Health care solution lies in prevention, cultural insight

Understanding is perhaps the most valuable skill the modern citizen can possess. We no longer live in an isolated world, but in an interconnected network. An avid learner by nature, I spent my last four years at Rice fine-tuning my understanding of people by observing how they were shaped by a phenomenon that is too often overlooked: culture. Culture shapes a person's character, behavior and personality. This is the main reason why I find Japan so fascinating. I want to understand a specific aspect of the Japanese culture - their diet.Japan has the lowest rate of obesity in the world - only 3 percent. It also has the highest life expectancy worldwide, reaching an average of 81.2 years for the population. Acªcording to the book The Okinawa Program, the highest ratio of centenarians - roughly 35 centenarians for every 100,000 islanders - lives on the Japanese island of Okinawa.