Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen
by Naomi Moriyama
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Book Summary Information
Author: Naomi MoriyamaEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-12-26
ISBN: 0385339984
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Delta
Book Reviews of Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen
Book Review: Ugggh........not again - read the one star reviews first
Summary: 1 Stars
I lived in Japan for close to 10 years. In Tokyo. Mine is an unscientific observation.
The diet in this book is a stereotypical "Japanese diet", one that most naive Americans and others think the Japanese eat.
I lived with a number of Japanese female roommates. The way they eat in public (picky and delicate) is nothing like the way they eat at home (they could get in a contest with a vacuum cleaner and win). I saw three of them down a large bag of cookies in 3 minutes flat. It was gone by the time I got back from the bathroom.
Japanese women are very cognizant of the way they are seen in public, and will also go to extremes to lose weight and stay underweight. I used to think that the popularity of Comtrex, a type of milky looking mineral water from France, was due to health concerns. I found out that young Japanese women take it because it has laxative qualities. Other popular diet aids have been "nata de coco", a colorless, calorie-free jelly made from coconuts, and water pills. The water pill thing got so out of control that at some point there was an epidemic of gout among young Japanese females, and pharmacies quit selling these pills to them.
As for green tea as a diet aid - funny thing, the Japanese don't drink THAT much green tea (except at the office) and not one of them ever told me it was a diet aid. I was told very often by the Japanese, however, that oolong tea was the secret to weight loss. Oolong is a popular diet aid in Japan. Green tea went for a long time unmentioned.
Beer should be listed as a major food group in the standard Japanese diet, considering the level of consumption. Popular dishes are "curry rice" - a football sized pile of rice with curry sauce and little bits of meat; ramen - which is usually high fat and loaded with msg; "pizza toast" - a very thick slice of white bread with pizza sauce and some veggies; "Tonkatsu" or "chicken katsu" - deep fried and breaded (with panko) pork or chicken cutlet; "hamburger steak"; spaghetti; and certainly the ubiquitous white rice three times a day. I was told by some school children there that the brown rice I preferred to eat was "for cattle".
A major cause of house fires in Japan is the well-used deep fat fryer, a standard article in most kitchens. This is used to deep fry shrimp, "croquettes", oysters, tonkatsu and tempura, among other items.
The Japanese diet changed with modernization and exposure to western culture, but not always in a bad way. Around the late 1800's to early 1900's, the average Japanese lived on little but rice and some pickled vegetables, and perhaps some fish if it could be gotten. Consequently, the life span was apparently not any better than the rest of the world - I once read an old Japanese fairy tale with a picture of two "elderly" people with long flowing white hair, and they were supposed to be in their 40's, according to the story.
Since the Japanese contact with the west, the amount of protein in the diet has gradually increased. This was in part due to agricultural reforms imposed by the US. The increase in protein in the diet over the years has not only lengthened the lifespan of the Japanese, but has made more than a few of the younger people much taller than their elders. So a slightly westernized diet has not been an entirely bad thing.
The main difference in the Japanese diet (as well as the Chinese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese) compared to the American is the absence of the huge amounts of sugar that Americans consume. This really is the secret. Most Asian sweets, no matter if they are traditional or commercially made candy or cookies, have a low sugar content compared to their American counterparts. Asians in general do not have a sweet tooth. Often, they cannot stand the super sweet foods that Americans consume, and therein lies the main difference.
Many in Japan, once they reach middle age, suffer from "middle age spread", the women in particular can start looking square or "chunky". There was a Japanese comic strip called "Obatarian" (rough translation: Aunt-Zillah) which lampooned this type of Japanese middle aged woman. This may simply be due to increasing insulin resistance because of age. Beer drinking and an over consumption of carbohydrates doesn't help much here.
The concentration of super-elderly people in Japan tends to center in Okinawa, which has a somewhat different diet - bitter melon being a part of it. Bitter melon keeps blood sugar levels steady, which adds to the longevity factor. The small village in central Japan that had a great deal of active elderly was noted to be a place where people consumed vegetables (grown fresh in their gardens) and did not consume much or any rice.
If you are a major consumer of fast food and have a sugar jones, any diet that emphasizes low sugar, lean protein and fresh vegetables will probably be a major improvement and you will no doubt see an improvement in your health from the change.
This book, however, is riding on the coat tails of the French Women Don't Get Fat diet, which is nothing but another low sugar, low cal option based on more myth.
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