51–60 of 268 posts
I thought I'd chime in with something that seems to be overlooked. Japanese have the 80% diet rule. Eat until you are 80% full. Hara hachi bun me. Calorie restriction has been shown to increase lifespan in several different species, https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/calorie...
I never cease to marvel that despite us living in the same household I weigh more than twice what she does.
Some observations... 1) Japan is not built around cars. There are more trains. You get to walk more. 2) Food portions are smaller, making it harder to overeat. 3) Fish is more popular than meat. Fish section in supermarkets is larger. Most kitchens have fish cooking equipment. 4) They do not put cheese in goddamn everything. I guess they get to eat more mercury (from fish) and arsenic (from rice).
I would sincerely like to get a breakdown of all the factors that contribute to the Japanese living to such an old age, rather than the usual "this one weird trick" bullshit that Economist and others try to swindle on the Western readership. It's quite frankly annoying, although I've lost the last ounce of respect I've had for the Economist years ago so I'm the idiot for expecting them to be any better. I've gone thr…
For what it's worth, Asian-Americans in New Jersey (and several other wealthy states) have a higher life expectancy than Japanese people in Japan. Source: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/08/asian-americans-men-in...
Probably a bad idea to compare a large data set (people in entire county) with comparatively vastly smaller sample set (Asian-American living in New Jersey).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re diet: putting aside that alcohol-per-capita consumption here in Japan is less than the OECD average [1], and also how the article is actually about how the introduction of meat into the Japanese diet has caused a decrease in strokes (i.e. this is probably off-topic); it is true that if you are eating out cheaply, you'll likely find lots of rice and meat stuff like gyuudon (beef on rice), katsudon (breaded meat on…
> anything served cold besides ice cream is disgusting, In the west there are salads. They're cold. In Japan salads are rare and usually nothing but iceberg lettuce and cherry tomatoes. > who thinks that anything pickled is gross, The pickled isle of a western super market has more pickled things than the corresponding Japanese super market. They're just different kinds of pickled things. > normal Japanese meal gener…
What's not mentioned in the OP: - INSANE peer pressure. If you're skinny as a twig in the US, you're probably considered normal in Japan. If you're actually an obese person (again, in the US standard), people here wouldn't even look at you straight. This kind of environment put a huge pressure for one to stay in shape. - INSANE obsession for health. I hear that Americans are obsessed with health, but oh boy, have the…
I would sincerely like to get a breakdown of all the factors that contribute to the Japanese living to such an old age, rather than the usual "this one weird trick" bullshit that Economist and others try to swindle on the Western readership. It's quite frankly annoying, although I've lost the last ounce of respect I've had for the Economist years ago so I'm the idiot for expecting them to be any better. I've gone thr…
What's an alternative to the Economist? I can't find a better publication short of an academic journal or literature. Someone recommended Foreign Affairs but I've yet to buy one.
The Atlantic is often advertised as the other high-quality publication. The target audience, however, is overwhelmingly the US. Economist makes me feel like other countries exist, and there is enough going on outside the US.
On the ideological front, I fell into this trap of finding a periodical with little bias towards the political left or the political right. While Economist touts itself to be centre, it would be naive to take them at face value as they clearly are centre-left. The silver lining is that they are far better than others who make absolutely no efforts to quell their suppress their ideological biases (e.g. New York Times).
I call this a trap because I've since realized that it is virtually impossible to expect a "truly" unbiased publication. As long as I feel that I am not falling into an echo chamber, I am fine with biases. Politically charged articles generally have more than one perspectives.
One would be hard-pressed to find a single publication as diverse as the Economist. I think this is primarily a historical artifact - they just have had a significant first-mover advantage (I think) and have accumulated a solid bunch of human capital. I'm slowly inclining towards subscribing to more niche publications instead.
Financial Times is a reasonable contender, though far more costlier.
I would sincerely like to get a breakdown of all the factors that contribute to the Japanese living to such an old age, rather than the usual "this one weird trick" bullshit that Economist and others try to swindle on the Western readership. It's quite frankly annoying, although I've lost the last ounce of respect I've had for the Economist years ago so I'm the idiot for expecting them to be any better. I've gone thr…
read deep nutrition, i can summarize sinple. eat all kinda meat, organ, muscle all of it, egg and milk also good. plants have evolved to protect themselves using chemicals so they're bad. seed oils are the root of all evil and illness. good nutrition of ancestors means better looks for next generation.
Paywalled so didn't read TFA but: It's always surprised that the longevity in Japan is often attributed to diet. From my travels there my impression is of a diet that largely consists of rice and various meats and a high consumption of alcohol and cigarettes. Although there definitely seems to be far less sugar in everything. Culturally it seems that fitness in general is encouraged, combined with a very different at…
The single biggest difference between Japanese and American diet is the amount of food. Just going for US servings to Japanese servings is enough to shed quite a bit of weight, although you are likely to go hungry if you are used to American sizes. Otherwise the Japanese diet is indeed carb heavy (rice, soba and udon), but I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
What about sugar? There's a big difference there, too. Americans put sugar in everything, even things you'd think wouldn't need it, like salad dressing and pizza dough.
Sugar (sucrose) is made up of glucose & fructose, and I don't think fructose is healthy for us. And its metabolic pathway makes us fat [0] via _de novo lipogenesis_.
[0] Sugar, the Bitter Truth, Robert Lustig, MD, Endocrinologist at UCSF https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
American people have reduced longevity by eating fast food