Japan: A Skinny Nation Gets Fatter
When it comes to setting longevity records, the Japanese are the best in the world. A nation of rice farmers and fishermen, Japanese over the centuries seemed to have cracked the code to a long, healthy life.
It starts with a near-vegetarian diet, heavy helpings of grain, soy and fiber, low on sugar and fat and stingy servings of meat and dairy foods.
"If you go to a Japanese kitchen and a Japanese house today, there's no oven. It's gonna be very simple," longtime resident Andrew Horvat, who is a scholar of Japanese culture, told Sunday Morning correspondent Lucy Craft. "A lot of stuff is eaten raw, or very little processed, or pickled."
Crowded living conditions, as well as custom, induce Japanese to rely more on their own horsepower than their car-loving American peers, another ingredient of their life-prolonging elixir.
But Japan's healthy edge is under assault. Japanese are abandoning their chopsticks and rice bowls to adopt Western eating habits with a vengeance. In just a generation, the people of Japan have worked up a whopper of an appetite for treats their forefathers could never have dreamed of ... like premium ice cream, French pate, rich sauces, and an ever-expanding array of Western gourmet delights.
This dietary quick-switch has wreaked havoc with waistlines and the robust fitness Japanese once took for granted.
"We are not accustomed to a meat-centered diet. Steak certainly is tasty, so we eat it. But genetically, our bodies are just not designed for digesting meat," Dr. Osamu Mizukami, who runs a health clinic at Tokyo Eisei Hospital.
Clinics now are packed with cases of diabetes and obesity - conditions practically unknown here twenty years ago.
"I'm extremely worried. I wonder whether my generation will live as long as the previous one," Mizukami said.
Physicians say they're not worried about senior citizens, who are largely immune to the lure of a "super-sized me." It's middle-aged and younger Japanese, they say, who are, almost literally, eating their hearts out.