After being starved for so many centuries, Okinawans seized this new food culture. They quickly developed a taste for canned meat (Hormel to this day still exports approximately five million pounds of SPAM a year to Okinawa) and fast food (Okinawans eat more hamburgers per capita than any of Japan’s other 47 prefectures). A sharp increase in obesity-related diseases such as diabetes has ensued. Okinawa now has Japan’s highest rate of obesity, and, among middle-aged men, one of the highest rates of premature deaths from cardiovascular diseases. While Okinawan women are still
