To be a bit envious of this lifestyle? (USA)

If anyone is interested in the not so nice part of living in America, look for “clean With Barbie” on YouTube. She cleans NY apartments. Horrible dingy depressing shit holes with old not fit for purpose plumbing, rats, cockroaches …. These apartments would result in court cases in the UK

You're wrong about Whole Foods accessibility. You're also wrong about other American supermarkets. There is a huge variety of healthy food available in cities and suburban areas. Even deprived rural counties will have a Walmart stocked with healthy food. One of my DCs in an extremely rural area in one of America's poorest and most obese states drives 45 minutes to their nearest Walmart for all the veg and fruit they're used to at home in the burbs of a major city.

This particular DC is an HCP and regularly sees patients who simply never buy what's on offer though they go to the Walmart regularly. They stock up on hot dogs, bread that will survive a nuclear holocaust, and soda even though there are thousands of better options available right under their noses. It's hugely fristrating to deal with people who won't try anything different from what their granny did. You can take a horse to water...

That's a very truthful post, even if you were going for sarcasm! But you for got the teeny-tiny portions of food...
Especially true is the sweetness of every foodstuff, and let's not forget the chlorinated chicken.

I haven't speculated on the reasons for the obesity here because it's probably very complex. My point was that there's a ton of healthy food available here in any supermarket.

It may not be as diverse as Europe, although it's about the same size, but it's still way too varied for generalisations imo.

being just a few hours drive from mountains

Can get that in the UK too 🙂

I have lived in America for 19 years - half in Virginia on the coast and half in Philadelphia. Some
things are great - going to the beach or zoo after school when the kids were small, better weather, being just a few hours drive from mountains, free
museums in DC, friendly people and general life still feels quite like a vacation over here. We don’t need to leave the country for vacations just drive and there are cool caverns and Amish farms etc and different scenery in every state.

that said, food is crazy expensive here now - $14 for a dozen eggs! $8 for a pack of butter. And the trump stuff is awful.

There is virtually NO chance that your child will be killed at school by a shooter. That is not a reason to be put off coming to the States. 🙄 A much healthier reason would be that you would miss your friends, family, and home, not because you're terrified by exceedingly rare events that the media likes to make out are coming to a school near you soon!

The U.S. isn't a continent size but it is silly to compare to the UK, I agree with you but that's why I compared it to Europe which is way more diverse seen as it includes many different countries and cultures and still has just over half the obesity rate that the U.S. has. The healthy food maybe available but a) is it being bought and cooked at a sizeable amount b) is there a significant drive for the outdoorsy life? Extrapolating from your own experience which sounds incredibly healthy, doesn't really prove anything. Out of 152 local authorities, I live in one of the top 5 for lowest rates of obesity, do I think that the rest of the UK is the same- no I don't!

What do you mean by character? Feature walls? Orla Kiely wallpaper?

Oh, that's alright then. 😕 🙄

As opposed to the wonderful housing stock in the UK!
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/159899291#/?channel=RES_BUY

In the UK you pay an insane amount for a shoebox with no storage and thin walls and ceilings. And the weather's rubbish. Here, even flats have great storage, and we have snowy winters and guaranteed warm, sunny summers.

You have plenty of choice of great places to visit apart from the coastal spots you mentioned though. Believe it or not, the rest of the US has national and state parks, lakes, rivers, mountains, dunes and sandy beaches, snow, slopes, places you can sail, kayak, enjoy museums, nightlife, theatre, opera, symphony orchestras, hiking, biking, etc.

The chances of a child being shot at school are absolutely minuscule. They have a far, far higher chance of being killed on the way to and from school than being killed by a school shooter.

I lived in Britain for 32 years and have now lived in America for 18 years. My experience is that life is a million times better in the US, in all kinds of ways.

YABU, much rather the UK where there's not all the school gun shootings.

I can't think of anything in US supermarkets that isn't readily available in the UK.

I know the US has obesity problems, but it's not for lack of healthy food available.

And yes, the US may be a country, but like I said, its size means it's functionally a continent, as in, there is way more diversity of culture, lifestyle and geography than you find in somewhere the size of the UK. It's so large and contains such multitudes, due to its size, that you can't really say that the US is this or that. Case in point: Brits think that the US is full of obese people eating crap, but where I live, the shops are bursting with healthy food and few people are obese. In fact, it seems to be full of health nuts. I know lots of people who go to bed at 9 and are in the gym at 4.45 am.

I agree some of the houses in USA looked like shacks.

What came across strongly to me was the gun culture and how normalised it was to have a gun one family said all children had guns. Also the very insular nature of the American families.
It was also very interesting that the American girl from a mixed race family wanted to stay in London because she said she felt much more at home there.

Back to the OP, I just don't think it is arguably better, different but not better. It depends what you like to do in your spare time. I like a bit of outdoors stuff but I'm more a city person and like cultural activities.

Yes, North America is a continent, the US is not. The North America continent includes the vast land mass of Canada which is not in the country of the U.S. which continent is the US a similar size to? Europe is more than double the population and way more diverse than the U.S it still has obesity rate of 23 %. I mean regardless of your photo aisles, the processed food consumed by the average American (the country of) is higher than the UK and Europe, hence the very high obesity rate. It isn't only availability of chocolate and crisps, what is the other stuff being bought by the average American in a typical supermarket, not Wholefoods, which is not going to be frequented by your average American, that is for the Elites like it is here. I'm not sure why you would deny the problems when it is clear and evident that the problem exists, I don't deny the stats in the UK just because anecdotally I don't know people or DC that fit that category.

There are lots of tiny, poor quality houses as well.

That’s the same in the US though. I love Maine, Vermont, NYC,California and the Pacific Northwest however if I lived in most other states I’d need a shed load of money to visit them. In fact I think Copenhagen from UK was cheaper when I did it. It’s so much closer for a start to the UK than a lot of the US is to its citizens spread around it.

This is so often said of houses in the UK and yet I don't think I've ever lived in a house with this set up, even as a student. Absolutely all my friends now - middle earning teachers, nurses, accountants mainly - have a utility room or, at worst, a large downstairs loo with space for a washing machine.

This

I don’t have the stomach to hunt, but I have great respect for hunters. Every hunter I know takes the task seriously. They hunt for food, not sport. A family can stock their freezer for a year from one deer that lived free and then was killed during hunting season. How is eating farmed meat superior?

Just to be clear, I eat meat. Since I don’t hunt, I typically get my meat from a grocery store unless I get lucky and have a friend or family member who gives me a portion from their hunt. I think that makes me a giant hypocrite. I like that my meat comes cleaned and packaged so I don’t have to think about the gory details of being an omnivore.

America has an abundance of wild game. In my area some of it is so abundant that there are periodic culls by parks officials so the animal a don’t starve. That meat is also used for food.

hunting for sport is immoral, but you won’t convince me that hunting for food is better than farming, especially industrial farming.