Lesley Riddoch: Why Scots’ nature is just unnatural

Our alcohol consumption and unhealthy eating are among herd habits that need to change

Are Scots the unhealthiest herd in Europe? The Office for National Statistics says Scots die younger than those in any other part of the UK. The 2010 Scottish Health Survey reports two-thirds of Scots are overweight, the majority don’t take exercise or eat enough fruit and vegetables and more than one in ten Scots takes antidepressants. It’s a vicious circle.

Overweight people become sedentary. Sedentary people eat more. Indoor, inactive, sedentary people use the world’s cheapest depressant – alcohol – to cope with the negative impacts of their lifestyle. Children watch and learn.

Educated and physically active people hope they’re immune. They’re not. Journalist Iain MacWhirter bravely described his shock after learning that a fit, healthy, active hill climber like himself with no family history of coronary disease could also fall victim to the “Scottish Effect.”

It’s a mystery.

What are Scots doing – or not doing – that marks us out so dramatically from our neighbours?

The experts cite poverty, deprivation, a fatty diet and less sunlight.

By way of explanation, that’s almost criminally negligent.

Scots are not generally living in “No Mean City”. And yet we live as if we are – or still were – bound by the habits of that disadvantaged, unhealthy herd.

Why do we do it?

Consumer culture encourages Scots to see ourselves as individuals who make informed, daily choices about every aspect of our lives. In fact, infinite choice has made us extremely predictable.

We eat the same things every day. We travel to work the same way, set our alarm clocks for the same time and do the same things every weekend.

These “non-decisions” create the fabric of our lives. How do we make them? By and large, we don’t.

The habits of the herd silently steer the behaviour and expectations of every member. Even eccentric outliers are subject to that powerful gravity.

And the unhealthy herd brings everyone down.

Chewin’ the Fat identified the power of Scotland’s social conformity in one line: “You’ve got tae drink.”

It’s self-mocking, but powerfully true. Belonging in Scotland means fitting in. In a pub, not drinking alcohol is unacceptable. It’s compulsory. You have got tae drink. You have got tae have a “good time” the way everyone else does.

Or else? Those who break the unwritten rules are affectionately pigeonholed and effectively marginalised.

We all know the score.

People who don’t drink are dour. People who run at lunchtime are “keen”. People who cycle are Lycra-coated nerds. People who use public transport are zealots. People who take sandwiches to work are ex-Tufty Club. People who make their own bread are English. And people who don’t get smashed on a Saturday night are plain boring.

This is still the unflinching view of the Scottish herd.

Even though fewer and fewer Scots subscribe to the machismo, waste, tedium and self-harming lunacy of it all, the hard-man habits of the Scottish herd remain.

We conform to norms long after we cease to actively or consciously support them – such is the force of habit.

It could easily be otherwise.

For the last six weeks, I’ve been living and working in Norway and have lost a stone in weight by simply falling in with the healthiest herd in Europe.

It wasn’t a conscious effort and it wasn’t hard.

In Norway everyone from the boss to the cleaner takes a matpakke or packed lunch to work, which they eat together for an hour with phones switched off in a pleasant room with coffee and tea provided by the workplace. No-one nips out for a sausage roll. There are no kebab shops, fish and chip shops, takeaways or sandwich and sausage rolls shops near big offices. There is a (distant) university canteen – with no chips – and cafes in most faculty buildings. But it’s perfectly acceptable to eat your own food there. So you do.

Upmarket delicatessens, bakers and corner shops do exist. But nothing isolates the stranger faster than wasting time and money to buy expensive, non self-prepared food.

I tried eating a Mars Bar amongst a lunch-room full of rake-thin Norwegians eating micro-waved beetroot and soft cheese with pepper on crispbread. I could hardly swallow. There was no easier way to be marked out as a social incompetent.

Actually, there was. Using a taxi or a car to get around. Oslo has one of the best public transport systems in Europe with an integrated network of six tram lines, buses, ferries, suburban trains and inter-city trains. A handy “multi-modal” timetable means route hopping is easily planned, reliable, fast and fun. Socialising happens in homes, not pubs. E-mail invitations to the most upmarket west end addresses come with details of the nearest tram or train stop.

There is no point driving in the city. So the herd cycles and walks.

It’s not unusual in winter to see Norwegians up at 7am for a quick ski before work – aided by Oslo City Council whose friluftsliv (outdoor living) policy prompted them to build the first tram lines a century back so the poorest workers could easily reach the mountainous margins of the city.

Compare and contrast Glasgow, where train lines to country stops like Milngavie and Balloch ran for almost a century without a Sunday service.

Scots are unhealthy because we live unnatural lives. We are divorced from nature – the glorious green stuff we hardly access and the fragile human stuff we overfeed and underuse by way of compensation.

The truth is inescapable.

Land in Norway is cheap and available, but alcohol and takeaway food is expensive. Land in Scotland is expensive and unavailable, but alcohol and takeaway food is cheap.

So Norwegians generally have two homes (a city house and a hytte or wood cabin in the mountains for weekends) while the Scots generally have two spare tyres.

Change needs a powerful kickstart. I applaud the SNP for sticking with minimum alcohol pricing and the Tesco Tax. We also need a fully-funded childcare revolution, a public transport revolution, reform of the Forestry Commission to have huts in every Scottish forest and land reform to create a re-occupied, community-directed landscape where people are in charge and on holiday all summer, and every weekend of their lives – in their own country.

A healthy herd needs a determined government.

So where’s the beef?