Part II - Who is outliving us & why ?

There are a ton of resources that rank countries longevity and in almost all sources I found 2 common denominators:

1) East Asia Countries are always at the top

2) Spain, Italy, and the Swiss are almost always in the top 10.

The Worldometer website ranks countries in many areas and their ranking was consistent with everything I looked at - so I will use them. Top 10 longest living countries (or districts) are:  

1. Hong Kong (a district of China)

2. Japan  

3. South Korea

4. French Polynesia

5. Switzerland

6. Australia

7. Italy

8. Singapore

9. Spain

10. Reunion ( a tiny French Island off the coast of South Africa, <900k people)

Before we get into per capita data, I thought this abstract was noteworthy in discussing the Asian Countries & districts.

“the main contributors to Hong Kong's survival advantage were lower mortality from cardiovascular diseases for both males and females.

Among high-income populations in the world, Hong Kong recorded the lowest cardiovascular mortality and one of the lowest cancer mortalities in women.

Hong Kong maintains lowest absolute smoking-attributable mortality than other high-income regions.

The report went on to say that Hong Kong’s achievements in longevity were shared by other regions including Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.   

Lets get into it ..... Per capita data by type of food

Per capita data - Dairy    

Per capita data - Eggs     

Per capita data - Vegetables

 Per capita data - Starches - Potatoes and Rice 

Summary of per capita Asian data

• With one exception Americans eat about 2.5 times more red meat than Asians.   
• While Asians eat about 2.5 times more fish and seafood than the US.
• In general, Asians eat 2-4 times more veg than we do.  
• The US consumes 3-7 times more dairy than Asian countries.
• We eat twice as much chicken as Asians
• And Asians eat a little more pork than we do.
• With one exception Asian counties consume 50% more eggs than the US

Summary of European data

• Europeans eat more pork than we do.
• We eat twice as much red meat as Europeans
• With one exception, Europeans eat almost twice as much fish as Americans.

In Part 3 we will look at cooking methods Asian vs US, we will also look at spices and the big difference between Asians and the US. In Part 4 - the final part of this series - we will circle back to mortality by disease type by country and see what correlations we can draw - finally we will make some obvious recommendations.

Eat Better, Live Longer

Farmer Kevin

Research Biography - all the data in this article was provided by the world by numbers data base.