The secret to living to 110? Bad record-keeping, says Ig Nobel Prize winner.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2024/12/25/lifestyle/lifes...
After an hour in any town and I'd seen more 95+yos walking about than 10 years in Britain. And the number of times I saw 4 generations of men from one family in the bathhouse!
While there are a few people who seemed to be nearly immortal, as in "being around since forever", like the Queen Of England or recently deceased https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Iliescu ... they didn't actually push past 100.
With all the care and life standard, seems to be a hard limit in our genes, so until something is done about that, better get realistic expectations.
He smoked only during WW2, was an army corp of engineers colonel when he retired from the military, came from a dirt farm in Michigan, engineered all kinds of civil and military projects. In the end, he still managed to engineer a smile. He absolutely loved maps/atlases/GIS.
Trust works both ways. There's also the trust that nobody will report anyone for the fraud, especially if it is widespread and normalized.
However, it would not surprise me if Japan actually did have high life expectancy rates because several other statistics seem to correlate with that, including low obesity, and universal access to healthcare.
I mean, clearly not all centarians in Japan are actually dead. But I think it's fairly straightforward that the numbers of super-elderly are inflated.
It was already seen over a decade ago: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11258071
(Greece commits a lot of pension fraud too)
So in short food itself from Japan is not generically healthy… it’s the choices that Japanese people make within this environment that are healthy.
Also, most people have a lot of walking/biking built into their daily schedule, especially in larger cities where having a car is impractical.
This all means that while there is a huge amount of sweets and fatty food, it's usually eaten in moderation, and people get exercise in their daily lives to work it off.
This is a difficult truth for a lot of people to accept because it’s so much easier to blame invisible factors that are poorly understood: Microplastics, xenoesteogens, microbiome, trace lithium in the water supply, or the other trendy excuses.
In some cultures moderating your eating and controlling your weight comes with very high societal pressure. Everyone sees this from a young age and internalizes it. It’s hard to communicate how strong this pressure is and it gets lost when you only look at studies about the food supply.
Also, portion sizes in America are huge.
In other words, it’s way easier to out diet a bad lifestyle than out lifestyle a bad diet, if your goal is to not be overweight. Obviously that doesn’t apply to all health metrics.
Most exercise in Japan takes the form of constant walking. You can walk from most homes to stores and restaurants, from many homes to train stations, from many workplaces to train stations, etc. For many Americans, the most walking they do is the walk from the door to the car.
It's substantially easier to build up a lot of time exercising by just walking as part of the things you do in daily life; a dedicated workout is generally only about 45-90 minutes. And the people going to the gym in Japan are also participating in all that walking, generally.
I wonder what anyone in Japan can say of the state of vanity over there. Is it relegated to an age ranges or genders, or is it beginning to pollute the culture entirely like in America?
My opinion is that Japan’s primary sin is pride and not necessarily vanity.
I actually miss the dirty oil fried food from Singapore , it’s much nicer when it’s greasy. Japan cooking oil is very clean , food quality is much higher too, less processed.
Traveling somewhere where you walk more and then losing weight is such a common story that it has become a meme.
People also don’t accurately judge how much they eat. The portion sizes were likely smaller and the food composition was different than what you ate in Singapore, even if you thought you were eating the same. A lot has been written arguing about hidden factors in food, but in actual studies it always comes down to eating fewer calories. Eating less calorie dense foods and smaller portion sizes will do it. Even the GLP-1 studies revealed that the magic of their weight loss is directly proportional to reduction of calories eaten, even if patients eat exactly the same foods (but in smaller quantities or less frequently)
As others have mentioned, social pressure plays a role in fitness, but there definitely is an abundance of unhealthy food. A previous generation may have had less unhealthy food options, so I'd be interested to see if this trend continues. All the greasy fast food chains exist here too and they are always packed.
anikom15•1h ago
fhdkweig•1h ago