ABSTRACT
If the social activities and relationships dealt with in the previous chapter are considered as occupying an intermediate place between ‘circumstances’ and ‘behaviour’, four areas of life remain which were specially considered in the Survey. Smoking, the consumption of alcohol, exercise, and diet, were chosen for detailed enquiry because they are the elements of lifestyle usually thought of as most clearly Voluntary’, and undoubtedly associated with health. There can, of course, be debate about the extent to which any of these is always and truly voluntary. Diet may be determined at least in part by income and by the availability of different foods. Smoking and alcohol consumption, in particular, may be regarded less as personal habits than as cultural norms, determined by social pressures. Particular individuals—heavy manual labourers, for instance, or working housewives—may not have the energy or the time to engage in leisure sporting activities. Nevertheless, these four are the lifestyle habits most commonly seen as, at least to some extent, the individual’s own responsibility: a ‘healthy lifestyle’, as currently promulgated, inevitably involves them.
