If you ask people all around the world, they would say that Japanese people are one of the people which eats healthiest in the world. Which might be true, considering that their food contains a lot of fish and soy products.
Tofu with soy sauce |
However, I have lived in Japan for a while, and I have seen these skinny girls and men eat a lot of not healthy food. Including cakes, daily trips to MC Donalds and other similar- not healthy food.
Although their food is healthy is does consider some few things which are not that good for your body. They fry a lot of their food, although their oil is said to be healthier than any other parts in the world. They also eat a lot of food like potatoes, rice and food containing salt, which is not very good.
Macarons |
However, they are still very skinny. And although they are this skinny, they consider themselves fat when Americans and Europeans don't consider them fat at all. So if you take a look in the magazines in Japan, you will find that almost every magazine contains articles about loosing weight. So I asked these Japanese girls how many times they had been on a diet.
7 of the 20 girls had been on a diet 3 times. 3 had been on a diet 4 times and one girl 5 times and another one 7 times.
I also asked what kind of diets they had heard about, where they said; water-diet, tofu-diet, morning-banana, don't eat after 6-diet, don't eat rice-diet, don't eat dinner-diet, don't eat breakfast-diet and apple-diet. Only one person mentioned working out and being active as a good diet.
It's very common to find all kind of food and drinks, which have less calories. |
It seems like the men does not want to be big, they want to be skinny. Then again, the girls does not want to be bigger than their men, so they do some drastic dieting to be as skinny as possible, according to my 36-year old Japanese friend.
Sweets Paradise- Eat as much as you want. |
Also, my friends sisters child calls her mom, which seems skinny to me, fat. Because all the other mothers at school are thinner than her mom, which made my friends sister stop eating breakfast and drinks some kind of shake in the morning instead.
I ask my self, is that a happy life? To always starve yourself to look this skinny? It seems like Japanese people are obsessed with being thin. Yes, they look great- until they take of their clothes- because they lack of muscles (and yes, I have seen Japanese women naked when going to onsen.)
It is very good to think about being healthy as in not being overweight, but does not the meaning of being healthy (when you are skinny) disappear in their unhealthy ways of dieting? My personal opinion is that you should not go on diets unless it's necessary for your health due to overweight. And if you choose to go on a diet, it's not good to stop eating or similar diets like above mentioned.
Since the time I first arrived in Japan I have seen Japanese people as a whole getting larger. While much in Japan is healthy, not everything is. And there are so many fad diets, many of which you mention, and advertisements showing bone-thin girls (and sometimes mothers and daughters who diet together) that are very disturbing. We study about this subject along the lines of body image and ideal bodies in Body/Comm class.
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