You’d think that the stress of living in Israel would be killing us, but a new international index shows that’s far from being the case, ranking Israel as the 10^th healthiest country in the world. Perhaps it’s all that freshly chopped salad.

The Bloomberg Healthiest Country Index’s 2019 marked Spain as the healthiest economy in the world, overcoming previous winner Italy, now coming in at no. 2. The other healthiest nations this year, in consecutive order, are Iceland, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, Singapore, Norway and Israel. Not bad company at all.

Meanwhile, Canada came in at 16^th place, far ahead of the United States and Mexico, which came in at 35^th and 53^rd place, respectively.

The Bloomberg index ranks 169 economies according to variables such as life expectancy, obesity, sanitation, clean water access and tobacco use – the last of which Israel can definitely improve upon.

Bloomberg attributed the Mediterranean countries’ high ranking in part to their much-coveted Mediterranean diet, which is rich in olive oil, healthy nuts and fresh vegetables. The same might go toward explaining Israel’s favorable ranking.

While Israel dropped one place since the last evaluation in 2017, it still fared pretty well, both in this index and other recent findings such as the United Nations’ 2018 World Happiness Report, where Israel made 11^th place out of 156 countries. Perhaps that last one has to do less with salad and more with burekas.