Posted on 03/09/2015 8:04:24 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The world’s oldest known man, Alexander Imich, born in 1903, died last June in New York.
The torch will be passed to 111-year-old Sakari Momori, who comes from a country full of elderly people: Japan. The Guinness Book of World Records is investigating.
That’s not really surprising. You’ve probably heard a similar story before: The Japanese have the highest life expectancy of any major country.
Women on average live to 87 and men to 80 (compared to 81 years for American women and 76 for American men). The Japanese can live 75 of those years disability free and fully healthy, according to the World Health Organization.
For decades in the US, the health mania over Japanese cuisine has taken on a life of its own, with books on the timeless “Okinawa diet” and a host of others purporting to have cracked the mystical, enlightened ways of the East.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but anybody who pushes the image of 90-year-old Zen monks taking refuge in a remote mountain monastery, feasting their life away on sushi and vegetables, is full of it.
So is anybody who proclaims the innate superiority of Japan’s food supply to the “Western diet” (How many wonderful, green healthful diets can you choose from in all of North America and Europe?).
And contemporary Japan can be a stressful place. Its hyper-urban people work long hours, at 1,745 hours per worker in 2012, suffer through a long and deadening commute, and can easily fret when a subway hold-up makes them just minutes late for meetings with their bosses.
The pressure to perform is high, and failure is frowned upon.
So how have the Japanese managed to live so long?
Cuisine could indeed play a role — although even that is up for debate.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
It is an odd title, since the article concludes we don’t know why the Japanese tend to live longer. My guess will be “genetics”...
But with the birth rate they have they’ll soon be extinct.
Quite a few African Americans (especially women) live long lives too.
Fish diet.
It is very common in Japan to conceal facts of deaths of elderly relatives to defraud government and keep collecting their benefits. It might have contributed to their health statistics to some degree.
On the other hand I wouldn’t discard ‘Japanese diet’ as well. The most popular cause of death is a heart disease and Japanese food is certainly less stressful for heart than diets of people from countries which aren’t known for long lives of their nationals.
THEY WALK!!
Anyone that has ever been there can tell you how much walking you’ll do. The train system is the primary means of travel so even if you travel a fair distance using them you must still walk to/from the stations and getting to your final destination. Taxi’s are *very* expensive.
Tokyo is built upward, not outward like the USA. One of the consequences of having so much land in this country is that we’re very spread apart, even a grocery store requires a drive for most. This all results with very little walking. Now we even shop online, rarely going to malls - which at least got us walking around.
Walking...it’s the best exercise you can do.
agree, this article interested me, and yet, ended up totally informative and a waste of time.
The culture. Find out more about the culture before attributing it to the cuisine.
When I started, the working hours were considerably longer than what we did in America, to the tune of 200 to 300 hours per year. You'd commonly come to work on a Saturday if there was a public holiday during the week.
When I left, the working hours were nearly identical. You can divide the number given in the article by 52 weeks to prove it. In general, the work was far less stressful than here. Yeah, you worked longer hours during the week, but the abundance of paid public holidays more than compensated.
Everyone worked at a fairly even and dependable pace. Fewer super stars, but also a lot less deadwood you had to support because there is no such thing as minority, gender, trans-gender privilege etc. in Japan.
Since work is such a large part of life, less stress in work means less stress in life.
Diet obviously plays a role as does exercise-- you get a lot more of it walking or biking to the local train station than you'll get driving door to door here
But not the fish caught off Fukashima.
Is it the radiation from Nagasaki and Fukushima, or the mercury from all of that seafood, or both? Hmmm......
I walk at least 5 miles/day on a treadmill at 12 degree incline. Hope that counts.
Oh - geishas - they cater to your every whim. They’re shy at first, but they’re quite skilled at conversation. They can discuss anything from world affairs to the fine art of fishing - or baking.
Yeah. Fish diet.
Ironically, The Japanese also have one of the most highest smoking rates in the work.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.