Listen: Health https://www.examenglish.com/B1/b1_listening_health.htm
Listen: nurse talking to a mum
Listen “Health and Fitness”
Reading activities: A generation of couch potatoes
The Secrets of a long life
The island of Okinawa in Japan has some of the oldest people in the world. It’s famous for its high number of centenarians – men and women who live beyond 100 years of age. There have been many scientific studies of their lifestyle and you can even buy cookery books based on their diets. Some of the reasons for their good health are that they …
- go fishing and eat what they catch.
- regularly do gardening and grow their own fruit and vegetables.
- go cycling and never drive when they can walk.
- often spend time with friends. They meet at people’s houses and play games.
- rarely buy food from a supermarket.
- do regular exercise, go swimming and lead active lives.
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Read the article and choose which sentences (1–3) is the best summary of the main argument?
- Happiness improves our health.
- Denmark is the happiest country in the world.
- There are different ways to measure happiness.
Measuring Health & Happiness
The small country of Bhutan in the Himalayan mountains is over one thousand years old. In the past, it was a poor country and not many people visited it. But nowadays, it is becoming more and more popular with tourists. Medicine and health are improving and its economy is growing. King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the king of Bhutan until 2006, talked about his country’s ‘Gross National Happiness’. In other words, he thought happiness is the way to measure the country’s development.
But how do you measure happiness? Perhaps health is the best way because a famous doctor once said, ‘Happy people generally don’t get sick.’ It’s also easy to measure how many people feel ill or unhealthy in a country. For example, one survey says Iceland is the ‘healthiest country in the world’ because men and women live a long time there, the air is very clean and there are more doctors available per person than anywhere else in the world.
However, there was another survey of the happiest countries in the world and Iceland was not near the top. The questions on this survey included: How much do you earn? How healthy are you? How safe do you feel? After visiting 155 different countries, the researchers decided that Denmark feels happier than other countries.
So does happiness equal money and good health? Not according to the artist Erik Krikortz. He feels that there are other ways of measuring happiness. Krikortz has a website and visitors click on different happy or sad faces to comment on how well they sleep, their family and friends, their level of stress, their inspiration and their physical activity. When you finish, his website adds the results for each area and it gives you a final result for your happiness.
In his home city of Stockholm, Krikortz also shows the results of his survey as different coloured lights on the side of a large building in the city. For example, red means the people of Stockholm are very happy, green is OK and purple means many people are sad. ‘A lot of people look at the building every day and see how “we” are,’ Krikortz says. The coloured lights are also useful if you feel like visiting the city. For example, if the lights are red, you know the locals are feeling happy!
Choose the correct answer (a–c) for the questions, according to the information in the article.
How did the King of Bhutan measure the country’s development?
a by money b by health c by happiness
Which is easier to measure?
a happiness b health c sickness and ill healt
Why was Iceland number one in a survey?
a for its money b for its health c for its happiness
How did researchers measure happiness in 155 countries?
a with answers to questions b by looking at people’s faces c by measuring the number of sick people
What do visitors to Krikortz’s website click on?
a questions b faces c numbers
How many categories does Krikortz have for measuring happiness?
a three b five c seven
What colour are the lights on the building when Stockholm is happy?
a red b green c purple
Happy Knowledge 