When I played in a band in college, my roommate was talking with an earnest young man while I was doing my solo part of the set. He explained to me later that the gentleman was suggesting what we really needed to complete our band was a harmonica player. "Hey, that's really interesting. You don't happen to play the harmonica, do you?"
Yeah, it was more than a lucky guess.
Well, at least the BBC mentioned genes in this story of Okinawan longevity.
Let us consider the high-carb diet theory unproven. And not really all that intriguing, no. These studies all have an air of "gee, I don't really understand how all this gene stuff works and I don't have the training to get funded for a study like that. So it must be something else that's the cause, something other than genetics."
My guess is that poverty after WWII prevented obesity in both the Okinawans and Italians (the vaunted Mediterranean diet is also high carb).
ReplyDelete"The famed good health and longevity of Japanese in Okinawa, which has the highest concentration of centenarians in the world, is under threat from a rapid increase in obesity caused by adoption of western lifestyles."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/3342882/Japanese-get-a-taste-for-Western-food-and-fall-victim-to-obesity-and-early-death.html
Yes, the "increased longevity through calorie restriction" idea might also be in play there.
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