I think the lack of accessible grocery requires people to pile up grocery for weeks, which motivates people to get crappy and over-processed food that last a long time.

This also promotes "one-stop shop" which heavily favors coperate driven big-box store than local specialty store with better and fresher products.

The lack of "natural exercise" from commuting and walking to grocery also worsens the problem.

A lot of the time people thinks "anti-car" is only for some far-fetching environmental argument, yet the over-reliant on cars is really corroding every aspect of our life quality.

I liked the article a lot and it made many great points. Especially about school lunch and public transportation allowing for a more active, therefore healthy, society. However, when I visited I noticed vegetables are not incredibly common, and those you find are not diverse. Dishes are rice heavy, and the vegetables are mostly varieties of cucumbers and seaweed. A friend of mine, who lived in Tokyo for a few years, confirmed my observation and mentioned it's thought to be a cause of persistent dental issues in Japan. Don't have a source or anything for that, but thought it might be interesting to mention. I think it greatly depends on where you live. In California, I have access to a huge variety of vegetables and many farmer's markets throughout the week I can attend. I imagine that i am an outlier though, and many areas have access to very few vegetable varieties. Food deserts are a very real thing and a very real problem. I'm mostly just musing, but I think I'm mentioning this because there is a trend in spaces like this to idolize Japan, and reality is much more nuanced than "Japan is perfect."

One thing that the article barely touches on, but is another huge factor, is price. You can get an excellent meal in Japan quite cheaply. Meanwhile, food in the US (and especially anything you get from a restaurant) is expensive.

I lost ~10 lbs in a month in Japan, eating and commuting like the locals.

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Dunno if this is related, but I can easily eat an entire candy bar and be ready to snarf down another. But 3 or 4 dried dates make me full and satisfy my craving for sweets, and I don’t want more.

Just a bunch of random thoughts, after reading the article (I'm neither from Japan nor USA):

This is not to say Japan is immune to industrialized and ultra-processed food trends driving up obesity rates worldwide. Excess weight is a growing concern here, too.

Even homemade treats like karaage can be an issue, too. The underlying problem is the same - it's highly caloric food tweaked to be as tasty as possible, that doesn't offer you a lot of dietary fibre or micronutrients. However at least homemade treats can be tweaked to become slightly healthier, while mass processed food will always contain as much fat and salt as allowed per law.

From what I recall, USA subsidises maize. That would be great if the subsidised maize would go into more "direct" food items (polenta, nixtamal, boiled, etc.), but I bet that most of that becomes corn syrup. Perhaps it should shift the subsidy towards vegetables in general?

I also wonder if the "heavy breakfast, light lunch" culture doesn't play a role. Usually a housemate will have more time to prepare a good lunch than a good breakfast; that usually means just high calories to keep you through the day, but relatively low amounts of micronutrients.