Information about the Aspen Ideas Festival is here. I am scheduled for a session, The American Wellness Paradox, currently scheduled from 11:00-11:50 a.m., at the East Lawn Tent. This will be a discussion with senior HHS policy advisor, Calley Means. Here’s the blurb on it: “Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, supplements, wellness trends, and “clean eating,” yet rates of chronic disease and metabolic illness continue to climb. As skepticism fuels the rise of movements like MAHA, debates over what Americans should eat have become deeply cultural, political, and economic. Two influential voices with sharply different perspectives on nutrition and food science explore how food systems, farming practices, consumer culture, and the wellness industry collided to create one of the defining public health debates of our time.”
Diet-related disease stats: Japan
I’m reading The Japan Times this week and saw this article: “Healthy life expectancy” on the rise: survey
The article describes how “healthy life expectancy,” defined as years of life without nursing care or serious illness, rose in Japan between 2013 and 2016.
Health officials attribute the increase to a greater focus on better nutrition and more physical activity among the Japanese population.
Here are the stats:
| MEN, years |
WOMEN, years
|
|
| Healthy life
expectancy |
72.14 | 74.79 |
| Total life
expectancy |
80.98 | 87.35 |
| Gap | 8.84 | 12.35 |
In case this isn’t clear, the life expectancy for men is nearly 81 years, but nearly 9 of those years will be spent in poor health. For women, the life expectancy is more than 87 years, but more than 12 will be spent in poor health.
The survey data cover more than 700,000 people.
Under a 10-year health promotion plan introduced in fiscal 2013, the Japanese health ministry is working to extend healthy life expectancy by setting numerical targets for death rates caused by lifestyle-related diseases—heart disease, certain cancers, type 2 diabetes, and others caused by smoking and unhealthy eating, and drinking.
I had not heard of healthy life expectancy used in this way, but I think it works well to quantify how diet affects longevity.
