

Not-So-Ancient Secrets Of Japanese Life Expectancy (And How You Can Do It Too) - koichi
http://www.tofugu.com/2010/10/06/why-do-japanese-people-live-so-long/

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mhd
I thought that we recently discovered that the ancient secret is not reporting
deaths. Aren't they "missing" 230000 centenarians?

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ilkhd2
Even if they miss 1000000 centenarians it would not significantly change life
expectancy - their population is big.

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mhd
They don't have a big headstart on other countries, and if this is just the
tip of the iceberg, they might not even be number one anymore.

Especially if you consider the diet, which is the only thing not terribly
obvious ("wash your hands", really?), we'd be looking at countries like
Switzerland, Iceland and Spain, all which have a significant difference from
Japan. Never mind that one should look at those anyway, as Japan is by no
means a freak outlier. On average, a lot of countries are close and/or are
higher than the US, so the only reason why Japan is often targeted is the
allegedly high occurrence of people over 100 – which seems to be somewhat
exaggerated.

Generally, the countries with high marks in healthcare seem to be doing well
(I know, that might be tautological, depending on what part of the statistics
those high marks are derived from). Fish, soy and tea? Not so much.
(Apparently you may as well mix it with skyr, toblerone and paella)

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ilkhd2
Iceland has second longest life expectancy but rather different food and
lifestyle: [http://www.iceland.is/history-and-
culture/Traditions/Iceland...](http://www.iceland.is/history-and-
culture/Traditions/IcelandicFood/)

