japan

Wagashi are not some sort of magic Japanese diet food

maki — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:42:56 +0200

Someone alerted me to this entry on the Health.com blog which quotes me. (Health.com is a Time Inc. property.) I just wanted to set some things straight, because a couple of the statements there are just not right.

The Time Inc. reporter contacted me with some questions, based on her premise that wagashi or Japanese sweets were healthier for you because they were low fat (or at least no added fat; there is some fat content in the beans used). She wanted to know if this was a reason why Japanese people were generally thin.

What I basically said to the reporter was this: no, I don’t think the lack of butter and cream in wagashi have anything to do with the general thinness of Japanese people. As I am quoted as saying, things like smaller portions, more movement and societal pressure are the main causes. I also said that a traditional Japanese meal does not include a dessert course.

So I was not misquoted as such. But the rest of the article goes on to say some rather misleading things, which I am rather surprised by since I gave the writer plenty of information which would have, I thought, logically lead her away from her preconception that wagashi are some magical diet snack.

First and most inaccurate: “The Japanese are not fond of cream, chocolate, butter, or the fattening ingredients that comprise the typical Western dessert.” - As anyone who has spent any time in Japan knows, this is absolutely not true. Japanese people love cakes and gateaus and puddings chocolates and choux buns. Beard Papa, anyone? Pocky? Purin? Cute Sanrio characters named after sweet sticky buns? I would venture to say that Tokyo may have more French-style patisseries per capita than almost any other city except for Paris and Vienna. Those skinny Japanese women love love love Western style pastries. Those pastries may not necessarily be eaten as part of a main meal as dessert, but are eaten between meals for sure.

The article also goes onto recommend giving wagashi a try. Of course, why not? You may like them, you may not. (I’ve noticed that non-Asian people have very mixed reactions to Asian sweets in general.) However if anyone thinks that wagashi will aid your weight loss efforts, please think again. They are loaded with highly refined white sugar and often use white rice or wheat flour. They are in that sense about on par with those infamous low-fat cookies, Snackwells. Surely we are beyond the point of thinking that eating low fat but high sugar snacks leads to weight loss?

A point in favor of wagashi is that many are partly made with some kind of bean - though almost always hulled beans, so with a lot less fiber than say, your average baked beans. Also, most wagashi are made in tiny little portions which, because they are so sweet, you can only eat slowly, usually with a cup of green tea. Finally, they may make you feel full simply because you’re not used to the texture and taste. But all this is simply speculation. I for one could probably eat more taiyaki or ichigo daifuku than I could a dense chocolate cake in one sitting.

Comparing apples to oranges, or rather wagashi to Western pastries

Here are some calories for some typical Japanese sweets. The source is the official food nutrient database (五訂食品標準成分表) which is published by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the standard reference for all dieticians and health professionals in Japan. Numbers are rounded off for simplicity.

1 daifuku (mochi (beaten white rice) dumpling filled with sweet azuki beans): 160 calories
1 piece of yohkan (a block of azuki bean paste): about 100 calories for a piece approx. 1 cm (less than half an inch) thick
1 dorayaki (two little pancakes with a mound of sweet azuki beans in the middle): 240 calories, most of which comes from refined sugar and white flour

Now here are the calories for single portion sizes of Western style sweets as they are typically sold, and eaten, in Japan:

1 individual serving of purin (caramel custard): 110 calories
1 small choux pastry filled with custard: 150 calories
1 piece strawberry ‘shortcake’ (actually a spongecake filled and frosted with whipped cream, with strawberries in the middle and on top): 350 calories

Not such a huge difference is there? Yes, those typical Japanese cake and pudding portions are quite small. The piece of strawberry shortcake for example is just about the size of the palm of my hand. A choux bun is about 3 inches in diameter.

So we come to same old boring conclusion

Anyway, why are Japanese women generally thin? I’ve addressed this subject in depth a little while ago, but to put it in a nutshell:

They eat less. Portions are much smaller.
They move more.
There’s a lot of societal pressure to remain skinny

Not very novel or cute answers I’m afraid. There is no magic pill, or little sweet.

(Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nutritionist or health professional. But I would challenge anyone to get a Japanese health professional to come up with the conclusion that eating wagashi in lieu of Western style sweets can help people lose weight.)

Of cherry blossoms, ohanami and Japanese culture

maki — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:27:23 +0200

It may surprise you to read this, but I do not actually miss living in Japan that much generally, except for my family and the food. My home territory there is the greater Tokyo area, and while Tokyo is a great metropolis, it’s also unbearably congested and you are living on top of other people all the time. To borrow a term used for another place in the world, generally speaking it’s a nice place to visit, but I’m not sure (given a choice) that I’d want to live there. But there are certain times of the year when I do wish I were there, and right now is one of them. It’s cherry blossom time.

Cherry blossom trees are so ubiquitous all throughout Japan, that they are used as an official measure of the changing of seasons. There is something called the sakura zensen (桜前線） or the cherry blossom front, which tracks the blossoming time of cherry trees throughout the country. (It’s so official that it even appears in elementary school geography books along with other weather maps.)

One thing that Japanese people repeat all the time is that Japan is unique because it has four distinct seasons. The implication is that no other place on earth does! This isn’t quite true of course, but I do think that the Japanese culture has a deep appreciation for the changes of the seasons. One of these appreciative rituals is o-hanami or hanami (お花見）. Groups of people congregate on mats under the most picturesque clumps of cherry blossom trees with bento lunches and have a good old party. A lot of sake is usually involved. Since certain places in Tokyo are so popular for o-hanami gatherings, it is traditionally the job of the lowliest grunt in the office to go out early in the morning to the place where his bosses want to party later on that evening with a mat and stake out a choice spot under the trees. He’d then have to sit there all day.

Families go out for o-hanami too, sans the sake usually, though there might be a small bottle or two (or beer) for Dad. Mom would wake up early to make lots and lots of onigiri, and the whole family sets off in their car or on the train to appreciate the blossoms.

(The illustration is by Melbourne artist and designer Andrea Innocent. Her web site is called Otoshimono and it’s filled with Japanophilia. See the original full size illustration on CalorieLab.)

Eating cherry blossoms and leaves

The trees that produce those beautiful pink flowers are different from the ones that produce cherries, but in Japan parts of the flowering tree are still eaten. The leaves are salted and wrapped around a mochi that is dyed a pale pink filled with an; this sweet is called sakuramochi. This is one of my favorite wagashi (traditional Japanese sweets) because the subtle salty-sourness of the pickled cherry leaves counteracts the sweetness of the an nicely. The flowers themselves are eaten too, salted and pickled in shiroume-su, the clear vinegar produced when making umeboshi that hasn’t been colored by red shiso leaves. Floating one or two of these preserved blossoms in a bowl of clear soup or tea is really nice, adding that little salty-sourness again.

Around here it’s still rather cold, but in a couple of weeks the apple trees in our village should be blooming. I wonder what the neighbors, human and bovine, will think if we had a o-hanami party in the fields…

The cherry blossom front lost in translation

Speaking of the cherry blossom front (sakura zensen) brought back memories of an odd experience I had many years ago.

In the late ’80s to early ’90s there was a revival boom of tanka, a traditional form of Japanese poetry that predates the haiku form by centuries. The instigator for this boom was an author and poet called Machi Sawara, whose book of modern tanka called Sarada Kinenbi (Salad Anniversary, サラダ記念日), became a runaway bestseller. (There’s a good analysis of her work and impact on her official English web site.)

One day, Ms. Sawara was engaged to speak at the Japan Club in New York, together with another author whose name I don’t remember anymore. My mother was a big fan of Sarada kinenbi, and so she dragged me there to hear this bestselling author who wrote such beautiful poems talk about her work. The audience there was almost all Japanese.

I don’t remember most of what Ms. Sawara talked about that day, except for one thing. She was describing how she had given a similar talk on Denmark, to a Danish audience. She said that she had described the sakura zensen, and how Japanese people tracked the arrival of spring with it as the front creeped up day by day from south to north. She said her Danish audience laughed at this, and said it sounded stupid, and that she realized that it was a very Japanese way of thinking that was not understandable by gaijin-san (foreigners).

Now I ask you, if you are a non-Japanese person reading this, do you have a hard time understanding the sakura-zensen? Does it sound stupid to you? I’m guessing it doesn’t at all. Every culture around the world appreciates the changing of the seasons, and have different traditions that mark them. I highly doubt that Danish people are any different. And I really doubt that that Danish audience said it was stupid. There must have been a severe breakdown in communication there somewhere - either a bad interpreter, or just that Ms. Sawara totally got it wrong. But the thing is she chose to interpret the situation the way she did.

I wasn’t a fan of hers when I heard this (I hadn’t read Sarada kinenbi yet), but my mother the big fan felt stunned at the shiya no semasa (the narrow view). It changed her opinion of the author so much that she stopped being a fan. Before that, she used to quote the tanka in Sarada kinenbi to anyone who would listen all the time. (A number of the New York-residing Japanese people who were there agreed with her, and the reviews in the local expat papers were pretty scathing, if I recall correctly.)

Anyway, the point of telling this story is that oddly enough, I think it was one of the defining moments in my life. It made me realize that one of the things I wanted to do was to give a real, living and informed (as much as possible) ‘translation’ of Japanese culture to people who weren’t Japanese, and vice versa. It’s one of the many motivations behind this blog and the others I run. For nihonjin (Japanese person), living solely in Japan (or in any single place) is like being in a protected, comfortable cocoon to a great extent, even in this internet age. Living outside of it is like being dunked in freezing cold water. It gives you a shock, but also opens your eyes to both sides of the divide.

Food related shopping places in Japan you should visit

maki — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:05:32 +0100

Please limit your suggestions to stores and places that are food-related: edibles, supplies, equipment, etc.

Precce Premium - Tokyo

Comments: “In a city where food presentation is elevated into an artform, this store peddles food pornography of the most sordid and explicit kind. I’m surprised the wheels of my chair didn’t go rusty from the dribble trailing from my open mouth. From the displays of unbearably beautifully fruit to the softly cascading clouds of dry ice that caressed impeccably fresh fish in dream-like soft-focus, this store is nothing but a delectable series of temptations.” -(Loretta) Link, Map.

All the 100 yen shops you could ever want to visit

…are all listed on this Guide to 100 yen shops by region (Japanese only unfortunately, but it’s a start!)

My take on why Japanese people in Japan don't get that fat

maki — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 07:33:44 +0100

The majority of the comments posted for this Guardian Word Of Mouth blog entry about obesity rates and fast food places are about Japan, and how few people there are overweight. It seems that people latched on to this paragraph in particular:

There would appear to be more at play here than sheer wealth. Japan, which isn’t exactly poor, boasts over 3,000 McDonald’s restaurants, second in number only to the US, and is also home to many other fast food outlets to boot. Yet Japan has one of the lowest obesity rates in the world.

Eating and snacking in Japan is very convenient. In urban areas there are so many fast food places, food stalls, kombini or convenience stores stocked with all sorts of tempting and often fattening readymade food, and the world’s most advanced food and beverage vending machine industry. The snack food industry is fiercely competitive. And, unlike statements made by English press sources like this one which implies that the fast food/junk food trend is some recent phenomenon, this state of affairs has been there for decades.

So at least in Japan the premise of the survey cited doesn’t hold true.

That’s not to say that there aren’t overweight or even obese people in Japan. Japanese people, especially women, are as obsessed with diets as their counterparts in the U.S. or the U.K. Every day there’s a new ‘miracle diet’ popping up. Go to Japanese food sites and every other ad there is for some sort of weight loss scheme. There are increasing concerns about the unhealthiness of fast foods and convenience foods.

Still, I think that at least for a while, people in Japan will continue to stay relatively slim. Here are a couple of reasons:

Peer pressure. Japanese society is largely based on how one fits comfortably and unabrasively into society, way more so than most Western societies. There is a huge amount of peer pressure to conform, and the pressure on women in particular to stay slim is tremendous.
More unplanned movement. Usually people who live in Japan, especially the urban and suburban areas, just have to move a lot more. Cars aren’t practical at all except for longer trips, so almost everyone commutes by public transportation. That’s not to say there aren’t any gyms and such (there are, tons of them) but people just naturally get more exercise than in a typical American city.
Despite recent supersizing trends, generally portions are way smaller. There are Mega-Burgers and Extreme Meals and all of that, but the average portion sizes are still quite a bit smaller than in the U.S.

But once you move out of the country, things change

A common complaint amongst Japanese people who go to live in another country, especially the U.S., is that a pretty substantial weight gain is almost inevitable. I haven’t been able to find any formal studies of this, but time and again I hear about people gaining around 15 to 20 pounds within a year or so after moving away from Japan. It’s not the Freshman 15, it’s the kaigai seikatsu (overseas living) 15. The author of Japanese Women Don’t Get Old Or Fat (my review here) starts off with a personal anecdote about how she gained 25 pounds after moving to the U.S. One of the bestselling diet books in Japan, Tatakawanai daietto: waka musume wa kooshite yaseta! (The Fight-free (struggle-free) diet: My daughter lost weight this way!) is based around the theme of a food and health journalist helping his daughter who came back “with a fat body” after a year of study in Arizona. (She’d gained about 10 kg, or 22 lb.)

This weight gained happened to me too. I wasn’t overweight at all until my family moved back to the U.S. when I was 17. Within the span of a year or so I went from around 50 kg to about 70kg. (I’m not actually sure what my starting weight was, since weight was not even an issue for me until I started to not fit in my clothes anymore!) I did lose a lot of it, but have since gained it back and more, hence my current efforts to get rid of the excess weight again!

Why did I gain 20 kg so easily? It comes down to fairly simple reasons: lack of unplanned exercise, lack of peer pressure, and the huge portions. Whenever my new school stressed me out (I hated that high school to be honest) I’d comfort myself with a bag of potato chips - the family size. We usually ate out as a family at local diners, where the club sandwiches could be stacked up about 15 inches high, and we started expecting home meal portions to be as big.

Living large around the world

I think it is just tremendously hard to stay slim in the U.S. compared to other places I’ve lived, which is why the obesity rate is so high there. Public transportation is not that available except in a few cities, and people just don’t walk much anymore in the suburbs. So one has to make a special effort and set aside a specific time to get any exercise. Busy people aren’t always willing or able to do that. Portion sizes at restaurants and such are large, and I’m fairly sure many people will complain if they were drastically reduced.

And, despite the attention paid to ‘size zero’ celebrities and such, I just don’t believe there is that much peer or societal pressure to keep yourself slim. When the people around you are mostly neither slim nor fit, why bother?

I haven’t lived in the U.K. since I was a child, but whenever I’ve visited there in recent years I gotten the feeling that it was becoming more and more Americanized in lifestyle - more reliance on cars, bigger portions and so on. Add that to the fact that traditional British food can be quite high calorie (pies, fish and chips, and well, curries) it’s not too surprising to see obesity rates there soar.

As for Switzerland, it has some factors that help keep people slim, such as great public transportation, a natural tendency for people to get a little exercise, and reasonably sized portions. Also, people don’t really eat out as much here, or rely on takeaways/takeout and readymade meals.

The bottom line is that home cooking is really better for you all around, health and taste wise. And it’s the best way to take control of your own, and your family’s health. (And all the better if at some of that home cooking is Japanese…a reason to keep coming back here to Just Hungry. :))

[Update:] See the followup discussion, Does going back to your culinary roots make you healthier?