Singapore is world's second-fittest country
According to the people who climb the majestic mountains of Nepal more than Singaporeans climb the stairs of HDB blocks, people in the Republic are among the world's fittest – second only to the Japanese.
MagicalNepal.com, a team that specialises in high-altitude trekking, based their ranking on 11 contributing factors — from life expectancy and alcohol consumption to disease and smoking rates – to a person’s fitness.
Its analysis of global health data led to the conclusion that Japan is the world's fittest country with a score of 78.33 out of 100. The country has the highest life expectancy at 84.8 years and the lowest share of obese adults at 5.63 per cent. Death by obesity in Japan stands at only 3.92 per cent.
Singapore scored 77.04 and at 11 per cent has a lower rate than Japan for death by smoking. This might in turn account for low numbers in death from respiratory diseases – 10.58 per 100,000 of the population. The average across all other nations stands at 42.5.
The nation also recorded among the lowest alcohol consumption at only 1.87 litres per person annually.
Average life expectancy in Singapore is 82.8 years.
The only other Asian country ranked in the top 10 is South Korea, standing at the ninth place with a score of 73.02.
Despite being many levels below Singapore, South Korea has only 7.24 per cent of adults who are obese – second only to Japan and much lower than Singapore's record of 13.8 per cent.
South Koreans have a life expectancy of 83.7 years despite an annual alcohol consumption of 8.19 litres per person.
Singaporeans may be a fit lot but the country scored poorly in two areas: physical activity and death by air pollution.
Insufficient physical activity is recorded in 36.5 per cent of Singaporeans and 23.48 people out of every 100,000 people die from air pollution.
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