Okinawans becoming obese and diabetic

The Okinawans on Okinawa Island in Japan – famed for their longevity and good heatlh - are getting fat and sick. According to a Bloomberg report published in The Straits Times, half the men and a quater of the women in Okinawa are now overweight or obese. Diabetes in Okinawa is on the rise.

The reason for this? GIs' diet of American-style barbeque, hambugers and soda.

After the Second World War, the US established a military base in Okinawa and brought along 36,000 troops and over 100 fast food restaurants including McDonald's, KFC and A&W. Okinawans even started their own fast food chain, MOS Burger.

And so today, the Okinawans today eat at fast food restaurants up to three times a week, compared to the average Japanese who eats Western style fast foods only once a week.

Before 1945, however, Okinawans consumed mostly fish, soybeans, seaweed, vegetables. tofu and pork.

Okinawans eat pork lard

The report cited 100-year-old Ms Shizu Miyagi, who retains her traditional diet and... “often invites friends home to share a lunch of stewed pork leg, potatoes, rice and red beans.”

Pork leg is, of course, full of pork lard - saturated fat. In fact, the Okinawans cook mainly with pork lard. Yet all that saturated fat and cholesterol did not clog up their arteries. It did not give them heart disease, diabetes or other degenerative diseases, it did not even make them fat!

So what has changed?

Is it because they are now eating beef (in hamburgers) instead of pork? That's not the likely reason. The Koreans eat lots of beef, yet they, too, are relatively healthy with low rates of heart disease, cancer and obesity.

And it is not just the Okinawans or Koreans who lead healthy lives on a diet with plenty of saturated fat and cholesterol. The French too. And the Greeks, Swiss, Austrians... The extreme case would be the Masai of Africa. They eat only meat, blood and milk. No grains and veggies in their diet. Yet they, too, are healthy and free from degenerative diseases.

So what is it in the American fast food diet that makes people fat and sick?

A more likely culprit is the soda - incredible amounts of sugar in there. Another is, of course, the harmful trans fats present in the hydrogenated oils used by fast food restaurants for frying

But I would say it is not any one element in the American diet that younger Okinawans have adopted. Rather, it is the entire system of preparing food US-style, a system that is highly processed, highly chemicalised and highly artificial.

Americans get themselves sick by consuming industrial “food”. But they cannot see their own mistakes and folly, so their scientists blame saturated fats and cholesterol, completely ignoring the fact that other cultures enjoy excellent health and longevity on a diet rich in saturated fats and cholesterol.

It is sad that the rest of the world is increasingly adopting the Standard American Diet (SAD).

But the greater tragedy is that learned scientists, doctors and health authorities all over the world - including Singapore - have all blindly embraced the American theory that saturated fats and cholesterol make people fat and sick.

Can't our scientists, doctors and health authorities think for themselves? Seems that all they do is swallow.

Okinawan Diet (from Wikipedia)

The Okinawa diet is a nutrient-rich, low-calorie diet^[1] from the indigenous people of the Ryūkyū Islands. In addition, a commercially promoted weight-loss diet (which bears the same name) has also been made based on this standard diet of the Islanders.

Indigenous islanders' diet

People from these Japanese islands of Ryūkyū (of which Okinawa is the largest) are reported to have the longest life expectancy in the world. This has in part been attributed to the local diet, but also to other variables such as genetic factors, lifestyle, and environmental factors.

Generally, the traditional diet of the islanders is 20% lower in calories than the Japanese average and contains 300% of the green/yellow vegetables. In addition, the Okinawan diet has only 25% of the sugar and 75% of the cereals of the average Japanese dietary intake.The traditional diet does include a relatively small amount of fish (approximately 1% of caloric intake) and significantly more in the way of soy and other legumes (6% of caloric intake).

The typical Okinawan reaching 110 years of age has had a diet consistently averaging no more than one calorie per gram and has a BMI of 20.4.

Commercial weight loss diet

The diet consists of a relatively low intake of calories and contains similar foods to the traditional Okinawan diet. The principal focus of the diet consists of knowing how many calories per gram each food item contains. They posit that there is a tight correlation between the high proportion of Okinawans over 110 years of age and the relatively low caloric density of their diet.

The proponents of this diet divide food into 4 categories based on caloric density. The "featherweight" foods, less than or equal to .8 calories per gram which one can eat freely without major concern, the "lightweight" foods with a caloric density from 0.8 to 1.5 calories per gram which one should eat in moderation, the "middleweight" foods with a caloric density from 1.5 to 3.0 calories per gram which one should eat only while carefully monitoring portion size and the "heavyweight" foods from 3 to 9 calories per gram which one should eat only sparingly.