Transcription
But Japan is the third richest country in the whole world, and they didn't get fat. Right? So 42% Americans are obese. It's 4% of Japanese people, and it's set to fall. Right?
There's no market for obesity in these countries because the Japanese government very consciously transformed the Japanese diet. They transformed the diet, and they did all sorts of things that are now continued and, in fact, stepped up. So I wanted to see what they are, and it was super interesting.
So, for example, it really begins from the moment you're born. So I went to this school in Tokyo called Coenji school. Kids go there from when they're six to when they're 18. And it was a really strange experience because it's a school with a thousand children. I spent a whole day there. There's not one overweight child in that school. It's a strange thing to see.
And we were greeted at the door, me and my translator, Chia, by a woman called Harumi Tatibbe, who's the nutritionist who works for the school. In Japan, by law, every school has to employ a professional nutritionist. Qualification, it's three years on top of your teaching degree. And as the nutritionist, your job is to design the school meals, which have to, by law, be made entirely of fresh foods that are prepared on the day. You're not even allowed pre-processed paste in the schools in Japan. And then you've got to use those fresh, unprocessed meals which contain all the main food groups.