On Wednesday, July 16, 2003, at 12:51  AM, mark wilson wrote:
>
> What about the Okinawans.  They consume substantially
> less food than Americans and 17% less energy than
> mainland Japanese and are the longest lived people on
> the planet.  They have a custom, there's actually a
> Japanese word for it, where they stop eating before
> they are full.  I'm sure their reduced calorie intake
> is at least partially responsible for their longevity.
>

Or, it could be due to fudged statistics, my favorite explanation for
it. I wonder how they factored out all the civilian dead from the
Battle of Okinawa at the end of WW2. If they include those people it
would sharply reduce average life spans. If they simply ignore them, it
would make the Okinawans appear to have unusually long life spans.