This is an interesting story published in the Japan Times. It’s worth a read. Check it out!
via Japan’s take on the humble burger | The Japan Times.
Having spent a great deal of time in Asia in the last few years, I am appalled at the explosion of American junk-food. Young people think that it’s fashionable but very soon they are addicted and obese. Obesity is one of the greatest healthcare crises in both the developed and increasing in the developing world. For me, there is a direct link; junk food causes obesity; and obesity causes poor health and early death.
If governments are responsible for society’s welfare, why don’t they raise taxes on junk food?
Thoughts?
Dr Alf's Blog 
The Japanese, and people everywhere, need to avoid junk foods, and all sensibly run countries should have variable taxes on foods to penalize the consumption of sugar, salt, e-numbers and dangerous chemicals in food, devoid of nutritional value.
Consuming these junk foods may seem trendy but they will send you to an early grave, just as surely as a .38 calibre bullet.
Dr Alf will know that the people with the greatest longevity in the developed world are Japanese woman, with devout Mormons coming a close second.
The people who live longest in the world as a whole are the Hunzas, an agrarian people living in what used to be Soviet Central Asia, who exist on a natural diet rich in Apricots and thus Vitamin B17 which is no longer part of the Western diet.
Living to be aged 140, in a Hunza community is not uncommon, whilst people in Lake Limone in Northern Italy live longer than almost everyone in Western Europe.
The lesson from all of this is for all of us to emulate the best dietary and nutritional practices of those people who live longest, not Americans who have even shorter average lifespans than Britons, who have the worst longevity in Western Europe other than perhaps Greece.