The Okinawa Program: How the World's Longest-Lived People Achieve Everlasting Health--And How You Cantoo

`The Okinawa Program' is an excellent book about the lifestyle of the worlds longest living group of people. It is extremely easy to read and although it is heavily aimed at an American audience (with charts that mainly compare America to the Okinawan people and another terrible American book cover that treats the readership like an idiot and spells everything out with numerous sub-titles) it has so much fascinating and useable information that this kept me engrossed throughout.This starts off by exploring longevity around the world and introduces the Okinawan study before looking at the Okinawan diet in more detail. It explains what they eat and in what amounts and what herbs and healing foods they eat. This has a revised nutrition pyramid that is easy to follow and a large chart listing foods that are beneficial to your diet. It also explains and demystifies a great deal about fats and carbohydrates in your diet. But more than just being a book about nutrition, this also looks at other aspects of the Okinawan lifestyle that has an impact on long life. These include spiritual beliefs, stress reduction and exercise. This finishes up with a four week plan to integrate these ideas into your own life and 100 recipes to use to keep things interesting and easy to implement.Although this is a book specifically about the Okinawans diet, this is also a book about nutrition in general. It has lots of complimentary information to ground the Okinawa diet in scientific fact, various case studies to show how this lifestyle can actually have an impact and it shows how the food plan makes for an all round healthy diet that is expounded (in various ways) by numerous health bodies around the world.This is one of those books that, if implemented in your own life, could change the way you live and feel and whilst I already did some of the things in this book, the minor tweaking I have done based on this has already made me feel that little bit fitter and healthier. If you are new to nutrition and are researching a healthier lifestyle, I really can't recommend this book enough. It covers many facets of a healthy life, including food, social supports, spiritual health, physical fitness and stress reduction and it is an excellent all round healthy lifestyle plan. What is really good is that all this information is collated in one book and is based upon scientific research (all referenced in the back) that is easy to read and implement in your life. Simply superb.Feel free to check out my blog which can be found on my profile page.

This is an excellent book. I've bought it when I became interested in healthy living. It gives you advices not only on diet and food but on other life choices as well.I've found the section on specific food products and their influence on our health and various deceases to be very useful. I believe it is even more useful than the end section with recipes. If you study the first section of the book well enough, you will be able to choose healthy products from your own superstore.Overall, recommended for anyone who wants to learn more about healthy living, diet differences between the East and the West and what kind of impact it has on our health.

detailed, varied, comprehensive, good

Some great search on a healthy lifestyle . Clearly written

This was a fascinating book that was also enjoyable to read. There are plenty of delicious recipes in the book, with many that people with a western palate would enjoy. The first half of the book makes it clear which specific foods are good to eat and so you can adapt and make your own dishes. I've been eating this way for a month, along with regular exercise and I feel so much healthier for it.

Very pleased with the delivery speed. Started reading the book yesterday and I enjoy every page of it. Full of precious information on nutrition, well documented and researched. Will definitely apply the pieces of advice in the book.Also, the book is in very good condition. Happy with the purchase.Camelia

Very interesting to read - a large book so hopefully will have time to read further soon, lists things which are difficult to find in the UK but all very informative

This book has plenty of good information but it also has dated and/or misleading information. The book might be exaggerating the importance of cholesterol on heart disease, for example. Uffe Ravnskov, a Danish doctor and independent researcher is one of the many scientist who are questioning the "official medicine" view on cholesterol. He says that "the cholesterol campaign is the greatest medical scandal in modern time" on "New Scientist" published on 11 february 2017.The book suggests brown rice instead of white rice but we know today that brown rice has far more arsenic than white rice, which turns out to be the healthiest rice to eat.And no study in the world will make me eat soy or drink soy milk in order to protect myself against prostate cancer. This book considers soy as the best food on earth but many authors disagree. Just check the book "Perfect Health Diet", for example. It is exactly the opposite of this book.I rather stick with pomegranate juice (Waitrose. The only one in the market that is 100% pure squeezed pomegranate juice, no sugar or water added. The so popular "Pom - wonderful pomegranate" is not pure squeezed. It is from concentrate), olive oil, berries, avocado, sweet potato, sun dried tomato, good turmeric supplements (Thorne research, natural factors, Doctor's Best) etc.The Okinawa diet, according to "Blue Zones", consisted of 67% sweet potatoes until 1949. The Maryland University says that findings about soy's protection against cancer are "complex". "Some studies suggest that a woman may get the best protection if she eats a diet high in soy when she is young, rather than when she goes through menopause." Seeing that information, one could argue that the main food behind the Okinawa diet success is sweet potato, not soy. After all, the Okinawa centenarians mentioned in this book (published 17 years ago) ate mainly sweet potatoes until their late forties or early fifties!!!And read this, also from the University of Maryland website: "Isoflavones may lower the amount of iodine in the body, which can lead to underfunctioning of the thyroid, called hypothyroidism. A few cases of hypothyroidism have been reported in infants fed soy formula. It is rare in the United States where most people use iodized salt. " Even considering soya as a good food, it is important to point out the consume of fermented soya in Japan instead of the many forms of heavily industrialised soya you will find over here.In addition, if you check the Sardinia diet , which is the diet from the world's longest-living men according to "Blue Zones", you will see that those very old and still strong Italian men do not eat soya at all...It is a very good idea to read other books and doing your own research on serious and reliable websites (no forums...) before committing yourself to add soy to your diet.I posted a comment to criticise a comment against the one star review. I ended up writing a review about this book. I am trying hard to stop writing reviews. I must try harder...Amazon, fortunately, is making it easier for me because they changed the website design making it much less user friendly than it was and I can't just see all my reviews at once as I could before at the click of a button.