The emphasis on fresh high-quality food made me wonder if that sort of food is more satisfying (and filling) than what the author sees in American food. Does eating poor quality food leave you hungry? (Also, consider people living in “grocery deserts” who subsist on large amounts of fast food. Their obesity rates are very high.)
I think the lack of accessible grocery requires people to pile up grocery for weeks, which motivates people to get crappy and over-processed food that last a long time.
This also promotes “one-stop shop” which heavily favors coperate driven big-box store than local specialty store with better and fresher products.
The lack of “natural exercise” from commuting and walking to grocery also worsens the problem.
A lot of the time people thinks “anti-car” is only for some far-fetching environmental argument, yet the over-reliant on cars is really corroding every aspect of our life quality.
I liked the article a lot and it made many great points. Especially about school lunch and public transportation allowing for a more active, therefore healthy, society. However, when I visited I noticed vegetables are not incredibly common, and those you find are not diverse. Dishes are rice heavy, and the vegetables are mostly varieties of cucumbers and seaweed. A friend of mine, who lived in Tokyo for a few years, confirmed my observation and mentioned it’s thought to be a cause of persistent dental issues in Japan. Don’t have a source or anything for that, but thought it might be interesting to mention. I think it greatly depends on where you live. In California, I have access to a huge variety of vegetables and many farmer’s markets throughout the week I can attend. I imagine that i am an outlier though, and many areas have access to very few vegetable varieties. Food deserts are a very real thing and a very real problem. I’m mostly just musing, but I think I’m mentioning this because there is a trend in spaces like this to idolize Japan, and reality is much more nuanced than “Japan is perfect.”
From what I remember when I lived in Japan vegetables weren’t a problem as much as fruit was. They were either seasonal, expensive, or both. Also the fattier, red meats could be difficult to find (things like pure ground beef was uncommon and was commonly found as a beef/pork hybrid).
And yes, I would imagine public transportation (or just having to walk/ride a bike) is a huge boon to overall health levels.
One thing that the article barely touches on, but is another huge factor, is price. You can get an excellent meal in Japan quite cheaply. Meanwhile, food in the US (and especially anything you get from a restaurant) is expensive.
I lost ~10 lbs in a month in Japan, eating and commuting like the locals.
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You can wander past cases of specialty foods, from marbled meats to miso-pickled vegetables to handmade gyoza dumplings, in the depa chicka, or department store basements.
I ask Terry Huang, a health policy professor at the City University of New York, about the apparent contradiction in Japan’s relationship with food.
Huang calls this “default design” and he says it literally comes built in: The fact that Japanese cities are densely populated, but safe, allows for heavy reliance on public transport, for example.
He ladled the soup onto noodles and a thin slice of roast pork, green onions, bamboo shoots, topped off with nori, or seaweed.
Japanese convenience stories, called conbini, feature refrigerated walls of noodle salads, rice balls, bento boxes, all perfectly portioned and delicious, if you ask me.
It means driving, regularly, to half a dozen different grocery or specialty stores to stock fresh ingredients, like shrimp, dried seaweed (nori), or produce like Japanese yams and chives, then setting aside time throughout the day to wash, chop, cook and clean.
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Dunno if this is related, but I can easily eat an entire candy bar and be ready to snarf down another. But 3 or 4 dried dates make me full and satisfy my craving for sweets, and I don’t want more.
Just a bunch of random thoughts, after reading the article (I’m neither from Japan nor USA):
This is not to say Japan is immune to industrialized and ultra-processed food trends driving up obesity rates worldwide. Excess weight is a growing concern here, too.
Even homemade treats like karaage can be an issue, too. The underlying problem is the same - it’s highly caloric food tweaked to be as tasty as possible, that doesn’t offer you a lot of dietary fibre or micronutrients. However at least homemade treats can be tweaked to become slightly healthier, while mass processed food will always contain as much fat and salt as allowed per law.
From what I recall, USA subsidises maize. That would be great if the subsidised maize would go into more “direct” food items (polenta, nixtamal, boiled, etc.), but I bet that most of that becomes corn syrup. Perhaps it should shift the subsidy towards vegetables in general?
I also wonder if the “heavy breakfast, light lunch” culture doesn’t play a role. Usually a housemate will have more time to prepare a good lunch than a good breakfast; that usually means just high calories to keep you through the day, but relatively low amounts of micronutrients.
Yes, maize is subsidized, and yes, the majority is turned into corn syrup. Culturally, there has been a shift away from corn syrup so lots of products popping up using sugar instead (cuz, ya know, that’s so much better). But the products with corn syrup are right next to them, and people usually can’t afford the newer “less processed” alternatives.
Per the USDA, here’s what corn is used for in the US:
- 1/3 goes to feeding livestock
- 1/3 is used for ethanol which is added to car fuel
- “The rest of the corn crop is used for human food, beverages, and industrial uses in the U.S., or exported to other countries for food or feed use. Corn has hundreds of uses. It is used to make breakfast cereal, tortilla chips, grits, canned beer, soda, cooking oil, and bio-degradable packing materials. It’s the key ingredient in the growing medium for life-saving medicines including penicillin. Corn gluten meal is used on flower beds to prevent weeds.”
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2019/07/29/corn-americas-largest-crop-2019
I’m sure a lot of it is used for corn syrup but it appears to be far from the majority. Mostly animal feed (which in turn becomes things like beef and milk) and fuel.
Thanks for the info!
Nevermind on the maize thing then. Perhaps reducing the subsidies might be sensible for other reasons, but odds are that it won’t affect health concerns.
