Sorry to contradict Jerome but if you look at the data sets used you will find they are for England only (See my diary of yesterday on Booman). The four countries in the UK have separate health services, administerd by the local assemblies/parliament while England is controlled by Westminster.

Scotland in particular has much higher rates of coronary heart disease and alcoholism than England. There seems to be a genetic link to Celts having a predispostion to alcohol dependance.

The BBC item on this interviews a couple of the researchers of the report and it looks like there are societal factors in play. I surmise it might be that there are different work patterns. Certainly the English have far more holiday time than Americans. While the data would not have been affected by the working time directive, it is not untypical for there to be both shorter time at work and shorter commuting times in England. Certainly for middle class professionals or central/local government office staff, there are possibilities of taking retirement at a much earlier age than in the USA. This cohort benefits from index-linked rises in pensions resulting in much less stress than Americans retiring on either fixed pensions or having to rely on annuities purchased from lump sum savings.

One other factor also strikes me. The age group examined were either born just before or just after WWII. The data is for 54-65 year old in 2002/3, making their birth dates between 1938 and 1948. Even the youngest would have started school before rationing of sweets ended. The older group would have been children under full rationing where meat and fats in particular were restricted. I am a few years younger than the group. My family was still getting a lot of fresh vegetables from my grandfather's allotment, a small area of land in a local park for locals to have to grow vegetables. A great treat was picking blackberries from their house's garden. Now studies of the heath of the nation showed that rationing produced a radical improvement in the health of all socio-economic groups.  I wonder whether the early eating experience of the English cohort had an effect on these results in later life.