61–70 of 268 posts
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…
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…
Seems like you have some divergent ideas here. On the one hand, you ask about practical, actionable stuff; on the other hand, you ask "How many consecutive generations of people living to 100 does it take before it happens at a regular basis.". The answer to the latter question is not something you can really use for anything. I sometimes wonder if the right thing for westerners wouldn't just be a big sequence of pho…
Subtitle: Japan’s rate of strokes fell during a period when it began eating a bit of meat Article is paywalled, but the subtitle appears to make a correlation between the consumption of meat in Japan and the decline in the rate of strokes. At face value, this seems dubious.
It seems plausible to me. A small amount of meat could fix a vitamin B12 deficiency.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, article (title) is hard to believe. The affordable food is rice, noodles and fried things like chicken and some fishes. Every other thing (meat, vegetables, fruits) is really expensive. It’s often not worth the hassle to cook lunch meal in comparison to the cost of raw ingredients in the supermarket. To add insult to the injury Japanese cooking involves a lot of steps, tools and preparation so cooking something…
I'm interested what dishes you're specifically talking about here? Japanese cooking is not complicated, just different. Me and a lot of my friends here can all meal prep <500yen per meal and that ranges from Japanese food to Indian/Italian/Mexican. You just need to make smart adjustments and substitutions.
That isn't necessarily true, Japanese cuisine (along with Italian which are my two cuisines I cooked professionally) actually relies more on elaboration and skill of seemingly humble ingredients: more than just about any other cuisine in my experience. It's a great equalizer to have something seen as exotic as truffle shaved on a soufflé be outshined by a long way by a Chawanmushi with a proper dashi, seasonal (cheap) vegetables, herbs and seafood.
Sure you can make staples like maze gohan, tamago gohan, takikomi gohan or ocha zuke with whatever you have on hand and rift where needed to keep it from being boring but each and everyone of those dishes that is carefully created and balanced makes it so much more satisfying and I find that to be the trick to Japanese cuisine as it makes you re-evaluate your perceptions/positions, and thus the execution of what is really important in a recipe as a result: I dislike eating in the morning, like really hate it, but I really loved having onsen tamago over slightly seasoned uruchimai rice and some handmade zukemono and miso (with proper dashi) for breakfast. The extra I could just eat as onigiri with toasted nori later in the day with a miso shiro and it was that good and never something I never get tired of despite being prone to 'palate fatigue.'
And all of that is because the elaboration and prep that went into making things that use affordable ingredients but require a great deal of attention to detail--for example a bitter salty dashi, or worst yet that hondashi powder, is repulsive and indicative of improper heat monitoring and regulation with the katsubushi/niboshi. A hastently made zukemono is very disappointing when eating teishoku as you want the sourness and saltiness and crunch to refresh your palate as you go back and forth between dishes. Not having that ruins the meal entirely.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I tried searching for one a few months ago when my Economist subscription was expiring. Unfortunately, not even a single one comes close. 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 findin…
They’re Liberal, not Left.
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…
Quite the opposite! Random strangers will stare, and friends and colleagues will make blunt comments in a way that would send them straight to HR in the US: you'll be told to your face you're fat, asked how much you weigh, get poked in the belly, asked if you've tried sumo wrestling, etc.
A random デブちゃん's experience: https://www.tofugu.com/japan/fat-in-japan/
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…
Isn't Okinawa a good place to start? You get two interesting comparisons: Okinawans vs other Japanese during the last century, and Okinawans then vs now. It reduces the number (or at least the scale) of differences so that you can better pinpoint the factors, right?
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...
Asian American in New Jersey overwhelmingly probably refers to Indians so I don’t think you can compare that to the Japanese directly.
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…
A diet of a lot more plants like the Mediterranean diet meant I met all my RDI's, whereas a normal meat and 3 veg, cereal for breakfast western diet didn't - things like vitamin E and so on were a lot easier to get with the Mediterranean diet, though for things like Zinc I had to start eating nuts and so on - something I'd never done much.
It surprised me that the things that seem to stop cancer (according to some studies) were exactly the same things that are more prevalent in the Mediterranean diet, it became a bit of a no brainer. Give it a go (I'm just a happy customer - its free any way with a paid tier)
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...
If you are going to pick a small arbitrary region of the country to compare, then I’m sure you could pick an arbitrary region of Japan to compare to New Jersey favorably.
On a recent Tyler Cowen podcast he stated that Japanese Americans have the longest life expectancy and speculated it was a combination of genetics + wealth. I think it is a good counter to the diet argument the piece puts forward. I was unable to find a link to the study he referred to though - so I linked to the one above. Hopefully my recall of Cowen's point is correct.