The Okinawa Diet Plan: Get Leaner, Live Longer, and Never Feel Hungry [Paperback]

I'm an Okinawan-American...which means that I've eaten all of the recipes in this book and I tend to like the taste of them. Eating traditional Okinawan food is not strange for me, but it can be for people who are not accustomed to it. For example, Okinawans eat a lot of kelp, but the slimy texture and the resultant bowel movements from eating too much at once might turn some people off of this diet.

I don't like the way that the authors try to paint their diet and research as unassailable, especially since there are other diets out there that are also good. If you don't want to spend money on exotic foods from ethnic supermarkets, you can just eat vegetarian and get a good effect. Even though the traditional food of Okinawa is healthy, saying that you will live a long time just because you imitate the habits of a different culture is not so sound. For example, if you eat all Okinawan foods and yet still subject your body to the hectic stresses of daily life, you're not doing much good. I mean, you can eat what the goat farmers of the Steppes eat, but you're not in their environment, so you probably won't see the same results they do.

In short, check the book out at a library, first, and see if the odd foods are something that you can really stick with. Then, follow the advice to destress and get more into family and friend connections. After that, you'll have what it takes to help live a good life, I think.

As for me...I still like hamburgers and fries, every now and then.

I am a Japanese registered dietician (RD) and nutrition researcher (PhD) living in the U.S. and I recently discovered this wonderful book. The Okinawa Diet Plan is without a doubt the best diet book I have seen. It offers easy to follow dietary advice that teaches the reader how to choose the healthiest carbs, proteins and fats. Great recipes too! It is by far the best diet plan for long-term health, it is high in antioxidants and suggests new foods that promote healthy weight and longevity. I lost 30 pounds over 8 weeks without any major life changes, just some simple rules for eating. And I have KEPT the fat off. I have never felt better!!

One thing that concerns me about some of the reviews for this book is how some people in the US call themselves nutrition experts or dieticians without proper training and then profess to know something about the Okinawan eating habits because they read a few research papers and got confused about the data.

Some even say that soy might have adverse health effects. While we should always try to look at all the evidence this is not very likely. The Okinawans have eaten more soy that anyone in history and are the world's healthiest people. That should say something. Until recently the second most common occupation of Okinawan women was tofu maker. Many of the centenarians in Okinawa used to be tofu makers. That would suggest soybean curd (tofu) is pretty good for you.

Unfortunately, soy consumption has been declining in Okinawa for the last few decades--mostly among young people. This, I believe, is one of the reasons that younger people in Okinawa are less healthy than the elders. I think it is because they eat LESS soy, less vegetables, and MORE red meat than the elders. The Okinawans were never vegetarians but they always ate lots of veggies, legumes (like soy), fish and used small pieces of lean meat as a garnish or in stir-fry dishes, like the Chinese have traditionally done. Soy is the elders' main protein.

The average soy consumption (tofu, miso, etc) was around 75 grams per day in the old days but some people ate more, up to 120 grams per day. Currently, young people are eating less soy at only 25 or so grams per day but the high consumption in older people brings the population average up. Perhaps that is one reason why young people are not as healthy as in the old days but older people, who still eat a lot of soy, are the healthiest in the world. I say all this about soy because several reviewers seem confused about what the elder Okinawans eat and what the younger Okinawans eat.

Also a comment on longevity genes. Genes are important for ANY population for longevity. Perhaps up to a third of lifespan is genetically determined according to Drs Willcox and Suzuki. Of course, centenarians are more likely to have better genes than most of us since people with bad genes generally die younger---unless we have a very healthy lifestyle. So why so many centenarians in Okinawa? Add the healthiest lifestyle in the world to good genes and you get an amazingly healthy population. It's the best combination for longevity.

This simply means that those of us who are not genetically blessed have to pay more attention to our lifestyles. A thorough read of the Okinawa Diet Plan will help you either way BUT especially if you have bad genes. That's the whole point of the book. It will get you lean, healthy and long-lived despite your genes (while eating plenty of calorie light tasty food)!

I also read that some people think that Okinawans eat a high fat and high meat diet. That depends on your perspective. Okinawans USED TO eat lard for fat in the old days. But overall fat in the diet was so LOW (less than 10% of calories) that they really needed it. Fat is essential in any diet. The body needs fat to make hormones, cell walls, etc. Japan began to import a soy/canola oil blend in the late 1970s and early 1980s which was easier to use and tastier than lard (and much healthier) so everyone began using that, including Okinawans. Not surprising since rapeseed plants (where canola comes from) have been eaten for centuries in Japan. Meat consumption is higher than the old days when they may have eaten meat once a week at best. It is now only about 100 grams per day, which is much lower than the 200 or so grams per day in Americans. Again the elders eat much less and young people more than this average. Meat is still used mainly as a garnish in stir-fry meals in the elders not as a main dish.

So what is the take home message? Eat lots of soy if you like it because it's a very healthy protein. Use canola oil, or olive oil or another healthy type of oil in moderation (see Okinawa Diet Plan for other healthy oils). And if you eat meat, don't overdo it. Try one of the Okinawa doctor's rules---the plate should be 1/4 or less animal products and 3/4 or more plant products and not the other way around. And of course use lots of antioxidant-rich healthy Okinawan herbs and spices like turmeric, peppers and mugwort. It's all about balance--that's the Okinawa Way. Nuchi gusui (Food is medicine!).

Anyone who has dieted knows diets don't work. They don't work because diets consist of temporary changes to one's typical dietary habits. This inevitably results in temporary weight loss because as soon as you reach your weight loss goals and start letting some of those former eating habits creep back into your life, guess what? You start to gain back all the weight you lost.

By intentionally marketing diets as a quick fix, commercial diet plans have been designed to keep you stuck in this vicious cycle of yo-yo dieting that keeps you coming back to them again and again. A few commercial diet marketers realized that consumers were beginning to catch on to this little scam, so now they have "maintenance" phases that promise to help you keep that weight off for life. There's just one catch: these maintenance phases are designed to turn you into a life long consumer of their endless supply of prepackaged, processed foods designed to "help" you keep that weight off.

This is the sort of "help" I expect from a crack dealer, not from someone promising to improve my life.

The Okinawa Diet Plan is not about any of that. This book is all about giving you the tools to learn how to eat and live in a way that will keep you lean and healthy for life. And that lean, healthy life is likely to be a very long one because the Okinawa Diet Plan is based on evidence taken from studying the longest-lived people on the planet.

It seems most commercial diets are built on a business plan rather than on research. Not so with The Okinawa Diet Plan. The Okinawa Diet Plan grew out of nearly 30 years of solid research from an international team of highly respected doctors and scientists. How many commercial diets can say that?

The ongoing Okinawa Centenarian Study, from which this diet plan is derived, is the most extensive and respected study of its kind. It has produced and enormous amount of research, showing how Okinawans manage to stay naturally lean, fit and healthy up until their final years (often exceeding 100). Like the cover of the paperback edition of this book says, this is "the only diet with 100 years of living proof."

This is not hype. I've seen people attempt to discredit this book in reviews here; but if you look closely at these smear tactics, they invariably turn out to contain spurious and misleading charges from individuals with questionable reputations who are often aggressively promoting their own books and agendas that the evidence uncovered by the authors of The Okinawa Diet Plan tends to disprove.

Yes, I am obviously a big fan. I have struggled with my weight all of my life and have been waiting for a long time for a book like this to show up, so it ticks me off when people slam this book by spreading lies.

Thanks to The Okinawa Diet Plan I am continuing to shed pounds at a healthy, steady pace: I've lost 43 pounds since adopting the recommendations in this wonderful book. I am now more fit, healthy and have more energy than ever before in my life. I have now learned to put my health first and I no longer strive to look like the anorexic models and body builders that commercial diets use to sell their products. I look great, I feel great and I'm well on my way to outliving any bodybuilder or model.

If you still think that the Okinawa Diet Plan is just like any other diet, do what I did: give this book to your doctor to read and then ask him or her if this is a diet plan worth following. My doctor is now huge fan and tireless supporter of this book.

So say sayonara to South Beach and adios to Atkins -- I've tried most of them and this is simply the best diet book on the market, period.