that Japenese have a so long lifespan with a diet so poor in vegetables ? (sorry the title was too long to be displayed)

I mean I have been dabbling in 和食 cooking for a couple of weeks now (thanks to my DS and some cooking manga) and if practising on a daily basis have considerably improved my knowledge of the japanese diet , I just don t get how a diet with so much refined cereal (white rice at every and each meal) and so little vegetables (and consider that I cook myself : so I use 大根　なめこ　れんこん　extensively.....your average salary man buy bento every day in konbini ,bento where vegetable is nothing more than decoration ) can be healthy enough for the average life expectancy to be 81 years old something ?

if you put apart regions like okinawa or creta it s nothing less than the longest life expectancy in the world .

I guess that soy and fish can help a lot but still it s far from solving the problem .
Actually when I look at different sources they almost contradict each other :let s just take soy : one says that japanese is not a staple of japanese diet , the other insist it is and put it as the cause of the high stomach cancer rate among asians especially japanese and another says that soy is a great source of protein if consumed with moderation .
An other issue : variety .According to one of those artcles ,a typical American will have about 30 varieties of food per week. A typical European (especially southern European) will have about 45. The typical Japanese will have about 100 varieties of food per week, and will include lots of fresh fish, vegetables, fruit and a variety of meats. Has this guy ever been in a japanese supermarket ? they sell fruit and vegetables on a item-by-item basis .

Does anyone have a clear explanation ?

I'm not sure about that; my wife is always including plenty of vegetables. She's always aiming to balance various things in a meal, (including the colors). A proper Japanese meal has not a lot of one thing, but a little of many things. Also we usually have rice with other things mixed in like brown rice or other grains, than plain white rice. Oh, and we have a lot of fruit for desert.

Beside diet though, Japanese probably live longer because they tend to be less overweight.

In the norhern parts life expectancy is shorter - perhaps because of eating more salty/preserved foods.

Soy beans are of course very nutritious and used all over in Japanese cooking in things like miso, natto, tofu, aburage. Soy sauce is very salty and likely cancer inducing.

The Japanese eat a FAR greater variety of vegetables than we do in the West.

ghinzdra Wrote:I just don t get how a diet with so much refined cereal (white rice at every and each meal) and so little vegetables (and consider that I cook myself : so I use 大根　なめこ　れんこん　extensively.....your average salary man buy bento every day in konbini ,bento where vegetable is nothing more than decoration ) can be healthy enough for the average life expectancy to be 81 years old something ?

Hey, pretty much all of Asia eats like that. We're doing fine, thankyou =).

Another thing that amazed me is the favorite drink of a lot of Japanese kids is buckwheat tea. That's much more healthy than the high in sugar bad for digestion system soft drinks that westerner's drink a lot of.

vosmiura Wrote:I'm not sure about that; my wife is always including plenty of vegetables. She's always aiming to balance various things in a meal, (including the colors). A proper Japanese meal has not a lot of one thing, but a little of many things. Also we usually have rice with other things mixed in like brown rice or other grains, than plain white rice. Oh, and we have a lot of fruit for desert.

Beside diet though, Japanese probably live longer because they tend to be less overweight.

In the norhern parts life expectancy is shorter - perhaps because of eating more salty/preserved foods.

Soy beans are of course very nutritious and used all over in Japanese cooking in things like miso, natto, tofu, aburage. Soy sauce is very salty and likely cancer inducing.

I also though that soy was very healthy () but take a look at this extract
The Japanese do suffer from very high rates of stomach cancer, and relatively high rates of cancer of the pancreas, liver and esophagus, the so-called Asian types of cancer.
The most common theory is that the use of highly salted foods such as soy sauce and salted fish is the cause of stomach cancer. But other dietary components are equally suspect, including high levels of irritating talc present in white rice and carcinogens in modern processed soy sauce.


Japanese have low rates of lung cancer (even though they smoke far more than Americans) and low rates of breast, prostate, reproductive, colon and rectal cancer compared to the US. This is said to be due to the fact that they consume more soy and less meat, fat and dairy than Americans. But cancer rates went down in Japan during the period when consumption of animal foods went up. And the Japanese actually consume far less soy than Americans because even today, they do not consume much partially hydrogenated soybean oil. In fact, the most likely explanation for high levels of breast and prostate cancer in the US compared to Japan is the high levels of trans fatty acids from partially hydrogenated soybean oil in American convenience foods.


While the Japanese diet is held up as the paradigm of natural eating, Japan is also home to the world's quintessential imitation flavor, MSG. Originally extracted from seaweed, MSG or monosodium glutamate activates glutamate receptors on the tongue and tricks the body into thinking it has eaten meat. Today most of the world's MSG is produced by Ajinomoto, a Japanese company, through a chemical process. It is no longer derived from a natural food.MSG is used to make cheap soy sauces, thus driving out artisanal producers who traditionally took great care and up to three years to produce the delicious fermented elixir. Factory-produced soy sauce can be turned out in the space of three days and contains, besides neurotoxic MSG, many carcinogens.



where do you wife buy fruits and at what price ?
except for banana and pineapple they re so damn expensive.... as far as I m concerned the price of vegetable and fruit is the biggest shortcoming of living in japan.

bodhisamaya Wrote:The Japanese eat a FAR greater variety of vegetables than we do in the West.

Contrary to a populary belief west is not limited to america....
mediterrean culture is by far the greatest consumer of vegetables . In europe I used to eat something like 10-12 vegetables-fruit a day (small shares) because spanish and french vegetables/fruits are considerably cheaper than in japan (Actually I think I should present it the other way around : japan vegetables are insanely expansive). No way I can buy that much in japan .

Quote:I also though that soy was very healthy () but take a look at this extract
The Japanese do suffer from very high rates of stomach cancer, and relatively high rates of cancer of the pancreas, liver and esophagus, the so-called Asian types of cancer.
The most common theory is that the use of highly salted foods such as soy sauce and salted fish is the cause of stomach cancer. But other dietary components are equally suspect, including high levels of irritating talc present in white rice and carcinogens in modern processed soy sauce.

Yeah, that's why I separated soy sauce from just soy, I mean tofu & natto are not salty, so why is soy sauce so salty? Do they add salt to it?

I think salty dry fish, soy sauce, umeboshi, tsukemono and that kind of thing probably contribute to the high cancer rates in Japan. That and smoking.

Quote:where do you wife buy fruits and at what price ?
except for banana and pineapple they re so damn expensive.... as far as I m concerned the price of vegetable and fruit is the biggest shortcoming of living in japan.

We live in California now so there's lots of nice cheap fruit here, but in Japan we also had a lot, although it is much more expensive. The fruit we ate the most in Japan are sliced (humongous) fuji apples, mikan and kaki (persimmon). Some fruit can be ridiculously expensive like cantaloupes and cherries when they are in season, I mean I remember seeing a 4000 Yen cantaloupe before.

vosmiura Wrote:

Quote:I also though that soy was very healthy () but take a look at this extract
The Japanese do suffer from very high rates of stomach cancer, and relatively high rates of cancer of the pancreas, liver and esophagus, the so-called Asian types of cancer.
The most common theory is that the use of highly salted foods such as soy sauce and salted fish is the cause of stomach cancer. But other dietary components are equally suspect, including high levels of irritating talc present in white rice and carcinogens in modern processed soy sauce.

Yeah, that's why I separated soy sauce from just soy, I mean tofu & natto are not salty, so why is soy sauce so salty? Do they add salt to it?

I think salty dry fish, soy sauce, umeboshi, tsukemono and that kind of thing probably contribute to the high cancer rates in Japan.

Quote:where do you wife buy fruits and at what price ?
except for banana and pineapple they re so damn expensive.... as far as I m concerned the price of vegetable and fruit is the biggest shortcoming of living in japan.

We live in California now so there's lots of nice cheap fruit here, but in Japan we also had a lot, although it is much more expensive. The fruit we ate the most in Japan are sliced (humongous) fuji apples, mikan and kaki (persimmon). Some fruit can be ridiculously expensive like cantaloupes and cherries when they are in season, I mean I remember seeing a 4000 Yen cantaloupe before.

by soy sauce do you mean shoyu ?
because I don t see how I can cut on shoyu : each and every recipe (from sashimi/onion to chicken hodgepodge or fried salmon and vegetables) includes shoyu. Even if the japanese are biased I guess that shoyu has a key role in cooking.

4000 yens a cantaloupe ? yesterday I passed a shop in shibuya where they sold pamplemousse and watermelon for more than 10000 yens the piece ....

ghinzdra Wrote:by soy sauce do you mean shoyu ?
because I don t see how I can cut on shoyu : each and every recipe (from sashimi/onion to chicken hodgepodge or fried salmon and vegetables) includes shoyu. Even if the japanese are biased I guess that shoyu has a key role in cooking.

Yeah, that's true. I guess just get the 'Lite' variety. And when eating sushi just dip the tip of the fisih in it not the whole sushi rice like some people .

When I went to the US on a business trip, I thought Americans took in three times more calories than us everyday and consumed the same amount of meat, oil, salt and sugar in a day as we do in a whole month. I'm no expert on this, but looking at their butts, I don't think I'm totally wrong on this one.

Just my 2 yen.

Meat & sugar probably, but Japanese consume lots of salt in soy sauce, miso, and fish.

I don't even know how people eat soy, it is ***** disgusting, I hate all forms of sauce, I like my food dry.

I love fresh chilli, but not bullshit 'chilli sauce' or whatever the hell that's meant to mean.

I'm allergic to quite alot of exotic foods, such that whenever I do eat out, at korean/chinese/japanese places there is at least a 60% chance I'll come home vomitting for the rest of the night. Octopus, squid instantly ***** me up. Prawns that aren't done right leave me hugging the toilet. Nearly all restaurants in sydney that I used to eat at don't even clean prawns properly so you are essentially eating an intestine full of shrimp poo, so disgusting.


*sticks to traditional home made arabic and indian foods*

If you go home made then you can't go wrong, greasy or non greasy. And by 'home made' I mean *actually* home made from raw fresh ingredients, instead of buying Nestle's "Chicken Tonight Pre Made Sauce" and chucking it in the microwave.

Consider that one pound of body fat is worth about 3000 k Calories. If you're 180 pounds and 20% body fat, that's 36 pounds of fat or a tad of 100,000 k Calories. That's about 1000 pancakes. Even if you dropped to a reasonably healthy 10% body fat, that's still 500 pancakes you can draw upon.

The point being, humans can sustain a calorie deficient diet for quite some time. In addition, some think a calorie deficient diet is healthier all around for a human. So maybe what's helping in the equation is Japanese are not malnourished nor overeating.

Then there's the whole Zone Diet thing that's beyond this thread, though I do support it. The Carbs-Protein-Fats split of 40-30-30 has worked for me for over two years.

ghinzdra Wrote:4000 yens a cantaloupe ? yesterday I passed a shop in shibuya where they sold pamplemousse and watermelon for more than 10000 yens the piece ....

Those are crazy, they even come complete with decorated wooden cases like it's some kind of superexpensive bottle of wine lol

Image buying one of those 10000 yen watermelon thinking it must taste like heaven, coming home, splitting it open only to find:




But nothing can beat the square 西瓜！


Does Japanese people drinking a lot of (green)tea also contribute to longer life?
I mean, here in the west we all eat greasy food and wash it down with a glass of coke (pure sugar), while Japanese eating their fish which isn't greasy in the first place followed by tea. I mean, tea kinda cleanses and 'counters' oilyness.

I would say smaller portions, more vegetables, less processed food, less fat, less trans-fat, more green tea, less sugar, more fish, more seaweed.

The american diet is: huge portions, few vegetables (potatoes don't count), lots of greasy sauce, lots of fast food, lots of meat, lots of sugary drinks, almost no fish, milkshakes, bacon.

Anyway, this looks like a good link: http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/diets...anese-diet

Whole grains

European and European-American style food processing plants strip grains of their husk to quicken processing and cooking time.

Asian plants for the most part, are either old enough (South Asia) or new enough (East Asia) to avoid this pitfall. Eating whole grain'd rice is like a daily enema for the junk in your blood. The grains attach to and drag all manner of undesirables into the excretory queue.