What can we do to live long and healthy? What must we not do to die young? News Target looks to Japan for a study in contrasts and the answers. The Japanese work ten hour days, commute daily for at least 2 hours and drink in the evening. Yet their median longevity is the highest in the world — for men it is 79 years and women, 89. Now they are dying faster even as medical science advances geometrically. The answers to these questions reveal an evil nexus between the food industry, Western dietary ethos and the unsuspecting Japanese consumer. Till 1867, the Japanese abstained from meat due to royal prohibition which was lifted with the restoration of the Meiji dynasty. Till the late 1960s Japanese eschewed the ice-cream as too high calorie. And nobody in Japan had heard of ‘diets’ for till date there is no obesity problem there. Research has conclusively shown the relation of belly-fat with higher incidences of heart diseases leading to greater mortality. But now the times are changing in Japan.
Nuclear power is mostly used to light up Japan. The Japanese love for electrical gadgets is well known. Now the effects of the radiation of home electrical appliances and nuclear power generators have not yet been studied exhaustively. Whenever someone publishes any report indicating higher cancer rates from such radiation, multi-national companies fund and publish reports to the contrary. Then the Japanese uses the natural juice of the stevia plant as a sweetener. Now sugar and aspartame is being substituted in processed foods. Aspartame is a well documented cancer-causing agent. Traditional Japanese hygiene associated with family Buddhist rituals was meticulously followed. Hot baths were undertaken daily at night to wash off oxidizing-toxic sweat. Now the changing pattern of Japanese communal lives is preventing such baths. The unkindest cut of all has come from Japanese businesses; Mitsubishi Corporation procures unsafe genetically modified food into the country. Also other Japanese companies have popularized the carcinogenic Monosodium Glutamate as a common ingredient in most packaged food. We need not go into the presence of a McDonald’s or a Kentucky Fried Chicken in any major Japanese city. These two chains are more global than even the UN. More Japanese eat pizzas and burgers than healthy, heart-healing soya products like tofu.
The Japanese have fought long to prevent this march of death. They allow no immigrants permanent work permits. This was enforced to prevent foreign bad habits entering Japanese society. But now Japan is losing the battle against the bulge and consequent death. Death has been invited into the land of the rising-sun.
Via: News Target
Image: Emb Japan
