Here's another way of looking at this. After WWII and other events the amount of salt in the Japanese diet had gone down. This reduced all kinds of problems ass

Here's another way of looking at this. After WWII and other events the amount of salt in the Japanese diet had gone down. This reduced all kinds of problems associated with high salt diets. Many things (soy sauce, pickles, dried meat) were staples in Japan since they did not have non salted ways of preserving food (ie: refrigerators). In other words, Japanese may be living longer because the DNA of living harder got passed down (hard labor, high salt diet, low calories and only two meals a day/when available). However, Japanese seem, at least to me, to be getting different diseases. In Japan there is plenty of talk about diabetes, arthritis, alzheimer's, etc. in media and in social circles. To me it seems while the Japanese may be more heart attack/stroke resistant they are getting more Western diet related diseases. Having lived in Japan for almost a decade my view of the Japanese diet is highly biased from what I have seen but I think the stereotype of all Japanese being healthy needs to be based on seeing regular Japanese people eat day in and day out.