I did find some information in the book, "The Okinawa Program", that was based on the 25-year study of Okinawa. It was conducted by 2 American doctors and 1 Japanese doctor, and they were the authors of the book that came out in 2001. You can say it's outdated if you want to, but the point of the study is to provide a snapshot in time of a healthy lifestyle.
At the time of the study, the world rankings for longevity were as follows: (And the source of information was the World Health Organization, Japan Ministry of Health and Welfare)
....................Average Life expectancy
1) Okinawa...............81.2
2) Japan...................79.9
3) Hong Kong.............79.1
4) Sweden.................79.0
8) Italy......................78.3
10) Greece..................78.1
18) United States.........76.8
The authors claim that every city, town and village has had reliable birth and death statistics since 1879. And based on those statistics, Okinawa had the highest concentration of centenarians. In a population of 1.3 million, they had 400 centenarians. That's about 34 per 100,000 population. In the U.S. it was 5 to 10 per 100,000. That's a big difference.
The 3 doctors spent 25 years doing this study, they put their reputations and credibility on the line, so I'm sure they gave careful thought to providing accurate statistics.
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