*

This article on The Age website has near the end this quote:

Japan’s meat consumption had increased by 900% since 1955, in part because expanding incomes had enabled families to supplement the sparse national diet of rice, fish and miso soup with more Western-style food.

Which made me laugh because just before reading this, for lunch I had multigrain (16!) rice with miso-saba (fish), and miso soup, something I eat about 3 times a month simply because there’s a nice little place nearly in front of my office that has it.

But 900%! Wow. All those insanely old very healthy active japanese people in their 90s did not grow up eating tons of meat, they ate that “rice, fish, and miso soup” diet.