Wow, way too complicated for me. And I doubt I would ever cut corn out of my diet. It's a guilty pleasure. For many, it's a staple - because it tastes good, in addition to being plentiful where they live.
And cutting out soy - I don't think the Japanese would ever do that, do you? Nor any of the Asian populations.
As I said, I use fish oil supplements and don't want to overdo it. There was mention in at least one article of people taking aspirin and fish oil supplements. I've already stopped doing that. Yet, there are many people who have the habit now of using aspirin to prevent heart attacks.

Corn is plentiful because it's produced using intensive unsustainable methods. Even before the Industrial Revolution this was true of all grains, but with the advent of chemical fertilizers it is even more so. The production of corn is probably the single greatest environmental disaster happening on American soil (and in the Gulf of Mexico).

The amount of soy consumption in Asia is often overestimated, just as the plentiful use of pork and lard has been overlooked. Asia has one of the world's longest histories of grain consumption, but even there, soy has been used as a food for less than half the time that wheat and rice has. Originally it was only planted during crop rotations for nitrogen fixing, and it was not eaten at all. Eventually the Chinese learned to ferment soy to minimize its antinutrient properties. Centuries after soy sauce was in common use, tofu became a common food. Although it is not fermented, some of its antinutrients are neutralized during processing through the use of calcium or magnesium salts. Soy milk was a byproduct of tofu-making and was not commonly consumed until an American popularized it in the last century.

The extracting of oil from seeds is an intensive process, and until industrial means came along, corn and soybean oil simply could not have been used as the primary cooking oil. Butter, lard, tallow and chicken fat were used in most of the world, while coconut oil, palm oil and olive oil were used where available. Even in the Americas where corn was the main staple, it was consumed mainly for its carbohydrate content, not for its oil. In Asia where soybeans provided protein for the traditional diet, soybean oil is also a novelty. In both places, the primary cooking fat was once lard.

No matter what the history of the Japanese diet, they do eat a lot of soy. They have more ways of preparing tofu than I can keep track of.
The software from NIH uses the Japanese diet as the most heart-friendly. They eat more fish and more soy. Much less meat. If you want to be in the group with a much lower rate of heart disease, use that model. I think there may be a Scandinavian group in there, too.
Whatever you think of corn, it's a staple in Mexico. Hispanic people in the United States will no doubt continue to consume that food just because it is culturally important to them. Just as Italians have strong feelings about pasta.
(I think I've seen pasta with omega-3s ... must have flaxseed!)

Fish IS MEAT . The last time I checked SHARKS (who eat fish) ARE CARNIVORES .

The Asian diet , if anything , is very well balanced. Anyone who has ever looked into Okinawan cuisine will clearly see how they eat PORK, BEEF, NOODLES, VEGETABLES, SOME SOY (usually fermented) BEER, etc. If you do a wikipedia search you will see the PICTURE of typical cuisine.

The Vietnam area eates all types of snakes, Thai eat bugs and insects various worms. ANIMAL (insects too) play an important part. Don't be fooled as to what they REALLY eat.


The blood cholesterol levels are not that different between Japan and the USA. The REASON the Japanese have less CAD is because they have SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER LEVELS OF EPA/DHA in their blood than do Americans. Read that line again until it sinks in. It has NOTHING to do with blood cholesterol levels or supposed "low fat diets" or "low meat diets". They eat meat in a good amount.

GOOGLE SPECIFIC CUISINES IN ASIA AND YOU WILL SEE MEAT, BUGS INSECTS SNAKES etc all play a large part. They are NOT some kind of vegetarian paradise........

Only morons who write books like The Okinawan Plan ( AMERICAN researchers with an agenda) think that........

Just looking at the previous page, but was wondering:

The best I can do is a 2:1 ratio or omega 6 to 3. That's around 3 g/day of fish oil and 6 g/day of omega 6. I'm aware that too much of a good thing (omega 3, in this case) can be a counterproductive thing to all of us.

Do you think that ratio should be lowered to around 4:1 per day?

Everyone I've ever known from Japan (for several years, we were host parents to Japanese students during the summer and my husband had clients he visited once a year in Japan, also co-workers here...) has said that what is a 'good amount of meat' here is absolutely huge in Japan. They eat much more white rice and small amounts of meat, if at all - fish is more common.
I would not mind at all eating only Japanese food. I make my own dashi, their version of the ubiquitous chicken broth we have in our recipes - but theirs is based on kelp and fish flakes. I have a good idea of what Japanese people eat, having been a guest in the homes of Japanese business colleagues of my husbands.
The DREAM meal of a Japanese student? A steak. That is to the American diet what John Wayne was to a six shooter, according to the Japanese kids.
If I did eat Japanese food all the time, I would certainly lose weight. If I ate Japanese food in Japan, I'd lose weight right away. Their portions are very small.

Anyone can see what the Japanese REALLY eat by watching Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmerman. I will leave it at that.

Animals are a central feature, land or sea . In China octopus is common. All Asians have their favorite meats which is NOT eaten in small amounts like fraudulent American researchers with vegetarian or low fat agendas claim.

They have smaller portion sizes, true, but their plates have a good amount of meat on it percentage wise.

They do have smaller meals.You need to ignore and avoid fraudulent agenda driven books like "The Okinawa Program" written by American researchers who are proponents of the farcical Cholesterol Theory.

These same researchers will tell you that the Sardinian Diet is low in fact . NOT AT ALL TRUE. You should have seen the cuts of cured ham they have - very fatty.

I saw the show last night. The Sardinian's diet is ANYTHING but low fat, in fact , it is VERY RICH in saturated fats, and they have huge amounts of centenarians - and men there live longer than ANYWHERE else in the world .

These researchers starting with Ancel Keys should have ALL been confronted. They LIED to us.


Kobe beef, crab, shellfish, sea mammals, finned fish, eggs, beans, flour, fruits, mushrooms, fu (wheat gluten) noodles, soy products ( many times fermented) vegetables (land and sea) are all main ingredients in the Japanese diet.

ANY SEARCH of authentic Jananese cuisine or anyone whpo watches Anthony Bourdain KNOWS this.

IGNORE these popular diet books written by Cholesteroil Theory proponents who LIE about the Asian Diet and LIE about the Mediterranean Diet.


The Mediterranean Diet si NOT an olive oiled up version of Pritkin. In fact PORK FAT is the backbone of the Mediterranean Diet NOT olive oil.

Okinawans also like their pork fat and ther pork . Some common Okinawans sayings are "begins with pig and ends with pig" and "every part of a pig can be eaten except its hooves and oink"

Okinawans and Sardinians live LONGER than Japan.

I don't have a TV and so I haven't watched Anthony Bourdain. My cookbook for Japanese cooking is "Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art' by Shizuo Tsujii - it is the classic, like 'The Art of French Cooking'.
I know Anthony Bourdain is a chef because I read his 'Kitchen Confidential' - if he talks about the cuisine of a country, he is approaching it as a chef might, not someone who eats their daily meals there.
There is great variety of protein sources (fish, meat, tofu) in the Japanese diet, but meat is a small part of what is on the plate. Rice, white rice, dominates.
Sukiaki, which is a dish many Americans like, has very little meat in it. The Japanese mother in a family (transferred here to the States and I met them through school activities) taught me how to make sukiaki (which she pronounced 'skee-aki'). Even given access to so much meat here, they hardly use any at all in a dish like that. If I had to describe Japanese cuisine to distinguish it from other, more familiar cuisines, I'd say it seems very watery - that dashi is just everywhere, diluting most dishes. Dashi is broth from fish flakes and kelp, nothing else.
Japanese housewives usually add granules of dashi to liquid instead of making it, it's just that ubiquitous, like bouillon cubes.
Breakfast - rice and something from the night before's meal - on top, like a condiment - and dashi.
No, I don't think Kobe beef is a main ingredient - maybe in Anthony Bourdain's diet when he visits Japan, but not in the diet of the average Japanese person. Noodles, rice, sea vegetables, fish, and I would put meat (small amounts) last.
One Japanese boy told me that his family thought that if he ate an American diet, with so much meat, he would grow taller.
The 'tuna casserole' or 'mac n' cheese' of the Japanese schoolboy/schoolgirl is curry.
In particular, the favorite was something called Vermont (the brand) curry, served with lots of rice.
We had several summers of hosting Japanese kids. The highlight of their stay, before going back to Japan: going to the supermarket and buying food to show mom and make a meal back in Japan. They always brought us Japanese food, as gifts, too - and one girl cooked my husband's favorite Japanese dish, which is a pancake seasoned with seafood, topped with mayonnaise.
I also remember asking one girl if the Japanese food we were eating in a Japanese restaurant here was authentic. She said 'No, it's American 'Japanese' food', which is too bad because I thought I was giving her a real treat.
I did learn to make decent sushi. Which the Japanese kids thought was something because back in Japan, you eat that at home maybe once a year.
These kids were middle class and one was probably kind of rich since his family owned their building in Tokyo. That's like Manhattan real estate.
My favorite Japanese dish (from the Tsujii book) is a kind of gruel that is popular when someone comes home and roots around in the refrigerator, after a long day at work, or hungover from drinking. It's just rice with dashi and maybe some egg.
Soy sauce on everything, too. You don't even have to ask.
Favorite Japanese food for entertaining (and a classic, showing up everywhere, in restaurants and at the table when eating in a Japanese home): a custard called chawan mushi, very watery compared to our egg custard, savory, and of course, containing seafood and made with dashi.
Japanese kids' favorite snack (we learned to make): mochi cakes. Just contains rice but packed so dense that when you bake it and it puffs up, there's not so much air there as gooiness. Japanese eat it during holidays, too. Every year, a few people choke to death eating mochi.
My own (American) kids got sick of Japanese food pretty quickly. What they loved when eating at a Japanese home: edamame, boiled fresh green soybeans. It's a snack good enough to be served to guests.
What's funny to me is that edamame can now be found on American supermarket freezer shelves. Mochi cakes can be found on supermarket shelves, too. But they are not the mochi cakes that I described - they are snacks made with rice to resemble something between a rice cake and mochi. We've Americanized them to make them palatable for our consumers. And a sushi bar in an upscale supermarket is just as normal as the deli section (I'm thinking Whole Foods).
A very good, prolific writer about Japanese cuisine, breaking it down for the non-Japanese, in particular, American reader, is Elizabeth Andoh. She has had a long marriage to a Japanese man and lives in Japan (with some breaks to live in New York, I think). She is the Julia Child of Japanese cooking to me - maybe Tsuji's book is more like the definitive classic for the Japanese cook - and I once wrote her an e-mail and told her I'd love to write her biography. She wrote back that she was flattered but she is not dead yet! I read that she was very honored that Tsujii aknowledged her skill.

Ain't the market economy great?


More sick people are better than less healthier people. Apparently. You'd need to ditch significant portions of Western thinking to ever see anything different. No one said it was a smart idea, though.

I also lived in Italy. Not in Sardinia (I wish!) but in Rome, with a family. They do have fatty ham. It's eaten in slivers, though. Not daily, either. Very thin (think prosciutto type thin) and one slice on a freshly baked roll is plenty. If you want a burger - some substantial meat - on a sandwich, go to McDonald's!
I loved the sandwiches - that very thin, thin slice of ham is flavorful. I'd eat one standing up in a bar while drinking a tiny cup of coffee.
And in an entire year, we ate meat once every other day, a small cutlet. The other day, we had fried eggs (never saw an egg scrambled) and always, vegetables dwarfed the protein portion (not calorically, serving size wise). Fresh white rolls were standard, bought fresh for the day. Every day. No leftovers. The cutlet - small. I'm talking small - diet small, as in pack of cards size (which is recommended for your meat portion on Weight Watchers) Never saw a roast, except at Easter, visiting relatives of friends who had a feast and roasted lamb.
Pasta - tossed with butter and cheese. No fancier than that.
Not a large serving, either.
My relatives are Italian and we never ate like that in the States. However, we did eat food that was modified for American culture. Italians who visit restaurants in the U.S. will tell you it is not the same food they eat back in Italy - and you don't find the same American food served in other countries... except McDonald's.
Breakfast every day in Italy: a big cup of hot milk and a roll. Sugar in the milk if you're a kid.
Food's a big deal in Italy - I think I read that the city of Rome serves organic lunches for the schoolkids.
I cooked the family a meal that I considered American, limited by what the ingredients I could find: baked beans (they thought it was really really spicy) and raw cauliflower tossed in the standard Italian dressing, which was olive oil and vinegar. The cauliflower threw them for a loop - they didn't believe people would eat a salad with raw cauliflower in it.

Pretty good article about the Japanese diet. Includes comments from a resident of Japan:
http://www.westonaprice.org/traditi...iets/japan.html
If you read the comments from the Japanese resident - which correct and refine some of the points in the article, she mentions 'nukazuke', a homemade pickle. I make my own! A Japanese student told me that's quite a big deal - it's a laborious process that many Japanese housewives will skip and just buy it readymade. She called her mom in Japan to get HER method for making nukazuke and it matched mine (which I got from Tsujii); her mom does bury a nail in the pickling mash. A nail as in what you hit with a hammer.
The pickling mash is made of whole hot pepper, raw rice bran, beer, garlic, hmmm, I think that's it - and I'm guessing salt. Bury small pieces of vegetables in that and let it ferment and you'll get one of the strangest smells in your kitchen for weeks on end. Midway through the time recommended, the vegetables have just the right snap, crunch, saltiness and beeriness for me and I take them out. Japanese pickles in general are too salty for me. But nukazuke (nuka is the bran) really hits the spot.

Speaking of saturated fats... I'm just beginning to research the omega 3 issues. I'm not a scientist, so I'm currently reading two popular books on the topics. They both seem to be full of factual errors - at least on topics that I'm fairly well-versed in. But on one point, they contradict each other, and I'd like to hear from people here who've studied omega 3's more.

One book says that "saturated fats ... are poor competitors of the omega-3s." The other says exactly the opposite. After giving the standard public health stance on saturated fats, the author says that in addition to all the other bad stuff about saturated fats, they also compete with omega 3's in the same way that omega 6's do. So if you want to raise your omega 3's you should reduce your saturated fats too.

Any thoughts?

My understanding is that different sources give different advice and no one really knows the optimal amount. I've read that the ideal is 1:1, but for most of us that would be difficult, so those agencies which make recommends suggest something like 2:1 or 4:1.

Personally I'm aiming for 1:1. I've increased my fish intake from virtually none to 1 or 2 meals a day including fish. I've switched to omega 3 eggs. I've located grass fed meat in my area. And I intend to supplement with fish oil for approximately 6 months.

Hi mathmaniac: I've lived through lean times when it was cheap food or go hungry. I truly feel for people in that situation. And those aren't empty words. I raised my son as a single mom on poverty level wages. The diet I had to live on almost certainly contributed to my current metabolic problems. And my son, now 24, suffers from a serious and persistent mental illness. My mother's guilt makes me wonder if poor diet contributed to his illness. I wish I could turn back the clock and make different decisions about food.

Now however my circumstances are better, and I can make decisions on how to budget my money to make food a priority. I remind myself that in other countries people spend a higher percentage of their income on food than we do in the U.S.

My understanding is that fish oil does something similar to what aspirin does. Aspirin helps prevent hearts, strokes, etc., by blocking certain inflammatory effects of excess omega 6's. So if your omega 3's and omega 6's are in balance you wouldn't need to take the aspirin to prevent heart attacks.