[ninetyninenine]

If you been to Japan, access to unhealthy food is extraordinarily easy. There’s so much bad food everywhere along with good food.

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.

[wanderer_79]

As a Japanese, I will also mention that what you see out to eat in Japan is not exactly what we eat at home traditionally. I doubt many would know about all the multitude of traditional dishes that my mom regularly made at home that one would typically not go out to eat, such as hijiki salad (ひじきの煮物) or kinpira gobo (きんぴらごぼう). These and others are the types of dishes that remind me of home (and not tamago-sandos and ramen). My mom emphasized eating things of different colors, which came in the form of assortments of various types of vegetables.

Also, portion sizes in America are huge.

[evidencetamper]

This, plus yearly mandated healthchecks with huge pressure and shame on excessive weight.

[wanderer_79]

Are you speaking from experience? Because this sounds like the typical sensationalization of all things Japanese which permeates even this website. Compared to western culture, people in Japan may be more forward about commenting on your weight (as is also common in some other East Asian cultures), but I wouldn't call it "huge pressure and shame".

As to the health exam, you may get some consultation and recommendations if your measurements show you are overweight, but it doesn't turn into some draconian process shaming you into losing the weight. I'm Japanese and never heard about such thing.

[evidencetamper]

If you never heard about the weight maintenance company wide competitions (let's fitness!), the labor doctor telling you that it might be difficult for you to handle stressful management work with high blood pressure, the kids saying that they were laughed at because their dad is fat...

You're blessed.

[dartharva]

None of these are even remotely unique or attributable to Japan. You can find them anywhere in the developed world.

[wanderer_79]

I can't tell if you are speaking from experience or not. I tried googling about this company wide competition and cant find any hits about this, searched "lets fitness" in english and Japanese, cant find anything.

High blood pressure is a medical condition, and you are telling me that a suggestion from the doctor regarding stress levels at work is bad?

And kids, cmon. Kids will make fun of anything. I did some schooling in the US and I was made fun of purely for being of a particular race.

[evidencetamper]

Oh, I see. You're not actually Japanese.

[pezezin]

Is that true?

I live in Japan and maybe my company is different, because we don't get that pressure and shame. My health check reports show a warning sign in the weight/BMI area, and that's it. Plenty of chubby and overweight people in my office too, and nobody shames them.

[Tor3]

Ah yes, the food we eat at home (my wife is Japanese) is quite different from a lot of the food you get when you eat out. And we use way less salt at home, and there are no additives unlike the pre-made ramen kits bought in shops. Lots and lots of fresh vegetables and other fresh food.

[Barrin92]

>it’s the choices that Japanese people make within this environment that are healthy.

Precisely that they don't need to make choices due to their environment is what makes the difference. In the US and EU people love their individualism, spend a gazillion on fitness interventions and most people are overweight, it's probably the most visible sign of the importance of culture. As Russ Ackoff said, the correct way to address problems is not to solve them, but to dissolve them. Not to fix individual issues but to create conditions under which they do not occur.

The best way to lose weight is actually to move to a place that's full of thin people, not "do" anything. It's funny that the reverse is common wisdom, everyone who moves to an unhealthy place will always proclaim how they gained 20 pounds immediately

[Aurornis]

> it’s the choices that Japanese people make within this environment that are healthy

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.

[eagerpace]

Agree. Hyper-partisanship has Americans on both sides believing any decision they don’t make for themselves is against their interests.

[zdw]

I think this is mostly a social/societal thing - at an early age in schools they tell kids that they should only eat until they're 80% full. And there's substantial social pressure and bullying of anyone considered even mildly overweight.

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.

[bobthepanda]

The public school food system also encourages healthy eating, and also general societal responsibility since children are the ones responsible for serving and cleaning up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fze5s1SlqB8&t=1188s&pp=ygUsZ...

[Tiktaalik]

North America is a car captured hellscape where so many people have zero options but to sit in a car to get everywhere they want to go.

Meanwhile in Japan and so many other regions in Europe that are pointed to as healthier people have the option to simply walk to do so many of their daily tasks.

No real surprise that the regions where people have to actively work harder to be active are in poorer health than others where being active is the default easiest choice.

The built environment is a critical thing here we can fix to make a healthier society.

[carlosjobim]

> North America is a car captured hellscape

Have you been to North America? Or have you been outside North America?

[Tiktaalik]

Of course I've done both.

[adrianN]

The Mediterranean diet is pretty much nothing like people in the Mediterranean eat today either. Very old people had a radically different diet during most of their life.

[prerok]

I might be missing something but AFAIK that is not true. I live adjacent to the Mediterranean and I still see folks eating at home what is considered their diet.

Can you elaborate what you meant?

[stavros]

I'm Greek, and we cook what my mom used to cook, which is what my grandma used to cook. It's something like "meat once a week, fish twice, vegetables the rest". My favorite dishes are peas, beans, lentils, and I don't tend to like steak much, for example.

If we do use meat, we use it in dishes with lots of vegetables, e.g. stuffed zucchini with rice and mincemeat (though the mincemeat is optional).

[adrianN]

The old diet had very little meat for example. The modern diet has meals daily that would be eaten on special occasions only a few generations ago. My great grandmother for example fed her family (more than ten people!) on one pig and a couple of chicken per year. Now the meat consumption in her home country is nearly seventy kilograms per person.

[firefax]

>If you been to Japan, access to unhealthy food is extraordinarily easy.

But so is healthy food. Imagine saying "I ate nothing but 7/11 food for two days and I feel the best I have in years" in America.

Where I'd be having a hot dog or pizza I was having onigiri. Small things like that add up.

And yes, they do walk a lot -- I spent a whole evening just walking around Shinjuku in awe of the place.

[damontal]

They have vending machines with hot pizza! I’d be in big trouble there.

[prerok]

We have them in Europe too. Creates a pizza from scratch (well, ok, the dough is preprepared) in about 5 minutes. Never tried it, though, but folks tell me it's ok.

[krapp]

We have them in the US too. Weirdly the one I used when I was in school was an A&W branded machine, which I only ever associated with root beer.

[Mawr]

What a horrible post, missing the entire point by a mile and worse yet, misguiding everyone about the most basic facts :(

I assume you're from a western society, so I can't possibly imagine how you could have possibly reached such a conclusion. The contrast should be obvious at first glance.

The default Japanese diet is greatly more healthy than the default western diet, especially the American diet.

As a person living in the west and willing to put in some of my limited effort into eating healthy, I'm screwed. There's barely any healthy options available, I'm flooded by an ocean of awful food and it takes significant effort and cost not to drown in it.

I can't emphasize this enough, it absolutely does not matter what you can technically do or not. Defaults are what matters. By default in Japan you eat a reasonably healthy diet and walk/bike regularly. By default in America you eat fast food and drive everywhere.

[majkinetor]

By American standard, basically anything is more healthy, so that is not really a good point. Do you think Italians, French, Spain or Serbians have worse food than Japan - they do not. Researchers thought it was something in red vine, then something in blue cheese, then olive oil, then fish, etc. Maybe its about so much Iodine, that is specific to Japan. I doubt its pristine environment and unique genetics.

[tetris11]

Isn't it just affordable access to high quality healthcare services?

[Mawr]

No, it's the opposite - an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of a cure. Not getting sick in the first place is way better in every way than trying to fix the damage.

[Aurornis]

Unlikely that health care drives the population’s daily food choices and caloric intake.