Food and beverages rich in polyphenols have been shown to reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases. The present study estimated polyphenol levels and consumption from food and beverages in Japanese women. Randomly recruited housewives living in the area around Tokyo (n 109; aged 21–56 years; Group 1) recorded all beverages and foods they ingested for 7 d, and the total polyphenol (TP) consumption was estimated based on the TP content of each item measured with a modified Folin–Ciocalteu method. For Group 1, TP was consumed at 841 (sd 403) mg/d (range 113–1759 mg/d), and beverages were a larger source of TP (79 %) than food (21 %). The largest single source of TP was coffee at 47 %, followed by green tea, black tea, chocolate, beer and soya sauce, at 16, 5·7, 3·3, 3·2 and 3·1 %, respectively. In terms of food groups, cereals/noodles, vegetables, fruits, beans and seeds, and seasonings (except for soya sauce) contributed 5·0, 4·0, 1·4, 1·8 and 2·4 %, respectively. Another group of housewives who consumed at least one cup of coffee per d were separately recruited (n 100; Group 2) in the same area. Their consumption of TP was higher at 1187 (sd 371) mg/d (range 440–2435 mg/d) than Group 1 (P < 0·001), and the difference mostly came from the coffee consumption. We conclude that not food but beverages, especially coffee, may be the major contributor to TP consumption in Japanese women.

The concept of "exorbitant privilege" has received great attention from policy makers as well as academics worldwide. The idea originally referred to the willingness of foreigners to hold large quantities of US government debt at extremely low interest rates, due to the dollar's world reserve currency status. In recent years, the term exorbitant privilege has been expanded to explain why the US appears to be enjoying excess return from its external assets over liabilities across all asset classes, including foreign direct investment, equities and other forms of portfolio investment. In this paper, we give a brief review of the recent literature on exorbitant privilege, and then proceed to discuss exorbitant privilege in the context of another country, Japan, which has been the world's largest creditor nation for more than two decades. In contrast to the common perception that Japan has been a particularly poor international investor, we find that Japan enjoys exorbitant privilege in both the broad and narrow sense. Japan also earns higher expected returns from maturity transformation. Thus although the dollar is the reserve currency, the yen also has enjoyed a safe haven effect in the recent period.

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