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Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

economist.com

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Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#91

Post by kansai-ben »

powersnail wrote: post #34
tasogare wrote: post #9

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…

> To add insult to the injury Japanese cooking involves a lot of steps, tools and preparation so cooking something tasty is like a full time job. I have to disagree here. A large number of Japanese recipe are highly homecook-able especially for Japanese people living in Japan, who probably already have the right tools/ingredients. It all depends on what you usually shelf at home. In fact, even as I live in US, I find…

> A large number of Japanese recipe are highly homecook-able especially for Japanese people living in Japan, who probably already have the right tools/ingredients. It all depends on what you usually shelf at home.

Agreed. I'm not making kaiseki every night, nor any night for that matter here in Tokyo.

Typically I'll have the rice cooker set to have rice ready at 17:00 when I finish work for the day. I'll usually have some dashi on hand that I made over the weekend, but otherwise it's a 5-minute job with instant stuff that's not powdered, or 20 or so if I feel like making it from scratch. Mix in white/red miso and any other extras, and soup's done. A quick stir-fry with some meat, bean sprouts, and a packet of seasoning takes me all of another 5 minutes, and that's dinner.

If it's noodles, I'll usually have some fried vegetables from the supermarket in the fridge, and that takes 5 minutes to heat up in the toaster oven. Udon can be boiled and done in that time. Slice up a green onion, mix in a raw egg, add soy sauce and some roe, and that's another quick dinner.

When I feel like doing something more major, making nabe on the weekends really isn't that much harder. Prepping ingredients takes maybe half an hour, and then it's just letting it simmer for another hour. Plus, leftovers from the last a long time.

Curry's also something else that takes an hour tops from start to finish.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#92

Post by latch »

howlgarnish wrote: post #67
latch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Interestingly enough, Okinawa has the highest life expectancy in Japan. They also really got the short end of the stick during WW2 though (a third of the civilian population died during the US invasion), so this may be a statistical/survival of the fittest type quirk too, plus the historically the local diet there was fairly different to the rest of the Japan (lots of pork, less seafood, sweet potato/taro instead of…

According to wikipedia, Okinawan men now have a life expectancy below the Japanese average for men. Which is why I think it's useful to look at.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#93

Post by howlgarnish »

tkgally wrote: post #88
euske wrote: post #47

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…

Long-term resident of Japan here with no particular expertise or insights on longevity or health. Something that has struck me recently are the government-led educational efforts focused on nutrition for infants and children. My daughter and one-year-old grandson live with me, and ever since he started eating solid food she has been feeding him exclusively homemade, vegetable-centric meals. When preparing the food, e…

That all sounds very wholesome, but based on what I've seen, reality is pretty different. That commercial baby food you mentioned seems to avoid salt entirely and make up for it with gobs of sugar. Snacks for kids like tamago boro are little puffs of sugar and starch.

I'll readily grant that the universal free school food is a huge improvement on the US swill, although this too has its share on unhealthy practices: mandating that everything served has to be eaten whether you're hungry or not or you like it or not (kids are regularly told that sukikirai, liking/hating foods, is not allowed), and the mandatory milk & milk bun for that sugar kick. At least whale meat has become too expensive to feature regularly anymore.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#94

Post by powersnail »

remexre wrote: post #84
powersnail wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To add insult to the injury Japanese cooking involves a lot of steps, tools and preparation so cooking something tasty is like a full time job. I have to disagree here. A large number of Japanese recipe are highly homecook-able especially for Japanese people living in Japan, who probably already have the right tools/ingredients. It all depends on what you usually shelf at home. In fact, even as I live in US, I find…

What're your go-to choices?

Pan-fried chicken thigh with Nanban sauce (soy sauce + vinegar + sugar + mirin + sake). If I have tomatoes and lettuce lying around, I'll cut a few slices and make it into a chicken sandwich.

This takes me about 17 minutes, 20 minutes tops, basically as long as it needs to cook and rest the meat.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#95

Post by saiya-jin »

tkgally wrote: post #88
euske wrote: post #47

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…

Long-term resident of Japan here with no particular expertise or insights on longevity or health. Something that has struck me recently are the government-led educational efforts focused on nutrition for infants and children. My daughter and one-year-old grandson live with me, and ever since he started eating solid food she has been feeding him exclusively homemade, vegetable-centric meals. When preparing the food, e…

Well, I am far from a food snob but even for me, what you can often buy as baby food is bland and has some weird mix of ingredients (ie some are too oily, some have weird aftertaste). I am talking about french and swiss rather premium products, so not some supercheap crap for 3rd world countries done by likes of Nestle/Kraft.

When you cook it yourself even with very little salt and reasonable spices for a baby, the result is so much better. We can see how much our little one enjoys cooked stuff vs bought ones, so we stopped quickly with those. It takes some time, but covid is actually helping with this particular thing right now. Thank god our kindergarden has proper chef who actually cooks and not just reheats frozen stuff from cheap retailers.

Its a bit sad that even in 2021 we can't really manufacture en masse reasonably processed food that contains just the food ingredients and tastes at least reasonably.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#96

Post by howlgarnish »

latch wrote: post #92
howlgarnish wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough, Okinawa has the highest life expectancy in Japan. They also really got the short end of the stick during WW2 though (a third of the civilian population died during the US invasion), so this may be a statistical/survival of the fittest type quirk too, plus the historically the local diet there was fairly different to the rest of the Japan (lots of pork, less seafood, sweet potato/taro instead of…

According to wikipedia, Okinawan men now have a life expectancy below the Japanese average for men. Which is why I think it's useful to look at.

TIL! Looks like that flipped around 2000: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18924533/

This goes into some more detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinawa_diet#Longevity

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#97

Post by saiya-jin »

deeviant wrote: post #83
thick wrote: post #14

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…

The Mindspan Diet, by Preston Estep has a lot to say about the Japanese diet. I think he makes many convincing arguments. Some key take-aways: Iron is very bad for longevity, refined carbs that aren't sugar and that have relatively low glycemic indexes (long grained rice and many pastas) are actually quite good (rice/pasta), meat bad but seafood ok, don't over do the saturated fat in general, drink moderate alcohol i…

Seafood specifically can't be judged as some ideal one 200 years ago prior to oceans pollution. If you want to pick up seafood which is not heavily contaminated by heavy metals, various regional spills, factory drains, near deltas of biggest rivers in Asia/Africa etc. you will find out you just play russian roulette with your food. Mercury poisoning with ie tuna can be achieved relatively quickly depending on the brand. Pregnant women should probably avoid things like salmon & tuna completely, the benefits are far outweighted by the crap. Farmed sea fish are properly bad food.

Freshwater fish can be better but they are almost 100% farmed, and good luck trusting some farmer with what he feeds them, since infections in overpopulated ponds are very frequent. Fish meat reflects what its being fed, so crappy food makes previously healthy fish into more bacon one.

Also meat is not an uniform substance, cheap beef is most probably less healthy than lean bio free range turkey. Also depends on the cuts, pork has very lean and very fatty tissues in the same animal. And so on.

I'd say for the food the quantity, timing, being active every day for longer stretch, calm peaceful life and obviously not much poisons/addictions makes up more than rest. We have centenarians in the west too. At least that's the best effort, if one has crappy genes with high probability of cancer or heart attack before 50, there are sadly some limits these days. But one can and should still maximize their own potential.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#98

Post by ergocoder »

gos_abhi wrote: post #21

American people have reduced longevity by eating fast food

Not just fast food.

The size of dish here is very large.

I moved from Thailand and was surprised how big a Thai dish in US was.

There is some sort of default expectation that a dish needs to be large.

I'm sure that contributes to obesity to some degree.

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#99

Post by DrRobinson »

agumonkey wrote: post #72
thick wrote: post #14

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…

The more I try to read, the less I know, the more I believe the answer is: - eat few - eat varied - move more - be with others - sleep nice Basically, avoid modern lifestyle advice.

Follow this advice and you'll increase your chances of growing older increases quite a lot, and you'll stay healthier in your older years as well.

There is only so far these things can take us though. A lot of (but still too little) research is being done on slowing down or maybe even reversing aging, which could increase our lifespan to 150 (or maybe even longer). Not only would we live longer, but we would stay healthier for longer as well.

If you're interested, make sure to check out the longevity subreddit[0], some longevity discords[1][2]. Also make sure to read Lifespan by Dr. David Sinclair[3] and/or Ageless by Dr.Andrew Steele[4]

Some other things to keep an eye on:

  - Blood pressure
  - Resting heart rate
  - Brush teeth twice a day
  - Reduce meat
  - Don't smoke
  - Reduce alcohol
  - Avoid stress
  - Your mental health
--

0. https://www.reddit.com/r/longevity

1. https://discord.gg/HwTX7gR

2. https://discord.gg/ftSbffu

3. https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-Age-Dont-Have/dp/0008380...

4. https://andrewsteele.co.uk/ageless/ (not yet released in the US)

X. Longevity knowledgebase: https://brain.forever-healthy.org/display/EN/Longevity+Strat...

Re: Japanese people may have gained longevity by balancing their diets

#100

Post by hbarka »

bobthepanda wrote: post #90
Torkel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct. Before covid only people who felt like thay might have a cold or similar wore face masks, to reduce risk of infecting others. (This is my understanding after living there for one year and then travelling for a month every other year for ~20 years. I’m not native though so there may be some nuance to mask wearing I’m missing)

IIRC, I've also read that they consider it helpful for allergy season. Japan supposedly has one of the worst allergy seasons in the world due to misguided industrial policy around timber. TL,DR; After WWII Japan heavily incentivized reforestation to provide cheap domestic timber for industrial and defense purposes, but only with two types of trees, Japanese cedar and Japanese cypress. It turns out that even with this…

“Male trees are one of the most significant reasons why seasonal allergies have gotten so bad in the recent decades.”

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/seasonal-allergies-bla...

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