Getting enough physical activity, eating a balanced diet, not drinking alcohol, not smoking and living with little stress: on paper, these goals seem achievable. But in reality, can we really tick all the boxes? To answer this question, a new report – the DKV-Report 2025 – is based on five main criteria. Explanations.
What is a perfectly healthy life?
Before even talking about good habits, you still need to know what the word “health” means. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines it as a state of physical, mental and social well-being, and not as the simple absence of disease. An essential nuance, which psychologist Laura König insists on.
“According to the DKV-Report, only 2% of Germans have healthy behavior, but this does not mean that only 2% of Germans are completely healthy. In the rest, the risk of developing an illness is simply higher”,
she explains to the German media Tagesschau.
This distinction is important, because our vision of a healthy life also evolves according to times and cultures. When it comes to food, for example, the WHO points out that there is no single ideal model. Several ways of eating can be beneficial for your health, provided you respect certain principles such as diversity, balance and moderation. In other words, wanting to impose a single definition of a “perfect” life does not reflect reality.
What the 2% figure from the DKV-Report 2025 really reveals
To better understand this ideal of life, the report’s researchers evaluated five lifestyle habits and their consequences: physical activity, diet, alcohol consumption, tobacco and the stress level of the participants.
Result ? 68% of those surveyed achieved the recommended level of physical activity, 34% had a diet considered healthy, 29% did not consume alcohol, 80% did not smoke or vape, and only 20% reported feeling “little or no stress”.
At first glance, this 2% figure may seem alarming. However, it deserves to be nuanced. The report specifies that with the old evaluation criteria, around 6% of the population would meet all the conditions. This result therefore does not mean that 98% of people have an unhealthy lifestyle. Above all, it shows how difficult it is to simultaneously bring together five particularly demanding criteria.
Why this ideal of life remains difficult to achieve
Beyond individual behavior, the context of life also plays a major role. For Ingo Froböse, responsible for the DKV-Report 2025, “ health should not depend on financial situation.”
However, the results show that people with the lowest income and education levels meet the previous criteria less often… and report more stress.
Added to this is another phenomenon well known to psychologists. Anna Biller discusses what specialists call the “gap between intention and behavior”. She describes it as
“something typically human”. Simply put, we generally know what’s good for our health, but our environment often pushes us in the opposite direction. The fattest, sweetest or saltiest products are often the most accessible, the most visible… and sometimes the least expensive.
Ultimately, aiming for a healthy lifestyle isn’t about getting a perfect score. The main thing is rather to adopt habits that you can maintain in the long term: cooking simple and varied meals a little more often, gradually reducing your alcohol consumption or walking more when you spend long hours sitting. The challenge is therefore not to be impeccable, but to ensure that all these “healthy” choices become, little by little, easier to adopt.