Written by Catherine Saxelby
on Wednesday, 13 November 2013.
Tagged: healthy cooking, healthy eating, healthy weight loss, review, weight loss
Sushi, sashimi, tempura, chicken teriyaki, beef yakitori and seafood udon soup. There's lots to love about Japanese food. It's light, fresh and flavoursome. And here's the best reason of all – it's one of the healthiest cuisines to eat in the world. In the midst of a global epidemic of obesity and chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease, the Japanese are doing something right.
In this book, Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat, Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle are keen to reveal their secrets.
The traditional Japanese diet, with its emphasis on vegetables, seafood, soy, clear broth, rice, green tea and seaweed, is a semi-vegetarian diet with less fat, less sugar and more antioxidants than ours. And it's paying dividends for the people who eat it.
Naomi entices us to live the Japanese way of life as she describes her and her family's lifestyles and values. She has spent half her life in Japan and half in the United States. Growing up in Tokyo, her childhood summers were spent at her grandparents' farm, hand picking tangerines (the local specialty) and roaming the green hillsides. It was here that she learned, as every young Japanese child does, all about the traditional Japanese way of eating.
Having completed school in Japan, Naomi gained a scholarship to an American university in Illinois. Separated from any trace of Japanese culture, she was thrown into the American ways of eating and living. And guess what? Within months, she was 10 kilos heavier than when she left Japan. Despite her efforts to go for that extra run each week, the weight would not budge – not until she set foot in Japan again. And the same thing happened years later when she brought her American husband home to Japan.
Naomi Moriyama reveals the secrets of both the Japanese diet and the associated culture that keep the Japanese so slim and youthful. She has cleverly grouped them into two lists – the 7 secrets of the Tokyo kitchen and the 7 key foods of the Japanese diet which she calls the '7 pillars':
Less is more. The Japanese diet contains a low 25 per cent fat, compared with around 34 per cent fat for an average Western diet. In addition, they eat less processed and refined foods, and their diet is lower in sugar and kilojoules than the typical Western diet.
And don't forget that exercise forms a daily part of life – walking, bike riding and gardening.
According to Naomi Moriyama, these 7 foods are what makes the difference:
This is an interesting book which gives you insight into how the Japanese eat. The writing style is friendly, easy to read and full of little anecdotes. Given that the author is an executive for a top advertising agency in New York, her writing skills are considerable and well used.
The book leads you through interesting stories and anecdotes from her childhood and adult years to show the contrast between Japan and the US. Her husband William Doyle is the co-author. It's a fascinating read full of side quotes, interesting little snippets and quotations and is semi-autobiographical in a similar vein to "French Women Don't Get Fat".
This is not your typical diet book that tells you exactly what to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's more about lifestyle and thinking about your food. If you like Japanese food, this is definitely a book to buy and read.
Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat is published by Bantam Doubleday Dell as a paperback 274 pages.
Buy it at the Booktopia here.
This post was researched and written by Catherine Saxelby, an accredited nutritionist, dietitian, author and award-winning food communicator. Catherine's goal is to help busy working women eat well, maintain a healthy weight and boost their energy.
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