Google gets more than 100 billion searches in a month.
People search for everything that's on their minds. This makes Google Trends a great source to see people's interest. We have used Google Trends to find the most health conscious countries and turned our findings into a world map.
If there’s a growing trend for searches like turmeric, it shows that people are taking interest in healthy food and ingredients. A rising trend of face mask searches indicates the rise in demand.
In our analysis, we have used an aggregated search score from 38 topics to find the most health conscious countries. These topics were picked from four categories.
- Eating
- Workout
- Rest
- Misc
These are the main components of a healthy lifestyle. High searches on any of these topics show that people are trying to adopt a more healthy lifestyle.
Here’s what we get after adding search scores from all these topics.
Following are the topics that we have used.
Eating:
Nutrition - Weight Loss - Calorie - Organic Food - Healthy Diet - Health Food - Veganism - Omega 3 Fatty Acid - Gluten Free Diet - Protein - Probiotic
Workout:
Physical Exercise - Gym - Physical Fitness - Weight Training - Body Building - Running - Aerobic Exercise - Activity Tracker - Cycling - High Intensity Interval Training - Hiking - Endurance - Jogging
Rest:
Meditation - Yoga - Mindfulness - Stress management - Relaxation Technique - Mental Health - Sleep
Misc:
Immune System - Risk - Detoxification - Hygiene - Longevity
The reason for using a diverse set of topics was to get a more well rounded idea.
Why Google?
Google gets up to 90% of all online searches in most countries. It makes Google Trends a reliable tool to judge public interest in a specific topic.
Researchers have used Google Trends for various studies with varying degree of success. For example this study uses Google Trends to predict economic indicators.
This one uses search trends for a drug (Meth) to predict Methamphetamine-related crimes.
We couldn’t think of a better source than Google Trends to see the interest in health related topics.
Countries with the highest search interest in health:
Here’s the list of top 20 countries with the highest search interest.
- Australia
- Canada
- United States
- New Zealand
- Ireland
- United Kingdom
- Singapore
- South Africa
- Chile
- Spain
- United Arab Emirates
- Colombia
- Philippines
- Mexico
- Switzerland
- Sweden
- Germany
- Austria
- Ecuador
- Argentina
Countries with the lowest search interest in health:
Following are the countries with the least bit of search interest in health (listed from bottom to top).
- Nepal
- Bangladesh
- Bahrain
- Syria
- Bosnia & Herzegovina
- Oman
- Srilanka
- Qatar
- Tunisia
- Iraq
- Moldova
- Ghana
- Trinidad & Tobago
- Jamaica
- Lithuania
- Paraguay
- Jordan
- El Salvador
- Algeria
- Turkey
The most health conscious countries are also the most healthy:
We compared our rankings with the life expectancy rates in different countries.
It turned out to be an interesting one.
14 out of our top 25 countries are ranked in the top 20 countries with the highest life expectancy rates.
Overall, 62% of the top 30 countries with the highest life expectancy appear in the top 30 of our rankings as well. Belgium and Costa Rica are not far behind.
It seems that all those concerns and efforts are paying off.
Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Israel, and Malta are some exceptions. These countries rank quite high in life expectancy chart but doesn’t rank anywhere near the top in our list.
The top-ranked nations are consistent across all categories:
The top 10 countries are on top for all three categories with some changes in their positions.
However, there are a lot of changes when we look at the next 10 positions.
Germany, Sweden, Austria, and Philippines rank in top 20 for main category and at least two more.
Ecuador and Colombia rank quite high in main and Workout Category but not in Top 20 for Diet or Rest categories.
Mexico is on 14th in main rankings but doesn’t rank in the top 20 for Eating or Workout category.
United Arab Emirates is on 11th position in the main rankings and 9th in Diet category but quite low in Exercise or Rest category.
Have a look at Top 20 rankings for different categories.
All these topics are trending:
One thing common with all these topics is the upward trend (or stable interest) over a period of 5 years.
The growing trend reiterates the fact that new generation is more concerned about their health and well-being.
The search trends for topics related to weight loss have an interesting pattern.
The interest level peaks at the start of each year and starts to drop. It reaches the lowest point as the year ends. Only to climb back as the new year starts (thanks to all those New Year Resolutions).
Are the more affluent countries the more health conscious?
Some of the most affluent countries like Qatar, Kuwait, Norway, etc. do not rank high in these rankings. There are some that appear in the Top 20 but not necessarily in the same order.
We also have countries like Chile, Spain, or Mexico which are not in the top 30 of richest countries but rank in the top 20 of our rankings.
We have also compared our rankings with Global Peace Index and again, the most peaceful countries do not necessarily rank on top.
Healthy nations are the happy nations:
Another rankings where we see similar countries on top is the world’s happiest countries list by United Nations.
24 out of the top 35 happiest countries are also ranked on top of our list.
Are the people looking to adopt a healthy lifestyle because they are happy? Or they are happy because they are focusing on the right things?
We will leave the question to you.
Limitations:
It’s important to note that Google does not have the same monopoly in some countries like China, Russia, South Korea, or Japan. So, our rankings are not a true indicative for these countries.
All in all, these rankings are based entirely on data from Google Trends and should be interpreted accordingly.
