Todd Moody wrote:
>
> On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Ray Audette wrote:
>
> > Asians have much higher rates of auto-immune disorders including several
> > times the cancer rates of Americans.
>
> It's also paradoxical, isn't it, that the longest-lived people on
> earth are the rice-eating Okinawans.


Some points, one, anything that reduces death by heart
disease will automatically have the effect of increasing
death by cancer. Those are our choices, folks, sorry.

And, the Okinawans do eat rice, but not otherwise the
typical japanese diet. They eat large amounts of pork, sea
vegetables, fruit, a large variety of foods typical of
pacific islanders. In spite of being the poorest area of
Japan, they enjoy the longest, healthyest lives on average.

Last, take national statistics with a grain of salt. All
countries make play with these sorts of statistics for
partisan politics. I certainly do not trust the japanese
longevity stats, not when every day I see the poor state of
health typical here.