Hi all
Now and then there is a mentioning on this list on the longevity of the Japanese. I always found the concentration on Japan a bit odd since there are many more countries in the world where people get old so I made a search on that. 
The countries where people get old is Japan 80.9 years, Australia 80.1, Sweden and Switzerland 80.0, Canada 79.8, Italy 79.4, France 79.3, Norway 79.1 but Denmark and USA stopped at 77.1.  The numbers are mean for men and women.  Icelanders get as old as the Japanese so they should have been in this list too but they were not - perhaps the population is too small (250.000). All of these fairly long lived people have long shores to salt seas - all except Switzerland. Some were part of the second world war and some not. 
So, why are you so occupied with Japan - if they eat more or less rice or wheat or what? In Sweden we are occupied with the Mediterranean diet, that is the Crete diet as we think it is and as if anyone knows what they really eat. 
Anyway, it must be the people that are old today that the statisticians get there numbers from so it must be interesting what the old people ate, or? Up til the beginnings of the seventies there was never any discussion in Sweden on what to eat. Breakfast: bread, butter, cheese, ham, oat meal porridge, milk, sugar or preserves from berries. Lunch at about noon: meat or fish, boiled or fried, with or withour carrots, onions and/or white cabbage. Boiled or fried potatos and gravy with this. Once every two weeks there was macaroni with meat balls or Falu sausage (sorry, it cannot be described) Evening meal: a bit like lunch in some families and also very common to have sandwiches with coffe and/or for instance gooseberry or strawberry fool (?) with full milk- the same for men, women and children. Come winter, come sommer. The ingredients were a bit different according to season. 

Feasting time at Midsummer with rather little food and more alcohol drinks, Cray fish party in August, perhaps some extra eating in the hunting time in Oktober. Christmas or Yule - the big, fantastic heathen feast with everything to eat and drink and so beautiful with everything dressed up in green, red and silver. All the food is put on a sideboard and the Gods are invited to eat first since they are the important guests. Then the rest of us help ourselves.

The first processed food my mother brought home was a packaged of sugar puffs - we ate them in awe and fascination only to find that our mother finished the package herself. Yes, she was a sugar and carbo addict -still is at 86 defending her right to fry yesterdays oat meal porridge in margarine.
Early in the seventies food companies started to produce table margarine and the health authorities were quick to tell us all how god it would be for us if we ate that instead of lard and butter. Then they wanted us to eat 6-8 slices of bread everyday, then skim milk, low fat everything, chemical sugar. We are still trotting on that road.
So, how come the Swedes get so old on that diet and why aren't the Danes just as old on more or less the same diet? And what do US people eat or do to kick the bucket at only 77?
Is it only the diet or...?
Eva