4 ms·

I think they are opposite because when I say police acts swiftly, you turn around and say that they are tax thieves. They can both be true? Healthy food. Yes t

I think they are opposite because when I say police acts swiftly, you turn around and say that they are tax thieves. They can both be true? Healthy food. Yes they eat healthy and their BMI shows it. I find it quite ludicrous to think their restaurants represent what they eat on daily basis. Proof is in the pudding (BMI). Yes it is getting worse and I hope American tariffs will help in this regard. Again, healthy living AND getting worse can both be true, especially with people that are friendly with cultures they want to know more about (many, but still a small subset). Not sure why Violent crime would be better than non-violent crime for feeding your kids. But the narrative that is pushed heavily in media is the equal sign between poor and criminal, instead of the correlation, which again is reductive. Why? Is there anger? What food do trigger it? What mindset? My grandparents where very poor (as in oat porridge for weeks poor). They would never hurt a fly. In certain minds that would have been a weakness, in certain minds it’s self sacrifice and equal strength. Most want to be the wolf among the sheep. It is US greatest strength and greatest weakness at the same time.

Pooge 2y ago
> police acts swiftly Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by "swift". > I find it quite ludicrous to think their restaurants represent what they eat on daily basis I have lived with 2 different Japanese family (one younger, one older) and I was referring to the younger one when writing my previous comment. You say that restaurant doesn't represent what they eat, but again this is not my observation; restaurants and prepared meal (bento) are socheap—price-to-purchasing-power compared to Western countries—that many people don't even cook for themselves. So yes, it's absolutely relevant. > Not sure why Violent crime would be better than non-violent crime for feeding your kids I never said it was. But hunger definitely makes you more violent and more irrational. I excluded non-violent crimes because people usually exclude those when thinking about a country's safety. There are a lot of scams in Japan, for example. > They would never hurt a fly. Most people would never hurt someone. Most people are lawful. But most criminals are not from well-off families and grew up needy. Perhaps there is a causation, perhaps not.
- darkwater 2y ago
  > But most criminals are not from well-off families and grew up needy. Petty or to-some-extent violent criminals. White collar criminals, the worse kind of criminal, usually come from good/rich/powerful families (I'm generally speaking, not talking about Japan specifically)
  - Pooge 2y ago
    Which is why I initially mentioned violent crime. The one people tend to care about the most.
  - achenet 2y ago
    nitpick: I'd argue the worse types of criminals are war criminals, like for example Hitler, who is, in my mind, worse than someone like Bernie Madoff.
mrob 2y ago
I think it's more likely that social pressure to control people's weights is responsible for Japan's low BMI, not anything to do with the food. Japan is the land of vending machines and convenience stores. It's easy to eat junk food all day if you want to. But people will notice you getting fat, and unlike in Western countries they're likely to criticize you for it.
- lynx97 2y ago
  "Bring back shame again" increasingly feels like something that would actually be beneficial in the long run.
  - dr-detroit 2y ago
    [dead]
  - makeitdouble 2y ago
    We tend to hit a Goodhart’s Law situation, where focusing on weight and BMI comes at the expense of actual health. That's how we get eating disorders and other mental health issues as well, so as usual it's complicated.
    - lynx97 2y ago
      Assuming you are actually from the US, your point feels a lot like system justification[1] theory hard at work... If close to 50% (or even more) people around you have moderate to serious weight issues, I can imagine how you end up normalising the status quo, looking for explanations that rationalise it... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_justification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_justification
- mantas 2y ago
  Just an anecdata but on my last stay in Japan I lost a couple kilos in a good month. Even though I did abuse kitkats.
  - 2y ago
friendzis 2y ago
BMI is mostly useless metric when comparing genetically diverse cohorts. Weight gain is mostly in fat and that is proportional to fat cell count. There is a saying "nerve cells are born and die, but fat - lives forever". The truth to it is that at an adult age fat cell count is mostly constant and mostly genetic. As you get fatter you don't produce more fat cells, they just get fatter, pun intended. There is huge genetic diversity between geographic regions / ethnic lineages in this regard. On one end you have northern european / african lineages, on the other end you have far east lineages, with other lineages somewhere in between, with northern european / african lineages having the largest fat cell counts, east asians the lowest. Furthermore, north european / african lineages tend to have fat distribution much more biased towards subcutaneous fat, whereas east asian lineages are biased towards abdominal fat, so many of the problems associated with high body fat (not insulin resistance) are seen at lower body fat percentages in east asian lineages. On top of that, body fat percentage does not map to BMI. BMI may roughly linearly scale with body fat percentage around the "healthy" region, however there will be huge offset between genetic cohorts, including sex. You should expect east asian BMIs to be lower across the board given similarly "unhealthy" diets.
- Pooge 2y ago
  Not the person you responded to, but this is a topic that fascinates me; do you have any resource to learn more about that? One that explains in average human terms would be appreciated!
  - friendzis 2y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/@benbikman https://www.youtube.com/@benbikman This dude is awesome

Pooge 2y ago

> police acts swiftly Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by "swift". > I find it quite ludicrous to think their restaurants represent what they eat on daily basis I have lived with 2 different Japanese family (one younger, one older) and I was referring to the younger one when writing my previous comment. You say that restaurant doesn't represent what they eat, but again this is not my observation; restaurants and prepared meal (bento) are socheap—price-to-purchasing-power compared to Western countries—that many people don't even cook for themselves. So yes, it's absolutely relevant. > Not sure why Violent crime would be better than non-violent crime for feeding your kids I never said it was. But hunger definitely makes you more violent and more irrational. I excluded non-violent crimes because people usually exclude those when thinking about a country's safety. There are a lot of scams in Japan, for example. > They would never hurt a fly. Most people would never hurt someone. Most people are lawful. But most criminals are not from well-off families and grew up needy. Perhaps there is a causation, perhaps not.

darkwater 2y ago
> But most criminals are not from well-off families and grew up needy. Petty or to-some-extent violent criminals. White collar criminals, the worse kind of criminal, usually come from good/rich/powerful families (I'm generally speaking, not talking about Japan specifically)
- Pooge 2y ago
  Which is why I initially mentioned violent crime. The one people tend to care about the most.
- achenet 2y ago
  nitpick: I'd argue the worse types of criminals are war criminals, like for example Hitler, who is, in my mind, worse than someone like Bernie Madoff.

mrob 2y ago

I think it's more likely that social pressure to control people's weights is responsible for Japan's low BMI, not anything to do with the food. Japan is the land of vending machines and convenience stores. It's easy to eat junk food all day if you want to. But people will notice you getting fat, and unlike in Western countries they're likely to criticize you for it.

lynx97 2y ago
"Bring back shame again" increasingly feels like something that would actually be beneficial in the long run.
- dr-detroit 2y ago
  [dead]
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  We tend to hit a Goodhart’s Law situation, where focusing on weight and BMI comes at the expense of actual health. That's how we get eating disorders and other mental health issues as well, so as usual it's complicated.
  - lynx97 2y ago
    Assuming you are actually from the US, your point feels a lot like system justification[1] theory hard at work... If close to 50% (or even more) people around you have moderate to serious weight issues, I can imagine how you end up normalising the status quo, looking for explanations that rationalise it... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_justification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_justification
mantas 2y ago
Just an anecdata but on my last stay in Japan I lost a couple kilos in a good month. Even though I did abuse kitkats.
- 2y ago

friendzis 2y ago

BMI is mostly useless metric when comparing genetically diverse cohorts. Weight gain is mostly in fat and that is proportional to fat cell count. There is a saying "nerve cells are born and die, but fat - lives forever". The truth to it is that at an adult age fat cell count is mostly constant and mostly genetic. As you get fatter you don't produce more fat cells, they just get fatter, pun intended. There is huge genetic diversity between geographic regions / ethnic lineages in this regard. On one end you have northern european / african lineages, on the other end you have far east lineages, with other lineages somewhere in between, with northern european / african lineages having the largest fat cell counts, east asians the lowest. Furthermore, north european / african lineages tend to have fat distribution much more biased towards subcutaneous fat, whereas east asian lineages are biased towards abdominal fat, so many of the problems associated with high body fat (not insulin resistance) are seen at lower body fat percentages in east asian lineages. On top of that, body fat percentage does not map to BMI. BMI may roughly linearly scale with body fat percentage around the "healthy" region, however there will be huge offset between genetic cohorts, including sex. You should expect east asian BMIs to be lower across the board given similarly "unhealthy" diets.

Pooge 2y ago
Not the person you responded to, but this is a topic that fascinates me; do you have any resource to learn more about that? One that explains in average human terms would be appreciated!
- friendzis 2y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/@benbikman https://www.youtube.com/@benbikman This dude is awesome