just going and going. And then it struck me. People are actually healthy here- or at least way more healthy than Americans. It's as if obesity is practically nonexistent; I rarely even see very overweight people. The site of these people so active and lively was amazing to me. Of course, the culture is of life in the streets. This does not carry the connotation of a fast, hard, criminal, or impoverished life at all. Life in the streets here means this is how people are active. Granted, the set up of the city is planned such that cars are not necessary and public transportation is fairly decent. A lot better than the bus system serving Cambridge, MA, at least. You can wait for the Number 1 bus on 77 Mass Ave for 40 minutes only to see three go by at one time once you’ve stopped waiting and decided to walk to Harvard Square. But everyone is eating, drinking, having ice cream, but also walking it all off, standing in the bars and streets socializing more so than sitting; and swimming, surfing, climbing the nearby mountains, biking, running, dancing, and just pretty much just playing around. It’s awesome. The health here just astonishes me. Going to the supermarket, I can’t find a huge variety (they don’t even sell peanut butter or bananas- you’ll have to go to the market or smaller grocers) but they have lots of natural, fresh, and whole food options. I’ve never felt better on a day to day basis and I’ve never been so fit in my life. I actually lost 18 lbs in the past two months of eating more whole foods and walking around more than driving around. Of course, this is summer time so there’s more time to be active and pay more attention to health than during the year or more intense periods of work, but still.

It makes me look back at my "normal" life in the States and how difficult it is to block the barrage of marketing tactics to persuade us to make unhealthy choices in our everyday lives. What are we as a generation going to do about this state of affairs? Do we agree with it? Do we want to change it? Is it even a question of personal health and therefore personal responsibility, or is it a question of global health and thus everyone's responsibility to make change? Looking at this issue globally, you could link global climate change to the over production of livestock for food and its substantial contribution of methane to the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere (even more than transportation). I think American society as a whole needs more education in nutrition. I mean, I certainly don't remember learning how to make healthy food choices while living in the United States in school. They teach everyone the food pyramid but that has so little power in the face of billions of dollars in marketing for fast food options. Maybe the food pyramid would be practical in other countries where food isn't so heavily processed and then injected with chemicals in an attempt to recreate the taste it once had. None of the food drawn on the food pyramid isn't sealed in plastic with the title "Hungry-Man" or put in a paper bag with a large yellow "M" on the side which is what we see as food everyday. I call for more education, life-long nutritional education, and a crack down on the excessive marketing of junk foods. How would you approach this issue and in what ways would you change the current state of affairs in the States to combat this unhealthy consumption?