The Asian Diet

[misssakura]

I really dig hot vietnamese salads lately. Fresh crunchy vegetables in an exotic leaf base. Yuummm

 

[Ghost]

talking about the asian diet, as you guys said"healthy", come to my country Burma and take a look at the dining table.....Half of the bowl in most of the dishes is oil.

myanmardot.com

Don't think it's watery gravy,,,,it's oil layer

and we love green tea salad with extra spooful of oil

But WE JUST LOVE GREEN TEA...CAN't HELP IT

 

[tlq05]

I'm asian. I eat more meat then that but we do eat quite a bit of fish and wow sweets. I eat insanely alot amount of sweets. Asians also have all types of snacks, and bakery goods. And here in America, we do tend to indulge ourselves all the time. Good food, material items, music.. so its normal we happen to eat more. In asia people tend to just eat less? more balanced I suppose. But you have to keep in mind, we are all built differently. I doubt my diet has anyting to do with my thin shiny hair >.>

I think the Asian Diet Pyramid could be the basis for a very healthy lifestyle. Do people in Asia really eat like that? I think it's more a recommendation how you should be eating. But only six glasses of water?

You seriously drink way more than six glasses a day?!

 

[Zen]

I remember when I was growing up in Korea (lived in a rural farm land) I lived off of rice, noodles, fish, and kimchi. I don't ever recall eating many sweets. I think each individual have different foods availible to them based on where people live. I believe I wouldn't have been as skinny if I was living in the city. Eating more fruits and veggies and sticking with a vegetarian diet does it for me. Oh, and portion control.

 

[cygnenoir]

Interestingly, I was just at the bookstore and saw this:

Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen
by Naomi Moriyama

Has anyone read it? I really only looked at the cover (it's in paperback) but thought it might be of interest.

 

[michyed]

I just HAD to bring back this old, old thread! This is my personal "asian" diet:

1L of sugar-free green tea a day
1L of water (generally in the form of water...)

Breakfast: Vegetable salad (with the japanese dressing which I have no idea what the name is in English) and bread
Lunch: Usually some random Japanese food. I love ramen and japanese-style noodles in general so I eat a lot of that. I love veges too... So a lot of that!
Dinner: Western food! (Sometimes I get a bit too bloated...) I don't think eating a huge meal during dinner actually makes you put on extra weight... I read an article on BBC that suggests eating late won't make you gain weight more easily than eating any other time.

I never drink or smoke and... I don't think my meals are all that different from a western diet. I ought to follow a PROPER asian diet!

 

[loonaka]

I think that this thread should be renamed to the East Asian Diet, at least from the comments I've read.

Skin, weight and health has alot to do with genes..My cousin will never get the same smooth skin as I just because she's Norwegian and I'm made in South-Korea. But I used to have really bad skin from I was 17 to 19 or so, but my skin does not have any scares after acne..and I love picking on my skin..haha.

A Norwegian friend of mine went to Tokyo and she gained so much weight, guess because she loved the food and had too much, so I agree with the portion sizes..and also there are food that everyone know is unhealthy like fast food, too much of the wrong fats, fried food and too much sugar so if you eat from Mc. D every single day your body is not going to be very healthy.

I think the food culture in France is healthier than than at least the Norwegian one, since they don't eat the same amount of potatoes or heavy food..at least when I was a kid ppl used to have huge amounts of potatoes for dinner^^ I love potatoes tho..

 

[loonaka]

Interestingly, I was just at the bookstore and saw this:

Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen
by Naomi Moriyama

Has anyone read it? I really only looked at the cover (it's in paperback) but thought it might be of interest.

I have that book too..but I haven't tried out the diet yet But from what I've heard Asians and Africans age differently than Western ppl anyway..I mean I'm 22 but I look like I'm 12 I once got carded for pain killers

 

[The_Ida]

Skin is definately related in a large part to diet. I don't know what the nordic people eat but they all have gorgeous skin.

Rye bread and herring...

In Scandinavia I think the thing that is important in the food is the quality, everything is very natural and unprocessed (in vegetables, fruits...). In a lot countries those things have gotten a little bit polluted.

I don't think so. You can't get good quality food at the supermarkets here. The veggies are crap, the meat is even worse, and I think it's disgusting to eat the amount of pig meat consumed in Scandinavia. I personally don't ever eat pig.
Plus, there's too many dairy products, sugar and wheat in the Scandinavian diet. I don't eat Danish, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The only good thing we have is rye bread really, except that the rye bread you can get in stores are filled with wheat...you might as well eat white bread.

 

[michyed]

^ That's so shocking! I always thought Scandinavian food would be top quality...

I kind of have to agree with you there though, Danish food is a bit bland... I remember during my time there every day, every meal we had a bunch of bread with some meat, mayo (and other combinations of the fattiest sauces ever) and maybe a salad. It was almost always cold food

 

[loonaka]

the Scandinavian food traditions have a lot to do with the climate..when it's could outside it's good to have a nice layer of body fat^^ haha
I actually like the Norwegian bead the best because it's not white... in loads of other European countries I've been to I've only found white bread which isn't very healthy..but of course they don't eat bread the way we do..haha

 

[loonaka]

I don't know what the nordic people eat but they all have gorgeous skin

ALL of them???

 

[sill]

The veggies where I live are great, they're always fresh and yummie! My family eat a lot of meat (mostly moose since my dad goes hunting) so we don't buy it from the supermarket. We eat vegetables to every dish and we make sure to eat fish at least once a week, we love salmon! Also we grow our own potatoes (at my grandmother's) so we usually don't end up buying a lot of potatoes at the supermarket either.

I think Scandinavian people in general eat more dark bread (with lots of fibres) than, let's say, Americans do. And swedish people usually don't eat 'sweets' for breakfast, like croissants, but something more healthy like bread or porridge. Most people also drink quite a lot of milk

Still, I don't think Scandinavian people are that healthy with amazing skin. There are a few people with good skin, but I guess those are the ones with great genes.

I think 'the asian diet' sounds like a good idea, that is eating lots of fish and vegetables, not drinking alcohol, etc. But I think that's just a good diet, and not perhaps what "every" asian eats..

 

[TommyGirl]

Rye bread and herring...

I don't think so. You can't get good quality food at the supermarkets here. The veggies are crap, the meat is even worse, and I think it's disgusting to eat the amount of pig meat consumed in Scandinavia. I personally don't ever eat pig.
Plus, there's too many dairy products, sugar and wheat in the Scandinavian diet. I don't eat Danish, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The only good thing we have is rye bread really, except that the rye bread you can get in stores are filled with wheat...you might as well eat white bread.

Yeah, I´ve heard food (meat in general) has gone pretty bad in Denmark, nobody here wants to buy christmas ham from Denmark, but there are not enough finnish ones for everyone.

In Finland we still have really good rye bread, I mean there are "rye" bread with lot of wheat, but I always choose the better option. I`ve visited in all nordic countries, except Iceland, and I must say we have the best bread. Oatmeal is very common, it`s actually very popular again.

I think the problem here is americanising, too, too large portions etc. Original Finnish diet is very simple and seasonal, it`s so cold we don`t have domestic veggies, growing outside, all year around. But when we do, oh boy, they taste good. Fish and low fat chased meat (moose,birds, reindeer) belong also in healthy Finnish diet.

But back to the original subject: I love thai-food, unfortunately we have only one thai restaurant where I live Could someone advice me how to make good salad thai-style?

 

[ChloeFrancoise]

Just say no to Americanizing portion sizes. This country is not a good example for portion control. I'm glad I know how to cook and eat at home more often than not so I can check the portions when I serve my own food and I know what's in it so I know it's not drowning in butter or oil or too much sauce.

 

[loonaka]

The veggies where I live are great, they're always fresh and yummie! My family eat a lot of meat (mostly moose since my dad goes hunting) so we don't buy it from the supermarket. We eat vegetables to every dish and we make sure to eat fish at least once a week, we love salmon! Also we grow our own potatoes (at my grandmother's) so we usually don't end up buying a lot of potatoes at the supermarket either.

I think Scandinavian people in general eat more dark bread (with lots of fibres) than, let's say, Americans do. And swedish people usually don't eat 'sweets' for breakfast, like croissants, but something more healthy like bread or porridge. Most people also drink quite a lot of milk

Still, I don't think Scandinavian people are that healthy with amazing skin. There are a few people with good skin, but I guess those are the ones with great genes.

.

I agree with Sill here...but I like croissants for breakfast

 

[Lite_Brite]

I think there is a strong tendency to want to romanticize, or in some cases even fetishize, certain other cultures. Idealizing one diet is fairly illogical as virtually every culture has developed healthy and delicious cuisine.

With the world as it is today, people in globalized nations have access to produce that long ago would have had to been brought thousands of miles by boat, so we can often enjoy a wider variety and therefore more nutritious diet.

American culture just generally places a lower (I would say too low, but that's subjective) emphasis on home-cooking, partly because we are perhaps some of the most over-worked people in the world, working far from home. Maybe it's partly incidental too. It's possible to be very healthy and eat foods not outside the norm of food typically grown and sold in the US.

In the end I think it's wise to take cues from the knowledge we can share about cooking from around the world instead of trying to pull off living off of raw salmon when one lives in Kansas.

 

[Ryan Riverz]

I used to take the "anything goes" approach to my diet but recently I've been gravitating more toward salads (green salads, not drenched in ranch), nuts, less processed food etc. and I definitely prefer it to eating bagged popcorn off and on all day.

I think that processed food is over-consumed because of convenience, and it's refreshing to incorporate things into your diet that haven't been sitting on a shelf for 8 months.

 

[michyed]

I think there is a strong tendency to want to romanticize, or in some cases even fetishize, certain other cultures. Idealizing one diet is fairly illogical as virtually every culture has developed healthy and delicious cuisine.

With the world as it is today, people in globalized nations have access to produce that long ago would have had to been brought thousands of miles by boat, so we can often enjoy a wider variety and therefore more nutritious diet.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. We're talking about asian diets here, and so far nobody here has "romanticized" the asian diet. It's true that the traditional EAST asian diet is generally more beneficial to the health. It's been this way for thousands of years- since 10th century BC, when the Chinese drank tea for medicinal purposes... And although over the years our diet habits may have changed, we have still, as a culture, preserved the mindset to eat healthy foods.
You're right about the globalization, but so far the extent of globalization in our daily cuisine is really only limited to nearby Asian countries. (Currently all of east asia is obsessed with Japanese food. Even South Korea It'll be like this for centuries to come)

There's nothing wrong with "idealizing" the asian diet. It is widely acclaimed for a reason.

 

[loonaka]

I agree with michyed..in some countries they live longer than in other countries, and it has def something to do with their food culture.