MSNBC Newsweek -- The Okinawa Way

The world's healthiest lifestyle producing the most and fitest centarians has discovered American food.

The grandparents live past 100, but after too many burgers, the islands’ next generation may not make it to middle age

Elderly Okinawans had remarkably clean arteries and low cholesterol. Heart disease, breast cancer and prostate cancer were rare, which they attributed to the consumption of locally grown vegetables and huge quantities of tofu and seaweed, rigorous activity and a low-stress lifestyle.

Okinawans have no genetic predisposition to longevity: when they grow up in other countries, they take on the same arterial disease risk as those in their new home. The authors [of The Okinawa Program] claim that if Americans lived more like the Okinawans, “80 percent of the nation’s coronary care units, one-third of the cancer wards, and a lot of the nursing homes would be shut down.”