Why are middle class older people so much more healthier than their poorer counterparts?

[Gorzf]

Sorry, if this is obvious to people but I can't help but notice all the well off people I meet in their 50s/ 60s / 70s, they're just healthy, their skin is glowing, they're fit and mobile.

I am a child of immigrants who came with nothing. We were quite poor growing up, the only kid in my friendship group on free school meals. Even as an adult I'm not particularly well off, just getting by. Growing up, most older people in my poor area / community just declined. It was almost a thing I thought was just normal, that's what happens.

It wasn't as I grew older and started meeting people from different socioeconomic status that I realised that wasn't the case.

It can't just be about having more money, surely. What is it that they're doing that the poor folk around me didn't do.

Nutrition.
Steak is hell expensive and one of the most nutritious foods despite what vegans try to say. Rich people generally have better nutrition than poor people exceptions being rich vegans go on any vegan YouTube family channel and you'll see a nice big house but a malnourished Ill looking family.
About 100 years ago poor people used to eat lots of the cheap organ meats sad lots of people have lost that knowledge and have a taste for junk food now instead

While nutrition in part is true the rest of what you say isn't.

The vegans I know and met in rl look healthy and some of them participate in lots of sports regardless of their age.

Then most of them don't actually go on about their vegan diet particularly if they or their family originate from India as it is a normal diet for them. They also allow their children to have a different diet, and actually ensure their small children have a different diet with dairy products.

The ones on the YouTube and other social media channels often have eating disorders, and also force their disordered eating on their children.

And one of the reasons why can't get cheap organ meats anymore is mad cow disease. Plus unless you live in an area with lots of ethnic minorities, butchers are for the rich so you can only get meat from supermarkets.

I agree steak is expensive and the best food you can eat nutrition wise. A vegan diet is probably better than living off processed sugar and other crap but animal foods are the optimum. Its what kings would eat while the peasants ate bread

Ah I see what was previously an interesting thread has descended into typical MN vegan bashing.

Yes and people from poorer backgrounds also may not have the words/confidence to advocate for themselves or be dismissed as somehow less deserving because of life choices.

Better diet over generations. Relaxed life.

The stuff coming out of the covid inquiry is pretty horrifying.

To vote for the Tories again you'd have to not mind the chaos, profiteering, Partygate, waste, lying, fraud, gobsmacking levels of debt and all that unnecessary death.

Less physical work and shorter working hours. I don't just mean, say, being a builder but even just manning a shop, bar etc you're on your feet all day.

Interesting point - if you’re a builder, then you’re probably physically fitter than, for example, someone working in a bank? So in theory that should help with your life expectancy. And even if building work ends up affecting your back or knees, people don’t die of dodgy knees, so is there a chance that a physical job could, in some circumstances, help your life expectancy?

Off the top of my head, I'd say it all depends. Builders who work for themselves may have more autonomy over their work than a call centre worker in a bank, so from that point of view might experience less stress. If they're good builders in demand, they can make very good money. They will be physically fit and strong, and quite supple because of all the bending and stretching. But they might also be exposed to noxious substances like asbestos or lead paint. Health and safety on building sites isn't always great. Also, some of the builders we've had working for us over the years have been eating lots of fried food, sugar, white bread, cakes, biscuits, etc etc - understandable when they are burning a lot of calories in their work, but it's not balanced out by also eating lots of fruit and vegetables. Thinking about the three builders we had working for us several times, they were all powerfully built, strong chaps, but also all had a lot of fat on the belly, which is not a good sign.

My hunch would be that a white collar worker doing a reasonable amount of exercise out of working hours would probably be healthier than your average builder. Does anyone know?

I think it probably depends on the type of physical labour too...e.g. its probably healthier to be a farmer in the fresh air and working during the day then packing boxes in a warehouse overnight with artificial light and lots of repetitive movements.

I wonder if office workers are getting healthier now WFH is more common, before if you were out of the house from 7.30-6.30 5 days a week you probably would have no energy to go to the gym after.

Farmers have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession. I'm not sure why, but would hazard a guess at loneliness now that most farms operate with hardly any staff, long hours and a lot of uncertainty about income caused by fluctuations in weather and market prices. Also access to shotguns.

I disagree it's about private healthcare/expensive skincare/gyms. It's more about your upbringing, if you were brought up not eating junk food, not smoking, and encouraged to look after yourself, be active, to learn/read etc. It's not even about money for the most part, and it doesn't necessarily have to cost more to eat decent home cooked meals than to live on readymade junk all the time. Libraries are free, parks are free, walking is free, but it's just not how some people want to spend their time.

Yeah, that makes sense now I think about it...its probably OK if you are just employed by the farm...but if its your farm and there's a bad flood/storm/one of the cows gets TB then that's your whole year completely ruined.

If you are really interested OP you can Google generational nutrition, which should bring up a few studies.

One of the things that comes out of it is your health and genetic expression will depend on not just your mother, but how well she was fed by her own mother.

These healthy middle class people you see will probably have had maybe hundreds of years of security and good eating. It's not the work of one generation to change it

DH is from a very WC family I’ve noticed a few things:
lots of them take no responsibility for their own health. If the doctor tells them to stop smoking for a lung condition they will reply that they won’t and the doctor just needs to ‘give them a pill’. Several of them have had on going issues which would be treated by a lifestyle change that they will not do.
Also distrusting doctors and thinking they are out to kill them so ignore them.
Snobbery about being interested in cooking and food. Especially cooking things you could just buy. My making DC food that wasn’t from a jar was a great source of amusement.
Also a lot of his family have physically taxing jobs but do nothing outside of work, when they retire they come to a total standstill. FIL put on loads of weight with no work.

Theres a huge pressure to conform and follow the crowd. DH doesn’t drink and never has and it’s always set him aside from the rest of the family.

I have a friend who was a GP with a very MC elderly patient list. They were so proactive and interested in their health, he said it was a boring job.

"Snobbery about being interested in cooking and food. Especially cooking things you could just buy. My making DC food that wasn’t from a jar was a great source of amusement."

They were the snobs here?

Farmers tend to be fairly long lived but the job can take a terrible toll on the body - most need hip replacements by their late sixties.

I've noticed this too about personal responsibility (and I'm on benefits, not looking down from lofty heights). There was a story on our local news about a mum complaining that her child had been in terrible pain because he needed a filling and she couldn't get an NHS appointment. She was saying he'd missed loads of school, was crying all night, life was hell etc. She looked very well groomed, fake eyelashes, nails done, hair beautiful. Someone in the comments said it would be about £100 to go privately for a filling, and could she maybe borrow money from friends to pay for it? The vitriol that came saying it wasn't her responsibility, it was up to the NHS who were trying to kill off poor people. It was very shocking that she would rather see her ds in pain than pay up herself.

UK farmers. many immigrants come from farming backgrounds and are decidedly not long lived

Oh indeed. Farming is a hard hard life.

There's a fatalistic attitude which grinds my gears

I used to work in a hospital office dealing with diabetes

If a member of an extended family with Type 1 diabetes running through it was also diagnosed with Type 1, there was often no improvement in health, despite diagnosis, testing, interventions by clinical staff and repeated appointments

Self neglect was so ingrained that the early onset of severe complications, such as gastroparesis, peripheral neuropathy, blindness and deafness (yes, that's a thing) were seen as absolutely normal

I'm talking about teenagers, and people in their twenties and thirties, not pensioners

Failing to renew prescriptions, running out of test strips and expecting clinical staff to help out, not testing after and before meals, horrific diets and failing to go to appointments

They were lackadaisical and almost completely abdicated responsibility for their and their children's health

One mother brought her child to an appointment after giving her a bag of Haribo, which the kid was munching on in clinic

She argued with staff that the kid liked it and wouldn't eat healthily, so as long as she was getting something down her neck, that was a 'win'

The kid's HBa1C and clinic readings were astronomical, but she was adamant she was doing the right thing

Social services were stretched so thin, they were ineffective

There was a mum at primary whose daughters teeth had an enamel deficiency. She was meant to get them painted every 6 weeks. She would miss the appointments and then go on a massive rant it was the dentists fault for basically not chasing her every single time.
She lived a 1 minute walk to the dentist.

*Someone in the comments said it would be about £100 to go privately for a filling, and could she maybe borrow money from friends to pay for it?

£100 wouldn’t cover the cost of a filling here 🤣. Perhaps she had no one to borrow the amount needed from, and looking well groomed didn’t mean she could afford private dental treatment.

It’s not all neglect or laziness. There’s thread after thread here about people with no access to a NHS dentist, and no money for private. Some are in pain and struggle to find anything in an emergency. Some considering DIY. Etc. It’s shocking.

@mistyfen my last filling a few weeks ago was £128 for a composite one. I could have got an amalgam filling for £40. Regardless, her attitude was appalling. If she has money to get eyelashes and nails done I'm sure she could scrape together a few hundred pounds over the course of a year. She didn't want to accept any responsibility though, it was nothing to do with her. And I totally agree that the NHS situation is appalling, but if your child is in severe pain surely you'd at least want to try to come up with a solution?

My last consultation, before any treatment, was £89.00. I put my costs on a credit card, others won't even have that poor option.

It is wrong to blame someone who cannot afford private treatment as that's not the real problem. Eyelashes 'done' are dirt cheap by comparison and the child can wait months in pain while she forgoes and saves up the cost of those future beauty treatments? It's an appalling situation, nationally, at the moment. Look up threads here if in doubt.