Japan's Kentucky Fried Christmas 🍗🎅

It’s not Christmas in Japan without KFC. Though only 1.5% are Christian, the Japanese are megafans of glitzy American consumerism and the commercial Christmas spirit.

The 1,150 KFC locations in Japan do 30% of their annual business (> $700M USD annually) around Christmas time, due to a decades-long branding blitz.

This is just a small glimpse of the broader Japanese trend towards American fast food. Generally as a nation they are thought to be fit, long lived and healthy, but let’s check in on how they’re doing lately:

Seed oils and obesity in Japan

While Japan’s obesity rates are lower than ours, they are steadily rising, from 15% in 1975 to greater than 25% in 2016.

The alarming part is that they are consuming the same number of calories that they did back then, but their seed oil consumption has more than doubled, and risen 13x since 1950 when it began to be introduced.

As I stated last week, there is ample evidence that we are actually moving and exercising more than we did in the 1980s, not less.

Sadly one of America’s greatest exports is Kentucky Fried obesity.

Merry Christmas Scouts, stay safe, and stay frosty ❄️

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