Changing the way you eat is hard, but it can be done. Look at Japan.

Japan shows the extent to which food habits evolve.

Japan has somehow managed to achieve the ideal attitude to eating: an obsession with culinary pleasure that is actually conductive to health.

Japanese cuisine did not change all at once but in stages.

The Japanese only really started eating what we think of as Japanese food in the years after the Second World War.

The Japanese must be doing something right in the way they eat, given that they live longer on average than people form any other nation.

In Japan, food filters into every aspect of the culture.

Almost the only places in the world that have lower obesity averages than Japan are countries such as Ethiopia or North Korea where there is widespread hunger and food itself is scarce.

There are signs that the Japanese themselves consider their excellent cuisine as an essential part of what it means to be Japanese.