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Columbine (Offline)
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07-27-2010, 10:31 AM

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Originally Posted by steven View Post

However, Japanese tend to eat a lot of eggs (at least the one's I've known). The opinion on whether or not eggs are healthy (or to what degree) is a constantly changing one so I'll let you judge that one for yourself. They also seem to drink a lot of alcohol-- beer, sake, shochu, etc. There are also a lot of fried things such as tempura or fried chicken/pork etc. Tempura seems to be a healthier variant of the type of fried food we're used to in the west, but hopefully someone can clarify that.
One thing I noticed where I was living (and there were a LOT of foreigners), was that people's weight fluctuated after the first month. The foreigners who stuck to a western diet or western-similar japanese food (karaage, Mc D etc) all stayed at a similar weight or gained, although if they drank they pretty much exploded. The one's who didn't drink much and stuck to the more asian side of Japanese food, found they lost weight quite quickly before it stabilized. And of course, those on a healthy diet but drinking a lot kind of stayed the same.

I've no idea about egg by itself, but compared to other heavy animal fats, it's not as bad. The yolk is fatty but the white is just protein, and it's what they recommend anemic or unhealthily underweight people to eat daily, so it can't be that bad!

Quote:
Originally Posted by steven View Post
In fact, there was a period in Japans history (or so I have read) in which the upper class people had a shorter life span than common/lower class people.
This is probably true of ANY aristocracy. The European ones had shocking health; eating too much meat, fat and sugar, and consuming far too much alcohol. Veg and roughage are always kind of seen as pauper's fare, so you avoided them. Elizabeth 1 had black teeth! Also, in terms of the women at least, they got a lot less exercise. Finally, if it's anything like some areas, the upper-classes also experienced more in-breeding.

Quote:
Originally Posted by steven View Post
Sometimes I hear people talking about 'longer intestines' and things like that. I've studied about it before, but to be honest I'm not too familiar with it. I think that a lot of Japanese people attribute that to what they used to eat. I've also heard Japanese people attribute their consumption of a lot of soft foods to some people having weaker teeth than their western counterparts (again, I have no scientific proof of this, this is just what I've heard Japanese people say). Another thing that I've noticed is that some Japanese people that I've talked to like to give an explanation for everything that is eaten (like if I sit next to them at a party or something). For example, there is a reason why people eat daikon with sashimi (for digestive purposes).
Sounds like the kind of thing you get in 'Japanese cultural study' books, where the writers (usually Japanese, i hasten to add) like to come up with scientific reasons as to why Japanese people do what they do because they are so different from everyone else in the world. Some of it, i'm fairly sure, is rubbish, but there is some truth in it; westerners certainly have a harder time kneeling because our leg proportions are slightly different.

There's some good reason for eating things with other things. The anti-oxidants in green tea kill off the (harmless) bacteria in fish that make your breath smell. The mild toxins in Umeboshi stop cooked rice from developing an enzyme, which if consumed can give you food-poisoning. The vinegar in the rice, the pickled ginger and...the wasabi, act like mild antiseptics, making the fish safer to eat; it also does something to the flesh which compensates for eating it raw, making it easier to digest? I think it helps break it down a bit, like putting lemon juice on raw food partly 'cooks' it.
Certainly chicken sashimi often comes with umeboshi paste, which is the culinary equivalent of rubbing TCP into it.
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