Japan has the lowest obesity rate in the world, about 4%, while the United States, which is also a developed country, has a high obesity rate of 32%.
Interestingly, the Japanese do not really love sports very much. [The world’s least sports-loving country], Japan ranks 11th, while the world’s most sports-loving country is the United States…
Why are Japanese the thinnest in the world?
Japan’s diet is light and varied.
Heshi (Japanese diet) has been successfully incorporated into UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage. One of the reasons is that Heshi is nutritionally balanced.
Many seafood: Japan is an island country, rich in fish, shrimp, crab and seaweed are the main parts of the food, the most typical Japanese sushi and sashimi.
Eat more vegetables: Although the price of vegetables in Japan is not low, most Japanese also prefer vegetables, and there are many half-price vegetables sold in supermarkets.
Diversified and less oil: From the style of cutting vegetables to the cooking method, it also took a lot of effort. The commonly used cooking methods include boiling, baking, steaming, blanching, cold mixing, etc., or eating raw directly. Compared with domestic stir-frying, the oil used is much less and the fat is not easy to exceed the standard.
Special frying: Of course, there are also [tempura] such foods as shrimp, octopus, pumpkin, okra, lotus root and other high-temperature fried foods. However, they are very particular, requiring that the noodles should be thin enough to be no thinner. The fried tempura will absorb the oil on the surface energy through oil-absorbing paper. After a normal meal, there are many kinds of matching and the calories will not be very high.
Light seasoning: greasy and spicy seasonings are used very little, and vinegar, soy sauce and mustard are relatively more. There is a principle in traditional Japanese cuisine that its delicious taste cannot hide the original taste of ingredients.
Less food, lunch, small appetite
Bring your own lunch: Most Japanese have the habit of bringing your own lunch. No matter young people living alone or their parents prepare it for their children to go to school, they will not do it hastily, and the quantity of lunch is really small. Maybe a little rice (or rice ball), plus two small fried chicken nuggets, some vegetables and a few small tomatoes, but they will pay more attention to color matching.
Small dishes: Tradition and food prefer to use very small dishes as containers, and the amount of food is very small. Although there are many kinds of ingredients on a table, it is easy for people to have the illusion that they have eaten a lot when eating, and it is easy to form the habit of eating less.
Eat slowly: Even if they eat snacks, they may be more accustomed to chewing slowly, stuttering sparingly, sharing food with friends, or leaving the rest for tomorrow.
Let’s dig deeper, why do Japanese have such eating habits?
A unique family model
After Japanese get married, the proportion of women becoming full-time housewives is very high. Unlike China, it is very common for Japanese families to have three or four children. Naturally, someone needs to spend more time with housework and children.
Japanese women will spend more energy matching three meals a day for their families.
They pay more attention to eating three meals a day at home, which increases the family atmosphere and exerts a subtle influence on the growth of children.
Pay Attention to Diet Education for All
Schools also play an important role. In Japan’s compulsory education stage, meals are required in schools, either the schools have canteens to make their own meals or entrust catering centers.
The school is staffed by nutritionists who make recipes and also need nutritionists with teacher qualification certificates to set dietary goals.
The so-called [dietary goal] is to use recipes as a teaching material. Schools should teach students the correct matching structure of staple food + main course + side dishes and the nutritional characteristics of different ingredients through eating, so that students can cherish food from an early age and have the ability to choose healthy food.
Japan has to carry out [food education] (food education other than morality, intelligence, physique, art and labor) from a very young child.
How small? It may have been carried out from the mother-child health care period when she was just born to kindergartens, primary schools and secondary schools.
The government calls on all people to lose weight.
Japan is a country with increasingly aging and childlessness. In order to solve the outstanding medical burden, the Japanese government has launched various policies to improve national health, including encouraging the whole population to lose weight.
In order to promote health, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare launched a new physical activity benchmark in 2013, calling on people to [+10 points]:
Through commuting walking time +10 minutes, housework time +10 minutes, shopping time +10 minutes and other ways, increase the number of steps to prevent living habit diseases.
In response to the government’s call, some enterprises have also drawn up employee health plans and linked health, weight and rewards.
Living habits are affected by the environment.
Japan has a low obesity rate, which is true. However, there are some regional differences, which are very interesting.
1. Obesity rates are high in areas with convenient transportation.
Taxi fares in Japan are very expensive, so many people choose to travel by bike or tram.
However, Nagasaki County, which has the highest male obesity rate, has free elevators everywhere because 80% of the roads are sloping roads and everyone can use them. Taxi or bus spending is among the highest in Japan.
Moreover, Nagasaki people like sweets and it is difficult to think about being fat.
2. The diet is European and American, and the obesity rate is not low.
For example, Okinawa Prefecture, although it has a long history of Okinawa cuisine, with the development of the war, its eating habits have gradually become European and American, and its intake of oil is on the high side, resulting in a high obesity rate among Okinawa women.
3. Fast-paced and stressful life
Another example is Tokyo, where people’s pace of life is much faster, the pressure is much greater, and their living habits are not so traditional and healthy. There are still many fat people who can be seen on the streets.
4. Exotic flowers lose weight, the more they lose, the fatter they become.
Influenced by mainstream popular culture and public opinion, Japanese women are also very keen on [being thin].
There are many exotic products, exotic health products, exotic diet drugs and exotic diet solutions related to weight loss, which have also deeply poisoned many people.
However, we should learn from their good living habits.