Seems like something similar could still be a problem here, although it seems less likely since the number here is significantly less than article I've linked.

In Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal he mentions that research shows that long life is not particularly heritable.

That, but also various factors during one's life - most importantly, ample and healthy food (especially during fetal growth, childhood and youth), a lack of exposure to known damaging factors for physical and mental health (smog, noise, tobacco, alcohol and other drugs), and a lack of wars and other forms of violence.

The top killers in the Western world are cardiovascular diseases (strongly linked to food) and cancers (strongly linked, again, to food but also to drugs). A safe working culture (both in business and in private) is also a good thing to have - the typical lackluster attitude towards workplace safety is a top cause of workplace accidents both fatal and non-fatal but serious.

After an hour in any town and I'd seen more 95+yos walking about than 10 years in Britain. And the number of times I saw 4 generations of men from one family in the bathhouse!

Hoping I live to something something something.

He smoked only during WW2, was an army corp of engineers colonel when he retired from the military, came from a dirt farm in Michigan, engineered all kinds of civil and military projects. In the end, he still managed to engineer a smile. He absolutely loved maps/atlases/GIS.

Many others lived past 100.

Last Civil War veteran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Woolson another example.

People do live past 100.

Look at a chart of how old people are when they die and you’ll see a consistent distribution with a downward curve. There really are people in the tail of that curve.

There is no hard cutoff in the body that can precisely track time passed over 36,500 days and then shut it all down.

Japan in particular is not food self sufficient and has a declining agricultural production so is not spending as much money on convincing people to export food. Plus technically a lot of Japanese food is not grown or caught in Japan and so can be made elsewhere using the same recipes.

In other words, it’s way easier to out diet a bad lifestyle than out lifestyle a bad diet, if your goal is to not be overweight. Obviously that doesn’t apply to all health metrics.

Also, portion sizes in America are huge.

Meanwhile in Japan and so many other regions in Europe that are pointed to as healthier people have the option to simply walk to do so many of their daily tasks.

No real surprise that the regions where people have to actively work harder to be active are in poorer health than others where being active is the default easiest choice.

The built environment is a critical thing here we can fix to make a healthier society.

This is a difficult truth for a lot of people to accept because it’s so much easier to blame invisible factors that are poorly understood: Microplastics, xenoesteogens, microbiome, trace lithium in the water supply, or the other trendy excuses.

In some cultures moderating your eating and controlling your weight comes with very high societal pressure. Everyone sees this from a young age and internalizes it. It’s hard to communicate how strong this pressure is and it gets lost when you only look at studies about the food supply.

Also, most people have a lot of walking/biking built into their daily schedule, especially in larger cities where having a car is impractical.

This all means that while there is a huge amount of sweets and fatty food, it's usually eaten in moderation, and people get exercise in their daily lives to work it off.

But so is healthy food. Imagine saying "I ate nothing but 7/11 food for two days and I feel the best I have in years" in America.

Where I'd be having a hot dog or pizza I was having onigiri. Small things like that add up.

And yes, they do walk a lot -- I spent a whole evening just walking around Shinjuku in awe of the place.

I assume you're from a western society, so I can't possibly imagine how you could have possibly reached such a conclusion. The contrast should be obvious at first glance.

The default Japanese diet is greatly more healthy than the default western diet, especially the American diet.

As a person living in the west and willing to put in some of my limited effort into eating healthy, I'm screwed. There's barely any healthy options available, I'm flooded by an ocean of awful food and it takes significant effort and cost not to drown in it.

I can't emphasize this enough, it absolutely does not matter what you can technically do or not. Defaults are what matters. By default in Japan you eat a reasonably healthy diet and walk/bike regularly. By default in America you eat fast food and drive everywhere.

Precisely that they don't need to make choices due to their environment is what makes the difference. In the US and EU people love their individualism, spend a gazillion on fitness interventions and most people are overweight, it's probably the most visible sign of the importance of culture. As Russ Ackoff said, the correct way to address problems is not to solve them, but to dissolve them. Not to fix individual issues but to create conditions under which they do not occur.

The best way to lose weight is actually to move to a place that's full of thin people, not "do" anything. It's funny that the reverse is common wisdom, everyone who moves to an unhealthy place will always proclaim how they gained 20 pounds immediately

* You can use cheaper types that are nothing but omega 6

* You can heat them too high for their smoke point

* They can oxidize and go rancid

* You can use an enormous amount of it

Likely one of the main reasons a lot of restaurant food may not settle as well as home cooking. But in principle a restaurant could do the reverse of these four points.

You can use rancid oil, seed oil, high and long temperatures on polyunsaturaded oils etc. All very unhealthy. Not sure what Japs use though.

Trust works both ways. There's also the trust that nobody will report anyone for the fraud, especially if it is widespread and normalized.

However, it would not surprise me if Japan actually did have high life expectancy rates because several other statistics seem to correlate with that, including low obesity, and universal access to healthcare.

The logical conclusion is fraud.

It was already seen over a decade ago: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11258071

I mean, clearly not all centarians in Japan are actually dead. But I think it's fairly straightforward that the numbers of super-elderly are inflated.