This is a very good article. I think that one of the biggest problems with epidemiological obesity is that people don't seem to recognize it as a cultural problem. You can find slivers of it in...
This is a very good article. I think that one of the biggest problems with epidemiological obesity is that people don't seem to recognize it as a cultural problem. You can find slivers of it in every stage of a person's life. We theoretically teach our young about nutrition, but it is so far divorced from reality as to be useless, teaching people about things like carbs and protein. They don't build a food culture and in the vacuum corporations have inserted their unhealthy processed foods, which they have done for so long that they have become a staple even among elders. They tell you to have sugars and fats in moderation, but rarely do you hear what that actually means. And here in the US, we overproduce milk and corn to such incredible extents that it is difficult to find a processed food item without them in one form or another; we are marked by foods stuffed with cheese, butter, and high fructose corn syrup.
Probably the biggest social problem is our relationship to fat. Even with nearly half of the population overweight, we deride fat people. We pretend that being fat is a moral failure in our cultural dogma. The author says that if people had to inform their workplace that they would be in arms because their employers had no need to know that information, but the truth of the matter is that the reason they would be upset is because to do so would open them up to derision and mental anguish. A "western" version of Japan's metabo law would not work because it would not address the social sickness.
If you think that’s the worst part of our food culture, you’d hate Japan. It’s that times 100. Not only the level of derision much higher, but it’s way more open. People will openly ask if you’ve...
Probably the biggest social problem is our relationship to fat. Even with nearly half of the population overweight, we deride fat people.
If you think that’s the worst part of our food culture, you’d hate Japan. It’s that times 100. Not only the level of derision much higher, but it’s way more open. People will openly ask if you’ve been gaining weight if your BMI is above a 19. The first thing your family will say if you have even a hint of pudge is that you’ve been letting yourself go. People will brag about the bizarre contorted diets they’re on to lose 5 lbs when they were 120 lbs to begin with.
Japan isn't perfect. Calorie-dense processed foods are becoming more and more common there. They may goad you about your weight, but they tend to be a lot better at actually supporting people who...
Japan isn't perfect. Calorie-dense processed foods are becoming more and more common there. They may goad you about your weight, but they tend to be a lot better at actually supporting people who are trying to lose weight. Beyond that, healthier options are ubiquitous, and will often be eaten regardless of if a person is trying to lose weight or not, they have a society that is built upon staying on their feet, and they have normalized doing exercise. As a society they value health much more than Westerners do.
I don't disagree that they value health much more, but it's not in this "supportive" way. I'm not Japanese, but I spent a lot of my childhood in Taiwan, which is about as close to Japan as you can...
I don't disagree that they value health much more, but it's not in this "supportive" way. I'm not Japanese, but I spent a lot of my childhood in Taiwan, which is about as close to Japan as you can get in East Asia due to both the colonial period and how close the countries got after Hokkien/Hakla political influence began to outstrip the KMT.
The main difference is that fatness being associated with deprave hedonism is just accepted. There's no recognition of anything else. That's why things like your workplace being concerned about your weight is OK - being overweight is just bad, so there is nothing wrong with being shamed anywhere anytime about it until you get better.
To some extent healthier options are more available, but equally as many people consume half of their diet from 7-11. It's just about portion sizes. You will be made fun of if you eat like a quarter of an American's average portion.
Undoubtedly the culture around weight, namely that being fat is the polar opposite of being a healthy, attractive person, contributes much to their statistics, but from a western perspective, it may not be something that you'd want to import wholesale.
Oh absolutely, I don't think that it should be imported wholesale. That's not even a realistic possibility. But the goal in comparison is not to become them, but to use them as a way to reflect on...
Oh absolutely, I don't think that it should be imported wholesale. That's not even a realistic possibility. But the goal in comparison is not to become them, but to use them as a way to reflect on ourselves and see what our problems are and have ideas on how to fix them.
Is this a general Asian thing? Most Asian women I know eventually say something crazy about how they're getting fat while clearly they are at the lighter end of the healthy range of body fat...
Is this a general Asian thing? Most Asian women I know eventually say something crazy about how they're getting fat while clearly they are at the lighter end of the healthy range of body fat percentage.
Yes, at least east asia. It varies by country, though. That being said, if you're any kind of AB(C,T,J,K), you'll probably be made fun of for your weight if you ever visit family, simply due to...
Yes, at least east asia. It varies by country, though. That being said, if you're any kind of AB(C,T,J,K), you'll probably be made fun of for your weight if you ever visit family, simply due to different norms.
Men have more leeway than women. But only like, up to a BMI of ~24. It's basically like being a smoker - having a 24 BMI, yeah, it's a little indulgent, but men will be men - kind of attitude.
Another thing is that there isn't really a gym culture, so in order to have the same body "shape", you need to be a LOT thinner than if you had more muscle. That's for men - women aren't allowed to be muscular really, so it doesn't matter.
Obviously for all of that there are exceptions.
One last thing is that as you get older, the less any of that matters, because you're no longer expected to be beautiful.
Not exactly an Asian thing per se. I remember an episode of That's So Raven where Raven tries to be a size 2 because that's what society expected from her. This is just one example of the many...
Not exactly an Asian thing per se. I remember an episode of That's So Raven where Raven tries to be a size 2 because that's what society expected from her. This is just one example of the many other examples of American TV shows and movies depicting the rabid doctrine of weight and beauty standards. It's just that America and the West in general have become way more understanding than Asia. Nonetheless, older women in Asia are not really pressured to adhere to this weight beauty standard. That's why a lot of Asian "aunties" are depicted as pear shaped and almost everyone is ok with that.
This part stuck out a bit to me: It's basically a cultural meme to not like vegetables, which is pushed on children and spreads. I didn't realize how bad it was until moving to the southern...
This part stuck out a bit to me:
I asked my translator: Is this a joke? Are they trolling me? A bunch of 10-year-olds, telling me how much they love broccoli and rice? But most of the Japanese people I discussed this with were puzzled to see that I was puzzled. We teach kids to enjoy healthy food, they explained. Don’t you?
It's basically a cultural meme to not like vegetables, which is pushed on children and spreads. I didn't realize how bad it was until moving to the southern midwest; people have absolute trash diets here, tastes that I'd describe as trending juvenile (if I didn't know better that children raised on healthier food don't naturally detest it), and it very definitely shows in the average weight. It was a bit of a shock going back to a coastal city for a visit and noticing that difference.
Increasingly, I think we need to treat sugar purveyors closer to how we treat cigarette companies...but there is vehement resistance to that, as one might expect from a place of addiction. We'd rather normalize obesity than fight it at an epidemiological level.
Eh, again, I feel like this is a only half the reality. Rice is one thing - at this point it's probably genetic that asians like rice, although white rice is really probably one of the...
Eh, again, I feel like this is a only half the reality. Rice is one thing - at this point it's probably genetic that asians like rice, although white rice is really probably one of the unhealthiest forms of starch - but it's not like everyone likes all vegetables as a kid. A stereotype is that kids don't like bell peppers - on the other hand, I think a lot of western kids like bell peppers, they're crunchy and slightly sweet. That example feels like cherry-picking somewhat.
But one real difference is that American households imo are much more likely to "give up". If your kid only wants to eat chicken nuggets, then get some chicken nuggets. When I was raised, it was much more of a "deal with it" attitude, which I think is typical of asian households. If I didn't want to eat what was on the dinner table? Then have fun being hungry tonight. You'll live. Asian kids in asia aren't some perfect angels that only love healthy food. McDonalds exists. Kids love it. They just aren't allowed to eat it.
I think that's a difference. There's a real culture of "you have to eat". I see this especially with breakfast - oh no, how can you send jimmy to school without breakfast? Why not? Do you think the hunter-gatherer ancestors just keeled over and died if they didn't eat 3 square meals a day? A kid will be more than fine if they don't eat a single meal.
Oh, and I also think american households are more likely to suck at cooking. I really doubt those Japanese kids were eating rice, with unseasoned steamed broccoli. At worse it was poached in water and flavored with soy sauce and sesame oil.
This seems to vary a lot in America. In parts of the South, I've known families that always serve miscellaneous canned vegetables (sometimes even homecanned!), and if you don't eat them it's...
But one real difference is that American households imo are much more likely to "give up". If your kid only wants to eat chicken nuggets, then get some chicken nuggets. When I was raised, it was much more of a "deal with it" attitude, which I think is typical of asian households. If I didn't want to eat what was on the dinner table? Then have fun being hungry tonight.
This seems to vary a lot in America. In parts of the South, I've known families that always serve miscellaneous canned vegetables (sometimes even homecanned!), and if you don't eat them it's downright offensive. At least amongst some of the older people I've met, it's actually a holdover from the Great Depression where their parents raised them to value every bit of food they could get. Of course, this can lead to overeating because it's rude not to finish everything on the plate.
The crazy thing is that these giant food corporations literally pull their playbooks from the tobacco industry. Several of them were literally owned by them for a period of time, before they...
The crazy thing is that these giant food corporations literally pull their playbooks from the tobacco industry. Several of them were literally owned by them for a period of time, before they decided to divest.
I agree with the points you make here and just want to touch on something related. There's a cultural change that emerges in many people of all different ethnic and cultural backgrounds when they...
I agree with the points you make here and just want to touch on something related. There's a cultural change that emerges in many people of all different ethnic and cultural backgrounds when they start to achieve a level of prosperity. And it's not even a particularly high level of prosperity. It's simply that having more food is better and being able to feed your children more food at a meal (and they better finish everything on their plate!) symbolizes the achievement of that ability to provide for one's family fully.
This creates part of a feedback loop based around food consumption. People over-eat around their parents because the plentiful food is part of their nuclear-family culture and then works backwards into that family's cultural heritage (in the old country your great great grandmother would always make a feast on the holidays!). And I know a lot of people who are in the first generation of that prosperity and when they have kids they are adamant that their kids are going to have 3 meals a day and anything they want from the grocery store.
When kids are given this opportunity to indulge and also to take pride in their family's prosperity, they're unlearning their body's natural ability to sense and reconcile fullness. Which means some of them can't manage their appetites or account for appropriate portion sizes in the future, either.
Edit: I meant to mention I think this has also shaped modern western culture's sense of zaftig. Older, more conservative cultures that were slower to adopt highly processed foods and dispense with communal family meals have a different and more traditional sense of what is an appropriate amount of weight to be attractive in a woman. Whereas other western cultures have varied positive views of a woman's weight that may include "thick or "curvy" or "husky" or "BBW."
Just like folks have mentioned in the other thread here, this unlearning happens on campuses with food plans that are really designed to be predatory -- top up your freshman's meal plan with what you can afford and if they can't reconcile that amount across X weeks of the semester/year, then they have to put more money into the system. Otherwise what are they going to do? Starve? So the parents get milked and the students get unhealthy experiences handling money and managing portion sizes.
I had started a reply and 3 cheers ate it when I had to switch apps so this may be shorter but I wanted to push back on the "predatory" aspect of meal plans. At my institution, on-campus students...
I had started a reply and 3 cheers ate it when I had to switch apps so this may be shorter but I wanted to push back on the "predatory" aspect of meal plans. At my institution, on-campus students have to buy weekly meal plans, X meals per week (including an unlimited option) so they can't run out of meals. Off campus/apartment students can choose to buy block meal plans (X meals per semester), or no meal plans. But no one wants anyone to run out swipes. Flex dollars can run out, those are spent at fast food or vending machines on campus, and if anything is kind of a scam it's those, but they're what students want. As is the large variety of food, as are the long hours, as is the "swipe for your meal not for what you eat."
And that's genuinely expensive to run and staff for 10-14 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our dining department is self funded, so they don't get external funds. Every wage, every food item, every cleaning product, all the equipment etc. all comes out of that budget. (As does paying the campus maintenance staff when they're called to assist). As do the dieticians and specialists that help manage our students with particular dietary needs.
I've eaten in a dining center regularly (5x a week ish) for almost 8 years and while it's easy to overeat, it's also easy to get tired of it. The food ranges from OK to good on average ( breakfast is A+, salad bar and baked potato bars are sold Bs, Indian food was a C-, Pizza is a C. Brussel Sprouts were a B- and just needed to be crisped up IMO) but there are absolutely tons of healthy choices.
College students don't have the experience of self managing their diet though, especially coming through puberty and the ravenous hunger so many folks get during that time period plus shifting activity levels from those who play high school sports but not college sports, plus heavy drinking, plus late nights and snack foods. I don't really think dining is to blame. I also know not every dining department is well run, but I think that describing them generally as predatory is inaccurate.
I get there's some nuance to the food plans. That was not my situation and still seems not to be at some campuses. It's all flex money. Or it's X meal plans per semester, but you can only get...
I get there's some nuance to the food plans. That was not my situation and still seems not to be at some campuses. It's all flex money. Or it's X meal plans per semester, but you can only get access to 3 meals a day if your class schedule allows for it, which contributes to over-eating and then skipping meals so you can make it to class on time or buying that third meal and hoping you can eat it at some other point in your day -- such as right before you go to sleep or while driving to class or while cramming for that pop-quiz your professor said they wouldn't do on Friday.
I'm glad that your campus has objectively good food (taste quality and nutrition). Not all campuses have meal plans that make sense or feel accessible. I mean some of this meal plan shit reads like "37 easy steps to filing your taxes." In the case of Sodexo, they are still pushing meal plans that don't add up to 100%, which forces you into spending real money on "flex points" because if you don't, your 175 meals per semester doesn't even net you 2 meals per day for people living on campus.
That was my personal experience with Sodexo-run campus services (who only hired students as food service workers) and that was many years ago. They seem to still be doing it. Also the mandatory meal plans aren't refundable. Texas Tech is the same way. If you don't spend all the money on the plan, Sodexo or the university keeps it. That's a scam. And these prices per semester are objectively predatory. No one possibly needs to spend $3k/semester on food (and coffee, since that's become an essential for many) -- that's $33 per day over a 90-day semester (and that's a generously long and optimistic semester because we know that students are often forced off campus during breaks, which means no access to that meal plan money).
I don't like privatized meal options, but 2500 a semester gets you unlimited meal swipes 7 days a week at my campus so we're definitely in a better situation. But they're not refundable, and are...
I don't like privatized meal options, but 2500 a semester gets you unlimited meal swipes 7 days a week at my campus so we're definitely in a better situation. But they're not refundable, and are mandatory if you live in a residence hall (since you don't have kitchen access). If you leave the school year with flex left, you don't get the money back but the meals renew each week. Sodexo has only students cooking as well as serving?
But it sounds like what you're describing sets people up for an odd scarcity and not using all their meals, which is a whole different pivot. I work with food insecure students but we do things like provide a few free swipes to students in need and then work for longer term solutions.
The best numbers I can find suggest it's about half of campuses that privatize their dining, so that does mean it's about half that don't. On behalf of one that doesn't (large public institution) we're not all bad.
I am having trouble trying to parse what you mean here: In particular, I'm not sure what you mean by "more traditional sense of what is an appropriate amount of weight". Would you mind elaborating?
I am having trouble trying to parse what you mean here:
I meant to mention I think this has also shaped modern western culture's sense of zaftig. Older, more conservative cultures that were slower to adopt highly processed foods and dispense with communal family meals have a different and more traditional sense of what is an appropriate amount of weight to be attractive in a woman. Whereas other western cultures have varied positive views of a woman's weight that may include "thick or "curvy" or "husky" or "BBW."
In particular, I'm not sure what you mean by "more traditional sense of what is an appropriate amount of weight". Would you mind elaborating?
I'm not experienced in framing this to the standards I would like to hold myself to, so as an example: I know some Swiss and Germans who feel they fit into the zaftig perception of cultural...
I'm not experienced in framing this to the standards I would like to hold myself to, so as an example: I know some Swiss and Germans who feel they fit into the zaftig perception of cultural beauty, but not "American" or "western European" or whatever their point of comparison is. These women are, in my view, not unattractive, but they view themselves as being more attractive than what might be considered attractive in the mainstream (i.e. the figure of a traditional fashion model).
Western cultures are doing better about being inclusive of models of other body types. But there are different cultural norms, too. I think OP was talking about just two extremes, but I wanted to point out that zaftig still persists as a concept in some cultures. Certainly in the west we have the "I want to grow up to be fat and happy" saying as well, so that is a carry-over from Old World cultures.
This article felt weird to me, it just has oriental mysticism vibes. I'd note that Japan, despite it's very low obesity, has one of the highest rates of type 2 diabetes in the developed world....
This article felt weird to me, it just has oriental mysticism vibes. I'd note that Japan, despite it's very low obesity, has one of the highest rates of type 2 diabetes in the developed world.
Traditional Japanese food is healthy - and really, that's true of almost everywhere. Food the common people ate were low in processed foods, rich in protein, and full of whole grains; that's because the opposite is, y'know, expensive.
Many Japanese people do not sit down to eat full Japanese meals every day, they grab ultra processed, sugar filled pre-packaged food from a cobini and eat it at their desk. The main difference is the portion size; they're just going to eat one tuna mayo sandwich. Again, high rates of type II diabetes.
Equally to do with their low obesity is that you will be ruthlessly mocked if you are fat. And by fat, I mean if you weight over 130 lbs as a girl and over 160 lbs as a guy. Forget your peers, the government will make fun of you. If you eat a lot, people will comment on it. Nothing like social anxiety to control portion sizes.
Diet culture is HUGE in all of east asia. Everyone is always on this or that fad diet, to go from 120 lbs to 115 lbs. Being hyper-conscious of weight, combined with a brutal work schedule that makes it easy to skip meals, helps. Even then, the average weight in Japan has been increasing over the years.
Yeah this was in line with my vibe on the article. There are definitely things that we could learn from Japanese culture around school lunches for example, but the last thing I want is my employer...
Yeah this was in line with my vibe on the article. There are definitely things that we could learn from Japanese culture around school lunches for example, but the last thing I want is my employer talking about my body on the regular, even in a "trying to help" way. Maybe especially in a "trying to help" way.
People living in Japan on average also move a lot more. Even many sedentary office workers walk or bike more in a day than some of their American counterparts do in a week. This was very apparent...
People living in Japan on average also move a lot more. Even many sedentary office workers walk or bike more in a day than some of their American counterparts do in a week.
This was very apparent during my time at a university in Tokyo. Nearly all the American students I knew lost significant amounts of weight within the first month following arrival, even those who didn’t obviously have a lot of weight to lose, because the amount of walking they were doing was suddenly many times what it had been in the US.
I remember a lot of walking when I was living on-campus as a student, so I'm wondering if it's even more than that? (There was still commonly a "freshman 15," though, so I think diet matters too.)
I remember a lot of walking when I was living on-campus as a student, so I'm wondering if it's even more than that?
(There was still commonly a "freshman 15," though, so I think diet matters too.)
At my school everyone was required to live on campus their first year and purchase a meal plan, which was all-you-can-eat. With no cooking facilities and a literal buffet for every meal, the...
At my school everyone was required to live on campus their first year and purchase a meal plan, which was all-you-can-eat. With no cooking facilities and a literal buffet for every meal, the "freshman fifteen" was almost inevitable, with many people visibly gaining weight. Some of my friends lost weight after moving off-campus, but some of them didn't. I feel like these policies were a huge disservice to the student population, but it also seems culturally normalized for any US institution to have policies that ignore negative effects on public health.
Certainly possible that things like sugars and fillers being less ubiquitous makes a difference, though the degree of that is uncertain with the quantity of rice and noodles (both carb-heavy and...
Certainly possible that things like sugars and fillers being less ubiquitous makes a difference, though the degree of that is uncertain with the quantity of rice and noodles (both carb-heavy and thus sugar-heavy) consumed if eating locally.
I don’t have any experience in US campuses to compare, but my hunch is that students in Japan still walk/bike more than students in the US by virtue of more being accessible. It’s not just the areas surrounding campus and dorms, but the whole of Tokyo that’s at one’s fingertips even without a car (and thanks to extensive rail, all of the rest of the country’s metros).
The diabetes info brings up what I think is very strange about the whole semaglutide craze: Ozempic is a medication created to control blood sugar. Whether or not a population of people are obese,...
The diabetes info brings up what I think is very strange about the whole semaglutide craze: Ozempic is a medication created to control blood sugar. Whether or not a population of people are obese, you'd think they would want it to treat diabetes.
If you look up how semaglutide works, you'll often find one explanation for diabetes and a different one for weight loss. This has improved in the last year or so, GLP-1 is usually listed in both explanations now instead of solely for diabetes. There isn't some kind of switch you can flip to make it work one way for one diagnosis and a different way for another, whatever it's doing it's doing to everyone who takes it.
So, rather than simply making you want to eat less, anti-obesity medications and Ozempic — like metabolic and bariatric surgery (“weight loss surgery”) — change the very functioning of your body in order to help you lose weight and keep it off ...
The general public seems to believe that Ozempic is an appetite suppressant, full stop. I presume this is because of the celebrity endorsement thing, but I don't really follow that. This brings obesity back around to being a moral/self control failing which can be blamed on the victim. If all it takes is eating less, why don't you just do that?
Ozempic is an appetite suppressant, it just does so in a very different way from others, so it's not just an appetite suppressant. I'd agree that the term doesn't really describe what it does, but...
Ozempic is an appetite suppressant, it just does so in a very different way from others, so it's not just an appetite suppressant. I'd agree that the term doesn't really describe what it does, but that's the aspect that society cares the most about so that is what it is seen as. But it seems like you are completely ignoring the appetite part of the equation entirely.
I am obese and have managed to lose a huge portion of my overall weight since the beginning of last year without the use of a medical intervention; it's all diet. Do you want to know what that looks like? I can't eat oils or butters. I can't eat sugar. I can't eat white flour or rice. I can't have meat or dairy. I can't have alcohol. Packaged foods and restaurants usually can't fully accomodate all of that, so I'm a burden on my social group. To be completely fair, that's not super sustainable in this society, so I have to be flexable, but it's a big hindrance on my life.
The reason why I need to take such a drastic diet is because it's extremely difficult for me to ever feel satisfied with my food. Earlier someone mentioned eating a single egg salad sandwich for lunch. I can barely comprehend that. For me, that might not even be enough to make a snack. The reason why my diet is so strict is because it has extremely low calorie density so I can fill up without consuming excessive amounts. And the thing is, it's still not enough; I need to make sure to balance what I eat because if I don't eat a reasonable amount of fat my stomach can be full but I still, somehow, feel hungry! Do you know what it's like to be constantly hungry? It's not a good thing. It effects every part of your life.
And you know the craziest thing? Hunger isn't even the only problem. There are countless cultural and social issues that contribute to it. Obesity has an endless number of contributing factors, like the types of foods we eat, to the additives and ways that food is processed, and more than I could possibly list.
So no, obesity is not a moral failure by any stretch of the imagination.
I'm completely aware. I left out appetite because I have had hypoglycemia along with the inability to feel either hungry or full. I went on the kind of drastic diet you are talking about. I was...
I'm completely aware. I left out appetite because I have had hypoglycemia along with the inability to feel either hungry or full. I went on the kind of drastic diet you are talking about. I was counting calories, using a total appropriate to my size and authorized by my doctor. I was eating whole foods and had already done an elimination diet. I cut out sugar except for some fruit once a week or so. I was exercising. I was desperate and practically turned this into my whole life for over a year. I finally gave up because I was slowly gaining weight instead of losing it.
When I bring this up I'm usually brushed off as an edge case. The thing is, my doctor treats many patients with these issues. They're hormonal problems which could theoretically be fixed through lifestyle changes, but that doesn't always seem to work in real life.
You can step this back many times to causes, but we don't know the base cause. We know that hormones trigger hunger, fullness, and whether or not the body is inclined to drop weight or if it's holding onto it because it thinks there's a food shortage.
If a piece of the metabolic cycle is out of balance, everything else is thrown off in overcompensation. That's one reason why some things work for some people and not for others; which hormones are high or low change everything from how much you want to eat all the way to whether or not your weight set point will move in the direction you want.
I remember an article a long time ago about the long lifespan of folks in Okinawa, which I unfortunately can't find now. That article was about overall health and quality of life rather than...
I remember an article a long time ago about the long lifespan of folks in Okinawa, which I unfortunately can't find now. That article was about overall health and quality of life rather than focused on weight alone. It's really stuck in my memory.
The conclusions drawn were based on lifestyle comparisons with the rest of the developed world.
People move more. They bike or walk every day.
Lots of vegetables with every meal.
Fish, not red meat.
A strong social web. Not just family, extensive friend circles.
The eating until you're 80% full thing mentioned in the linked article.
Presumably they also had a lack of fast food. Didn't obesity go up in Japan after Western food became fashionable?
I'd really like to see this looked at while comparing lifestyle in several countries at both the top and the bottom of the lifespan numbers.
I hate that nitpick, but if you order the meal described in the article at a restaurant in Japan, it’ll literally come with lemon and soy sauce, with grated radish serving as an herb. Preparing...
explained, this was an illustration of one of the crucial principles of Japanese cooking. Western cooking, he said, is primarily about “adding.” To make food tasty, you add butter, lemon, herbs, sauces, all sorts of chemicals. “But the Japanese style is totally the opposite.” It’s “a minus cuisine.” It is about drawing out the innate flavor, “not to add anything extra,” he said. The whole point is to try “to make as much as possible of the ingredients’ natural taste.” To Japanese cooks, less is more.
I hate that nitpick, but if you order the meal described in the article at a restaurant in Japan, it’ll literally come with lemon and soy sauce, with grated radish serving as an herb. Preparing this dish with a miso sauce is also common. I do think there is something there to the idea that Japanese cuisine has a less is more approach, but this is a bizarre example.
I think any article about obesity that doesn’t dig deep into poverty is missing the forest through the trees. Yes middle class people struggle with their weight, but not nearly as much as the terminally stressed, overworked underclass trapped in food deserts. So how much of Japan’s success is really about how they address their poorest citizens? In this regard, I think the point about how nutrition is addressed in school in the article was very interesting.
I also thought there was a subtle point of “Japan’s food culture was created by fascists who wanted strong soldiers”, which is uncomfortable but interesting. Western countries are pushing up against this, as I see a lot of backlash to health initiatives (nanny state, Biden will make us eat bugs, the food pyramid was a handout to big ag, etc). The role of government in fighting obesity is quite interesting here.
This is a very good article. I think that one of the biggest problems with epidemiological obesity is that people don't seem to recognize it as a cultural problem. You can find slivers of it in every stage of a person's life. We theoretically teach our young about nutrition, but it is so far divorced from reality as to be useless, teaching people about things like carbs and protein. They don't build a food culture and in the vacuum corporations have inserted their unhealthy processed foods, which they have done for so long that they have become a staple even among elders. They tell you to have sugars and fats in moderation, but rarely do you hear what that actually means. And here in the US, we overproduce milk and corn to such incredible extents that it is difficult to find a processed food item without them in one form or another; we are marked by foods stuffed with cheese, butter, and high fructose corn syrup.
Probably the biggest social problem is our relationship to fat. Even with nearly half of the population overweight, we deride fat people. We pretend that being fat is a moral failure in our cultural dogma. The author says that if people had to inform their workplace that they would be in arms because their employers had no need to know that information, but the truth of the matter is that the reason they would be upset is because to do so would open them up to derision and mental anguish. A "western" version of Japan's metabo law would not work because it would not address the social sickness.
If you think that’s the worst part of our food culture, you’d hate Japan. It’s that times 100. Not only the level of derision much higher, but it’s way more open. People will openly ask if you’ve been gaining weight if your BMI is above a 19. The first thing your family will say if you have even a hint of pudge is that you’ve been letting yourself go. People will brag about the bizarre contorted diets they’re on to lose 5 lbs when they were 120 lbs to begin with.
Japan isn't perfect. Calorie-dense processed foods are becoming more and more common there. They may goad you about your weight, but they tend to be a lot better at actually supporting people who are trying to lose weight. Beyond that, healthier options are ubiquitous, and will often be eaten regardless of if a person is trying to lose weight or not, they have a society that is built upon staying on their feet, and they have normalized doing exercise. As a society they value health much more than Westerners do.
I don't disagree that they value health much more, but it's not in this "supportive" way. I'm not Japanese, but I spent a lot of my childhood in Taiwan, which is about as close to Japan as you can get in East Asia due to both the colonial period and how close the countries got after Hokkien/Hakla political influence began to outstrip the KMT.
The main difference is that fatness being associated with deprave hedonism is just accepted. There's no recognition of anything else. That's why things like your workplace being concerned about your weight is OK - being overweight is just bad, so there is nothing wrong with being shamed anywhere anytime about it until you get better.
To some extent healthier options are more available, but equally as many people consume half of their diet from 7-11. It's just about portion sizes. You will be made fun of if you eat like a quarter of an American's average portion.
Undoubtedly the culture around weight, namely that being fat is the polar opposite of being a healthy, attractive person, contributes much to their statistics, but from a western perspective, it may not be something that you'd want to import wholesale.
Oh absolutely, I don't think that it should be imported wholesale. That's not even a realistic possibility. But the goal in comparison is not to become them, but to use them as a way to reflect on ourselves and see what our problems are and have ideas on how to fix them.
Is this a general Asian thing? Most Asian women I know eventually say something crazy about how they're getting fat while clearly they are at the lighter end of the healthy range of body fat percentage.
Yes, at least east asia. It varies by country, though. That being said, if you're any kind of AB(C,T,J,K), you'll probably be made fun of for your weight if you ever visit family, simply due to different norms.
Men have more leeway than women. But only like, up to a BMI of ~24. It's basically like being a smoker - having a 24 BMI, yeah, it's a little indulgent, but men will be men - kind of attitude.
Another thing is that there isn't really a gym culture, so in order to have the same body "shape", you need to be a LOT thinner than if you had more muscle. That's for men - women aren't allowed to be muscular really, so it doesn't matter.
Obviously for all of that there are exceptions.
One last thing is that as you get older, the less any of that matters, because you're no longer expected to be beautiful.
Not exactly an Asian thing per se. I remember an episode of That's So Raven where Raven tries to be a size 2 because that's what society expected from her. This is just one example of the many other examples of American TV shows and movies depicting the rabid doctrine of weight and beauty standards. It's just that America and the West in general have become way more understanding than Asia. Nonetheless, older women in Asia are not really pressured to adhere to this weight beauty standard. That's why a lot of Asian "aunties" are depicted as pear shaped and almost everyone is ok with that.
Yeah I understand that. It just seems like it must be particularly bad in China/Japan/Korea.
This part stuck out a bit to me:
It's basically a cultural meme to not like vegetables, which is pushed on children and spreads. I didn't realize how bad it was until moving to the southern midwest; people have absolute trash diets here, tastes that I'd describe as trending juvenile (if I didn't know better that children raised on healthier food don't naturally detest it), and it very definitely shows in the average weight. It was a bit of a shock going back to a coastal city for a visit and noticing that difference.
Increasingly, I think we need to treat sugar purveyors closer to how we treat cigarette companies...but there is vehement resistance to that, as one might expect from a place of addiction. We'd rather normalize obesity than fight it at an epidemiological level.
And broccoli and rice are superior to burgers.
Eh, again, I feel like this is a only half the reality. Rice is one thing - at this point it's probably genetic that asians like rice, although white rice is really probably one of the unhealthiest forms of starch - but it's not like everyone likes all vegetables as a kid. A stereotype is that kids don't like bell peppers - on the other hand, I think a lot of western kids like bell peppers, they're crunchy and slightly sweet. That example feels like cherry-picking somewhat.
But one real difference is that American households imo are much more likely to "give up". If your kid only wants to eat chicken nuggets, then get some chicken nuggets. When I was raised, it was much more of a "deal with it" attitude, which I think is typical of asian households. If I didn't want to eat what was on the dinner table? Then have fun being hungry tonight. You'll live. Asian kids in asia aren't some perfect angels that only love healthy food. McDonalds exists. Kids love it. They just aren't allowed to eat it.
I think that's a difference. There's a real culture of "you have to eat". I see this especially with breakfast - oh no, how can you send jimmy to school without breakfast? Why not? Do you think the hunter-gatherer ancestors just keeled over and died if they didn't eat 3 square meals a day? A kid will be more than fine if they don't eat a single meal.
Oh, and I also think american households are more likely to suck at cooking. I really doubt those Japanese kids were eating rice, with unseasoned steamed broccoli. At worse it was poached in water and flavored with soy sauce and sesame oil.
This seems to vary a lot in America. In parts of the South, I've known families that always serve miscellaneous canned vegetables (sometimes even homecanned!), and if you don't eat them it's downright offensive. At least amongst some of the older people I've met, it's actually a holdover from the Great Depression where their parents raised them to value every bit of food they could get. Of course, this can lead to overeating because it's rude not to finish everything on the plate.
The crazy thing is that these giant food corporations literally pull their playbooks from the tobacco industry. Several of them were literally owned by them for a period of time, before they decided to divest.
I agree with the points you make here and just want to touch on something related. There's a cultural change that emerges in many people of all different ethnic and cultural backgrounds when they start to achieve a level of prosperity. And it's not even a particularly high level of prosperity. It's simply that having more food is better and being able to feed your children more food at a meal (and they better finish everything on their plate!) symbolizes the achievement of that ability to provide for one's family fully.
This creates part of a feedback loop based around food consumption. People over-eat around their parents because the plentiful food is part of their nuclear-family culture and then works backwards into that family's cultural heritage (in the old country your great great grandmother would always make a feast on the holidays!). And I know a lot of people who are in the first generation of that prosperity and when they have kids they are adamant that their kids are going to have 3 meals a day and anything they want from the grocery store.
When kids are given this opportunity to indulge and also to take pride in their family's prosperity, they're unlearning their body's natural ability to sense and reconcile fullness. Which means some of them can't manage their appetites or account for appropriate portion sizes in the future, either.
Edit: I meant to mention I think this has also shaped modern western culture's sense of zaftig. Older, more conservative cultures that were slower to adopt highly processed foods and dispense with communal family meals have a different and more traditional sense of what is an appropriate amount of weight to be attractive in a woman. Whereas other western cultures have varied positive views of a woman's weight that may include "thick or "curvy" or "husky" or "BBW."
Just like folks have mentioned in the other thread here, this unlearning happens on campuses with food plans that are really designed to be predatory -- top up your freshman's meal plan with what you can afford and if they can't reconcile that amount across X weeks of the semester/year, then they have to put more money into the system. Otherwise what are they going to do? Starve? So the parents get milked and the students get unhealthy experiences handling money and managing portion sizes.
I had started a reply and 3 cheers ate it when I had to switch apps so this may be shorter but I wanted to push back on the "predatory" aspect of meal plans. At my institution, on-campus students have to buy weekly meal plans, X meals per week (including an unlimited option) so they can't run out of meals. Off campus/apartment students can choose to buy block meal plans (X meals per semester), or no meal plans. But no one wants anyone to run out swipes. Flex dollars can run out, those are spent at fast food or vending machines on campus, and if anything is kind of a scam it's those, but they're what students want. As is the large variety of food, as are the long hours, as is the "swipe for your meal not for what you eat."
And that's genuinely expensive to run and staff for 10-14 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our dining department is self funded, so they don't get external funds. Every wage, every food item, every cleaning product, all the equipment etc. all comes out of that budget. (As does paying the campus maintenance staff when they're called to assist). As do the dieticians and specialists that help manage our students with particular dietary needs.
I've eaten in a dining center regularly (5x a week ish) for almost 8 years and while it's easy to overeat, it's also easy to get tired of it. The food ranges from OK to good on average ( breakfast is A+, salad bar and baked potato bars are sold Bs, Indian food was a C-, Pizza is a C. Brussel Sprouts were a B- and just needed to be crisped up IMO) but there are absolutely tons of healthy choices.
College students don't have the experience of self managing their diet though, especially coming through puberty and the ravenous hunger so many folks get during that time period plus shifting activity levels from those who play high school sports but not college sports, plus heavy drinking, plus late nights and snack foods. I don't really think dining is to blame. I also know not every dining department is well run, but I think that describing them generally as predatory is inaccurate.
I get there's some nuance to the food plans. That was not my situation and still seems not to be at some campuses. It's all flex money. Or it's X meal plans per semester, but you can only get access to 3 meals a day if your class schedule allows for it, which contributes to over-eating and then skipping meals so you can make it to class on time or buying that third meal and hoping you can eat it at some other point in your day -- such as right before you go to sleep or while driving to class or while cramming for that pop-quiz your professor said they wouldn't do on Friday.
I'm glad that your campus has objectively good food (taste quality and nutrition). Not all campuses have meal plans that make sense or feel accessible. I mean some of this meal plan shit reads like "37 easy steps to filing your taxes." In the case of Sodexo, they are still pushing meal plans that don't add up to 100%, which forces you into spending real money on "flex points" because if you don't, your 175 meals per semester doesn't even net you 2 meals per day for people living on campus.
That was my personal experience with Sodexo-run campus services (who only hired students as food service workers) and that was many years ago. They seem to still be doing it. Also the mandatory meal plans aren't refundable. Texas Tech is the same way. If you don't spend all the money on the plan, Sodexo or the university keeps it. That's a scam. And these prices per semester are objectively predatory. No one possibly needs to spend $3k/semester on food (and coffee, since that's become an essential for many) -- that's $33 per day over a 90-day semester (and that's a generously long and optimistic semester because we know that students are often forced off campus during breaks, which means no access to that meal plan money).
I don't like privatized meal options, but 2500 a semester gets you unlimited meal swipes 7 days a week at my campus so we're definitely in a better situation. But they're not refundable, and are mandatory if you live in a residence hall (since you don't have kitchen access). If you leave the school year with flex left, you don't get the money back but the meals renew each week. Sodexo has only students cooking as well as serving?
But it sounds like what you're describing sets people up for an odd scarcity and not using all their meals, which is a whole different pivot. I work with food insecure students but we do things like provide a few free swipes to students in need and then work for longer term solutions.
The best numbers I can find suggest it's about half of campuses that privatize their dining, so that does mean it's about half that don't. On behalf of one that doesn't (large public institution) we're not all bad.
I am having trouble trying to parse what you mean here:
In particular, I'm not sure what you mean by "more traditional sense of what is an appropriate amount of weight". Would you mind elaborating?
I'm not experienced in framing this to the standards I would like to hold myself to, so as an example: I know some Swiss and Germans who feel they fit into the zaftig perception of cultural beauty, but not "American" or "western European" or whatever their point of comparison is. These women are, in my view, not unattractive, but they view themselves as being more attractive than what might be considered attractive in the mainstream (i.e. the figure of a traditional fashion model).
Western cultures are doing better about being inclusive of models of other body types. But there are different cultural norms, too. I think OP was talking about just two extremes, but I wanted to point out that zaftig still persists as a concept in some cultures. Certainly in the west we have the "I want to grow up to be fat and happy" saying as well, so that is a carry-over from Old World cultures.
This article felt weird to me, it just has oriental mysticism vibes. I'd note that Japan, despite it's very low obesity, has one of the highest rates of type 2 diabetes in the developed world.
Traditional Japanese food is healthy - and really, that's true of almost everywhere. Food the common people ate were low in processed foods, rich in protein, and full of whole grains; that's because the opposite is, y'know, expensive.
Many Japanese people do not sit down to eat full Japanese meals every day, they grab ultra processed, sugar filled pre-packaged food from a cobini and eat it at their desk. The main difference is the portion size; they're just going to eat one tuna mayo sandwich. Again, high rates of type II diabetes.
Equally to do with their low obesity is that you will be ruthlessly mocked if you are fat. And by fat, I mean if you weight over 130 lbs as a girl and over 160 lbs as a guy. Forget your peers, the government will make fun of you. If you eat a lot, people will comment on it. Nothing like social anxiety to control portion sizes.
Diet culture is HUGE in all of east asia. Everyone is always on this or that fad diet, to go from 120 lbs to 115 lbs. Being hyper-conscious of weight, combined with a brutal work schedule that makes it easy to skip meals, helps. Even then, the average weight in Japan has been increasing over the years.
Yeah this was in line with my vibe on the article. There are definitely things that we could learn from Japanese culture around school lunches for example, but the last thing I want is my employer talking about my body on the regular, even in a "trying to help" way. Maybe especially in a "trying to help" way.
People living in Japan on average also move a lot more. Even many sedentary office workers walk or bike more in a day than some of their American counterparts do in a week.
This was very apparent during my time at a university in Tokyo. Nearly all the American students I knew lost significant amounts of weight within the first month following arrival, even those who didn’t obviously have a lot of weight to lose, because the amount of walking they were doing was suddenly many times what it had been in the US.
I remember a lot of walking when I was living on-campus as a student, so I'm wondering if it's even more than that?
(There was still commonly a "freshman 15," though, so I think diet matters too.)
At my school everyone was required to live on campus their first year and purchase a meal plan, which was all-you-can-eat. With no cooking facilities and a literal buffet for every meal, the "freshman fifteen" was almost inevitable, with many people visibly gaining weight. Some of my friends lost weight after moving off-campus, but some of them didn't. I feel like these policies were a huge disservice to the student population, but it also seems culturally normalized for any US institution to have policies that ignore negative effects on public health.
Certainly possible that things like sugars and fillers being less ubiquitous makes a difference, though the degree of that is uncertain with the quantity of rice and noodles (both carb-heavy and thus sugar-heavy) consumed if eating locally.
I don’t have any experience in US campuses to compare, but my hunch is that students in Japan still walk/bike more than students in the US by virtue of more being accessible. It’s not just the areas surrounding campus and dorms, but the whole of Tokyo that’s at one’s fingertips even without a car (and thanks to extensive rail, all of the rest of the country’s metros).
The diabetes info brings up what I think is very strange about the whole semaglutide craze: Ozempic is a medication created to control blood sugar. Whether or not a population of people are obese, you'd think they would want it to treat diabetes.
If you look up how semaglutide works, you'll often find one explanation for diabetes and a different one for weight loss. This has improved in the last year or so, GLP-1 is usually listed in both explanations now instead of solely for diabetes. There isn't some kind of switch you can flip to make it work one way for one diagnosis and a different way for another, whatever it's doing it's doing to everyone who takes it.
This article gives me hope that this split perspective is changing.
The general public seems to believe that Ozempic is an appetite suppressant, full stop. I presume this is because of the celebrity endorsement thing, but I don't really follow that. This brings obesity back around to being a moral/self control failing which can be blamed on the victim. If all it takes is eating less, why don't you just do that?
Ozempic is an appetite suppressant, it just does so in a very different way from others, so it's not just an appetite suppressant. I'd agree that the term doesn't really describe what it does, but that's the aspect that society cares the most about so that is what it is seen as. But it seems like you are completely ignoring the appetite part of the equation entirely.
I am obese and have managed to lose a huge portion of my overall weight since the beginning of last year without the use of a medical intervention; it's all diet. Do you want to know what that looks like? I can't eat oils or butters. I can't eat sugar. I can't eat white flour or rice. I can't have meat or dairy. I can't have alcohol. Packaged foods and restaurants usually can't fully accomodate all of that, so I'm a burden on my social group. To be completely fair, that's not super sustainable in this society, so I have to be flexable, but it's a big hindrance on my life.
The reason why I need to take such a drastic diet is because it's extremely difficult for me to ever feel satisfied with my food. Earlier someone mentioned eating a single egg salad sandwich for lunch. I can barely comprehend that. For me, that might not even be enough to make a snack. The reason why my diet is so strict is because it has extremely low calorie density so I can fill up without consuming excessive amounts. And the thing is, it's still not enough; I need to make sure to balance what I eat because if I don't eat a reasonable amount of fat my stomach can be full but I still, somehow, feel hungry! Do you know what it's like to be constantly hungry? It's not a good thing. It effects every part of your life.
And you know the craziest thing? Hunger isn't even the only problem. There are countless cultural and social issues that contribute to it. Obesity has an endless number of contributing factors, like the types of foods we eat, to the additives and ways that food is processed, and more than I could possibly list.
So no, obesity is not a moral failure by any stretch of the imagination.
I'm completely aware. I left out appetite because I have had hypoglycemia along with the inability to feel either hungry or full. I went on the kind of drastic diet you are talking about. I was counting calories, using a total appropriate to my size and authorized by my doctor. I was eating whole foods and had already done an elimination diet. I cut out sugar except for some fruit once a week or so. I was exercising. I was desperate and practically turned this into my whole life for over a year. I finally gave up because I was slowly gaining weight instead of losing it.
When I bring this up I'm usually brushed off as an edge case. The thing is, my doctor treats many patients with these issues. They're hormonal problems which could theoretically be fixed through lifestyle changes, but that doesn't always seem to work in real life.
You can step this back many times to causes, but we don't know the base cause. We know that hormones trigger hunger, fullness, and whether or not the body is inclined to drop weight or if it's holding onto it because it thinks there's a food shortage.
If a piece of the metabolic cycle is out of balance, everything else is thrown off in overcompensation. That's one reason why some things work for some people and not for others; which hormones are high or low change everything from how much you want to eat all the way to whether or not your weight set point will move in the direction you want.
I remember an article a long time ago about the long lifespan of folks in Okinawa, which I unfortunately can't find now. That article was about overall health and quality of life rather than focused on weight alone. It's really stuck in my memory.
The conclusions drawn were based on lifestyle comparisons with the rest of the developed world.
Presumably they also had a lack of fast food. Didn't obesity go up in Japan after Western food became fashionable?
I'd really like to see this looked at while comparing lifestyle in several countries at both the top and the bottom of the lifespan numbers.
I hate that nitpick, but if you order the meal described in the article at a restaurant in Japan, it’ll literally come with lemon and soy sauce, with grated radish serving as an herb. Preparing this dish with a miso sauce is also common. I do think there is something there to the idea that Japanese cuisine has a less is more approach, but this is a bizarre example.
I think any article about obesity that doesn’t dig deep into poverty is missing the forest through the trees. Yes middle class people struggle with their weight, but not nearly as much as the terminally stressed, overworked underclass trapped in food deserts. So how much of Japan’s success is really about how they address their poorest citizens? In this regard, I think the point about how nutrition is addressed in school in the article was very interesting.
I also thought there was a subtle point of “Japan’s food culture was created by fascists who wanted strong soldiers”, which is uncomfortable but interesting. Western countries are pushing up against this, as I see a lot of backlash to health initiatives (nanny state, Biden will make us eat bugs, the food pyramid was a handout to big ag, etc). The role of government in fighting obesity is quite interesting here.
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.ph/bjAmi