| > I assume the secret is mostly genetics That, but also various factors during one's life - most importantly, ample and healthy food (especially during fetal growth, childhood and youth), a lack of exposure to known damaging factors for physical and mental health (smog, noise, tobacco, alcohol and other drugs), and a lack of wars and other forms of violence. The top killers in the Western world are cardiovascular diseases (strongly linked to food) and cancers (strongly linked, again, to food but also to drugs). A safe working culture (both in business and in private) is also a good thing to have - the typical lackluster attitude towards workplace safety is a top cause of workplace accidents both fatal and non-fatal but serious. |
| I worked with a manager that looked after the mainframe and he always told me to never assume. Assuming genetics is the assumption with nutrition and health, with this not always being helpful. Regardless of our genetics, what we eat and how we move can always move the needle on our health outcomes. Ancel Keys and his work on diet and longevity is pertinent to this article. He discovered that the people that lived the longest had a low saturated fat plant-based diet. This was to be found in the 'blue zones' around the world. This does not mean exclusively vegan, but getting that way. Keys had to make some recommendations to the U.S. government and he went for the Mediterranean Diet rather than what they were eating in Okinawa. This was because the Second World War was fresh in people's memories at the time and telling Americans to eat like Japanese people was not going to be well-received advice at the time. The Japanese diet has changed since the post-war years with the processed foods, animal products and saturated fats rather than what you might call a peasant diet. It is also the same with the Mediterranean Diet, which is not 'pizza, pasta, red wine and meat from imprisoned animals'. Also important is that most Japanese live in walkable neighbourhoods. Japan is a cycling nation so cycling happens too, not this lycra + polystyrene hat cycling from the parking lot and back to the parking lot that passes for cycling in the West, but everyday cycling on bicycles that are designed for comfort and getting about in regular clothes. We all like our fat, sugar, salt and motor cars, however, those that were deprived from these joys due to war do well in the longevity stakes. |
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| ▲ | majkinetor 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You can tell easily while entire scientific commune is still guessing? Epic. | | |
| ▲ | CarpetBombGaza 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | [dead] | |
| ▲ | kelipso 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | A guess from a random commenter is probably going to be more accurate than the food science academic community, when you consider their track record. |
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| ▲ | valianteffort 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I suspect two things, low-calorie diets consisting predominantly of fresh foods and vegetables. And active lifestyle. It is unreal how much a good diet and walking everyday will change your entire life. | | |
| ▲ | numpad0 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The actual traditional Japanese food consists of obscene amount of carbohydrates taken with pickles flavored salt with little to no protein or fat intakes. The role of carbs and proteins is switched from a stereotypical European dinner, a meal is about how to deal with the grains. This naturally shortens body heights and take diabetics out of family lines. This had changed massively owing to Westernization of diet and had reduced stroke(brain and heart) deaths even as recent as last ~30 years. This is apparently weird even to Chinese people; an image of ramen with rice and roast dumplings on sides amounts to a ragebait to them(as well as to experts in cardiovascular systems), while it's nothing more than a common lunch menu to students and young workers in Japan. But I digress - my point is, the real traditional Japanese meal is more like half a football worth of rice with vegetable flavored salt, quite unlike idealized modern interpretations thereof. | | |
| ▲ | decimalenough 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Otherwise correct, but the real real traditional Japanese diet was barley (mugi), millet (kibi/hie) and sorghum (awa), not just white rice, which was an unaffordable luxury for many peasants. | | |
| ▲ | smugma 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The article also mentions that 60 years ago, Japan had the lowest proportion of 100+ year olds. | |
| ▲ | hollerith 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Gemini disagrees with this. | | |
| ▲ | decimalenough 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Try an actual source: https://2024.sci-hub.se/1147/ff0abbc773b295a97bc927b98dcaed9... It is true that rice was always the prestige food consumed by the upper classes, and the peasantry ate rice too, but it was only one of the five staples (gokoku) and was often extended with other grains (mugigohan etc). | | |
| ▲ | numpad0 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Mugi/awa/hie were untracked substitutes for rice. Medieval Japanese warlords mainly collected taxes in form of bags of rice, and ignored other crops. So peasants mixed those grains into rice at varying ratios of up to 100% depending on local and yearly yields. That doesn't mean those grains were culturally considered defaults. | |
| ▲ | hollerith 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Your pdf is mostly about the 1870s and later. (Although it does mention the Tokugawa period, which began in 1603, it seems to do so for quite tangential reason.) In contrast, people in East Asia started cultivating rice 9,000 years ago, and modern Japanese are probably mostly descended from these early rice farmers (who started out in China, then spread to Korea and then Japan) with a substantial contribution from another population called Jomon, which were already in Japan when the heavily-rice-dependent people started to arrive in Japan about 2,300 years ago and who lived mostly by hunting and gathering. This is relevant because some people here are advocating for everyone to adopt a Japanese-like diet, which might not turn out so well for you unless most your ancestors have 8,000 or 9,000 years of experience getting most of their calories from grains. | | |
| ▲ | decimalenough 3 days ago | parent [-] | | We're not really disagreeing here? But wet paddy rice farming requires flat land, which in mountainous Japan is in notably short supply, so they planted other crops too. This parallels China, where the warm, wet south is rice country but the colder, drier north grows other grains. The five grains (gokoku) idea is itself originally Chinese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Grains |
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| ▲ | KPGv2 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Gemini thinks there are two "g"s in "guava" as of two weeks ago when I tested it. |
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| ▲ | panny 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That's pretty close. If I had to sum it up in one word, it would be: trains. Car culture makes Americans fat and lazy. 40% of US adults are obese. 80% are overweight. Walking and good food, yeah, that helps. But trains introduce short sprints into everyday life. It starts with "He's too late, he's never gonna catch it... well I'll be damned, he did it." and pretty soon, you're saying "We can catch it, just run!" Everyone on the train has a shopping bag, because trains don't have huge trunks like a car. You want groceries? Carry it. Good exercise. Trains also remove the road rage from your life, the daily stress of defensive driving in a fast moving freeway full of other angry drivers. Trains eliminate the premature death caused by road accidents which not only lower life expectancy directly, but indirectly as bread winners are taken from families. The car exhaust is gone too. Trains reshape how towns are built, with higher density and less parking. More walking! Everything mushrooms out from the decision to travel with trains. It's little wonder why Japan has the lowest obesity rate in the world. | | |
| ▲ | NalNezumi 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't disagree, but to add I think the retirement culture probably helps a lot for longevity too. The Japanese retirement attitude is "I've worked my ass off all my life. Contributing to the society all my life. Finally I have some time to spend on my hobbies! I should be active!" and they pick up quite active hobbies: if you go hiking mountains you'll see many old retired people with serious gears. Also still trains. Contrast it to ime, western retirement which is more "finally I can relax" and people become sedentary. Hanging around in parks, cafe, or focus more on socializing and diet. And starts to rely more on cars and other senior services. | | |
| ▲ | SenHeng 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes. My Japanese wife’s father and mine are the same age. FIL had a heart attack last year and almost died. Yet he’s still the president of the rotary club, travels every two weeks across the country to attend events or give lectures. Recently hosted an international student exchange at his workshop and is still making new pieces of art to be exhibited. My father spends all day watching football or horses and has visibly started going senile. | |
| ▲ | kelipso 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Feels like a much more likely explanation. Heard my parents talk a lot about people who retire, make their primary activity be vegging out, and then health issues start popping up. Japanese also seem to have a big culture of everyone needing to have hobbies. | |
| ▲ | JJMcJ 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Germany is rather like that. Never try to keep up with a German granny going up a hillside. |
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| ▲ | johndhi 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | By this logic wouldn't people in nyc, London, Washington dc, and Paris be living extra long? | | |
| ▲ | panny 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The answer to that should be fairly obvious after Iryna Zarutska and Emily Carlson happened so recently. American and Japanese trains are not qualitatively the same. Vagrants and solicitors wander the local trains here like it is their asylum. Amtrak is a lot safer since they have conductors checking tickets, but that is still very loud and unruly. If you'd like a more direct comparison to Japan, try Hong Kong, another place where I have spent a fair amount of time riding the trains. They also have world leading life expectancy. | |
| ▲ | shagmin 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Life expectancy in NYC is 82.6 vs 78.4 overall for USA. Lots of variables and such, but NYC must be doing something better than the rest of the country and I wouldn't doubt trains (and walkability) are a contributing factor. |
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| ▲ | supportengineer 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I recently had an experience where I needed to do physical labor about 16 hours a day for two weeks, at the same time there was hardly any time to eat so I had to eat very small and simple meals. At the end of the two weeks I felt amazing. | | |
| ▲ | Lwerewolf 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Be careful with that feeling and don't underfuel, or at least keep it at "sane" levels. I feel pretty amazing and full after 62km/2700mD+ XCMs as well, as an extreme example... which is at least partially due to the immune system (and resp. inflammation/etc) being suppressed. Long, light/moderate efforts without adequate food intake and rest can lead to the same thing. | | |
| ▲ | jama211 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | What are XCMs? 2700mD? Why would the immune system being suppressed make you feel good? I’m so confused | | |
| ▲ | Lwerewolf 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Stress hormones. Read up on cortisol's effects. XCM - cross country marathon (MTB race). 2700mD+ - 2.7km of vertical gain. A reduction of inflammation is a general effect of anti-inflammatory drugs, which tend to make you feel better. There's a LOT more than that (i.e. say, all the things that fall under the umbrella of "runner's high"), but the TL:DR is that significant physical activity / energy expenditure, combined with a lack of proper rest & nutrition leads to long-term undesirable effects that can definitely be masked and/or disregarded. |
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| ▲ | karp773 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I fugure XCM must be cross country marathon, where 62km is the distance. But what is mD? Difference in elevation in meters? | |
| ▲ | _zoltan_ 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I have no idea what you wrote and you shouldn't assume people know some niece jargon. |
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| ▲ | JJMcJ 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Did a major house cleaning a few years ago, got me out of the chair and the couch for a couple of weeks. Probably not as intense as your experience but I definitely felt better and was more flexible for about a month afterwards. | |
| ▲ | xhkkffbf 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think this works well for relatively short bursts, but if you made it a regular habit your body would start to break down after a year or two. |
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| ▲ | majkinetor 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Japanese food is not actually so great, especially nowadays - lots of carbs for one. Good Japanese food is not so different from Mediatorial. | | |
| ▲ | fragmede 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm no food historian/scientist, but I'm pretty sure the Japanese have been eating rice, which is a carb, even longer than has been a Japan. |
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