It is tempting to tell a tidy story in which people in Britain take too many pills because they exercise too little and eat too poorly, while Danes stay slim by cycling everywhere. The assumption is that Britain relies on medication to fix lifestyle failures, whereas Denmark relies on prevention.

But are Britons actually more medicine-dependent than the Danes? The honest answer is yes and no.

When it comes to the more routine maintenance of getting older – managing the physical wear and tear of the body – the two countries prescribe in remarkably similar volumes.

But where pills are sought to compensate for what society has failed to provide, Britain reaches for the prescription pad far more readily. And, crucially, the heaviest of that prescribing is concentrated in the UK’s most deprived communities.

Health Gap / Sundhedskløften is a collaborative series from The Conversation UK and Denmark’s Videnskab.dk exploring what the two countries can learn from each other when it comes to health and wellbeing.

From cycling and alcohol to inequality, healthcare and everyday habits, the series looks beyond hospitals and medical treatment to explore how culture, politics and society shape the way people live – and how healthy they are.

If you look purely at drugs prescribed to prevent disease, the stereotype of the overmedicated Briton falls apart.

Take heart disease. Around 13% of the Danish population are prescribed statins to lower cardiovascular risk. In the UK, the figure is nearly identical: the British Heart Foundation estimates 14 to 15% of adults take them.

This pattern holds for polypharmacy (taking multiple drugs regularly), too. Around half of all Danes aged 75 and over take five or more medicines a week; in England, the figure for the same age group is 51%.

So, a retired Dane and a retired Brit are taking roughly the same number of pills for chronic health conditions. Does this undermine the idea that Denmark prevents........

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