Big reason one nation outlives the rest of the world

An author and expert on wellness visited a massive school in a country renowned for having the world’s best life expectancy and was shocked to discover “there was not one fat child” there.Scottish journalist and author Johann Hari has spent much of his career examining the impacts of technology and modern life on health and wellbeing.In an appearance on entrepreneur Steven Bartlett’s hugely popular podcast The Diary of CEO, Hari recalled his “totally fascinating” recent visit to a school in Koenji, a district in the west of Tokyo, attended by children from the ages of five to 18.He and a translator were greeted by the school’s nutritionist – “by law, every Japanese school has to employ a professional nutritionist,” he noted – who explained that all processed food is banned.“Every meal has to be prepared from scratch at the start of the day,” Hari said.“No kid is allowed to bring in a packed lunch, so everyone has to eat the food prepared at school.”As well as being healthy and nutritious, the meals and their preparation are used as teaching tools to convey “all sorts of key principles” about wellbeing.“One of them … is a very deep cultural norm in Japan, which is you should eat until you’re 80 per cent full and then stop,”Hari said.Another norm is how people eat.

A typical dinner might include five dishes, although they are “significantly smaller” portions than in the West.That variety is important for gut health, he noted, but the Japanese also don’t do what most in the West would do and eat all of one dish before moving onto the next.“In Japan, that’s regarded as a crazy way to eat.You have a mouthful of the miso soup, then a mouthful of the white fish, then a mouthful of the sashimi, and so on.

It slows your eating down.”After spending a full day at the Koenji school, which has 1,000 students, Hari realised “there was not one fat child” – a sight that he found “jarring.”“They have extraordinaril...