I'm really amazed when I talk to an East Coaster who thinks we are lazy because we have days off once in a while, and actually spend time with our families. It's a strange world. First Church of the CPU, don't look at me and I won't look at you, eye contact is bound to fail, talk to me only through e-mail. In Greece and France, they eat way more fat, drink more alcohol, and smoke like crazy. Yet they are not dropping dead like Americans from heart disease and stroke.
Fashion is everything, as are a slim physique and youthful look.
Yet these same fashionable folks think nothing of peeing in doorways, chain-smoking really awful cigarettes, hawking loogies at will, and staggering drunkenly about. We are pressured to be neurotic about what we eat and drink, as though a healthy life is all in diet. Sure, you go live with a bean-eater. I'd rather breathe, thank you. No, I believe a much more important factor is stress.