What’s so Healthy About Japanese Cuisine
Nowadays, tasting the flavor of the world is easier than it has ever been. Whenever one feels hungry, s/he can order Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican as well as many other types of ethnic meals from the relevant restaurant. However, the search for variety while still trying to eat health might turn out to be harder than expected.
Not all meals, or as a matter of fact, not all counties' cuisines are healthy enough. Especially if your are really into the eating healthy lifestyle. For example, Italian cuisine is not the best choice you can make, for almost all of its meals are dough-based – pizza and the various types of pizza. From all the cuisines around the globe, one stands out as the healthiest. Japanese cuisine. To give another example, unlike the common diet in America, which is full of sugar, processed ingredients and refined carbohydrates, Japanese meals rely on fresh, natural ingredients.
Healthy Eating as a Part of Japan's Culture
Japan also has one of the lowest obesity rates. Unlike most people around the globe, who tend to eat for pleasure, the Japanese associate the act of eating with healing. Generally, they keep both their minds and their bodies as healthy as possible. Japanese have a colorful, lean and light diet.
They consume a lot of cruciferous vegetables, which contain a lot of glucosinolates. This is a substance that is proved to fight some types of cancer, especially colon and lung. As a comparison, people in Japan eat such vegetables (broccoli, cabbage, radishes, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, etc) five times more than Americans do. And that is why the latter are more prone to the aforementioned diseases.
Healthy Eating for a Longer Life
People, living in Japan, have lower cancer rates and cholesterol levels as well as longer lives than any other peoples. For instance, a lot of the residents of the Okinawa island live up to a hundred years of age. The Japanese consume mostly fruit and vegetables, as well as fish, and prepare them all in the healthiest way possible – over steam or they give them a really quick stir-fry.
Japanese people have a practice they call Hara Hachi Bu. This means “eat up to the point when you are eight parts (or eighty percent) full”. This is why Japanese are almost not likely at all to get breast or colon cancer.
Japanese Staples
Great for your health are the Japanese staples. They include green tea and yams rich in antioxidants; the bok choy vegetable is also good for you, as it is calcium rich; seaweed has a lot of iodine; fish, crab and the various other type of seafood that is regularly consumed in Japan has a lot of omega-3; the so called shiitake mushrooms are a famous source of zinc, copper and iron; and last, but not least, the foods made out of soy beans. However, soy that is good for one's health is the unprocessed soy, not the one that is made into fake meat. Choose miso, tempeh, tofu or edamame.
Don't Forget Your Greens
Green tea is really rich on antioxidants. It fights aging, infection and the free radicals in the body. It also has a really positive effect on people with high blood pressure.
A recent research also proved that green tea is a hundred times better than vitamin C and twenty five times more efficient than vitamin E and is therefore great for protecting one's immune system from various diseases. Seaweed, also referred to as sea vegetables, has been used in the Japanese cuisine for centuries. It's used not only for the purpose of wrapping sushi, but also in salads and soups. Seaweed has more minerals than any other food. It is rich with iron, magnesium, folate, calcium and vitamins B.
So, next time you don't feel like cooking, just grab a Japanese takeaway menu and indulge in the healthy alternative Japanese cuisine offers.
A guest post by holiday-articles.com