The Japanese Are Getting Fat - And the Results Won't Be Good

Yes. It's true. The Japanese are getting fat. They are not getting as near as fat as the Americans are, but they are getting fat. Fifteen or twenty years ago, you rarely ever saw a fat Japanese person. Nowadays, you see them all the time.

Along with the fat people here comes to diseases like heart disease, cancer and diabetes....

No wonder, though... The Japanese are starting to copy SAD (Standard American Diet) and we can already see the future, just by traveling to the USA today, what that means for the Japanese population of tomorrow.

Things like the five-decker hamburger in the poster below used to be unheard of. Now? Just about every restaurant offers "extra sizes" and helpings.

Oxford Journals reports in: 

Coronary heart disease risk in Japan – an East/West divide?

While total cholesterol levels have been decreasing in the US population, a marked increase in the Japanese population began in the 1980s, such that by the later part of the decade, mean levels in Japanese women exceeded those in US adults. These increases appear to be associated with the marked increase in ischaemic heart disease mortality observed in Japanese men and women in the early 1990s.  Japanese men and women who were around 20 years of age at the time of the study had higher cholesterol levels than did their US counterparts. This age group is now around 40 years of age and there is concern that the elevated cholesterol levels may be associated with increased cardiovascular disease as this segment of the population ages. In addition to an increasing prevalence of elevated total cholesterol between 1980 and 1990 for each decade of age, these data also suggest a high prevalence of elevated cholesterol in older, post-menopausal women.

The frequency of diabetes is also increasing in Japan, with survey data indicating a doubling of the prevalence of diabetes between 1980 and 2000. According to Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare statistics, the estimated population of diabetic patients in Japan is expected to increase from 6.9 million in 1997 to 10.8 million in 2010.

(Interestingly enough, and I'm sure it has nothing to do with this article, but the very first McDonald's opened in Japan in 1971!)

You can see what this is going to do to the Japanese in the video preview of "Forks Over Knives" below: