Big in Japan: Can’t get skinny? Eat slower!

by Matthew Firestone on

Your mother was right – it actually might be a good idea to chew your food 20 times before swallowing…

In a recently published study from Osaka University, researchers examined the eating habits of around 3,000 Japanese people, and found that eating too quickly may be enough to double your risk of being overweight.

On Monday, Big in Japan reported about the Morning Banana Diet, which has catapulted the humble banana into the latest ranks of fad foods. Of course, if you’re not particularly partial to this phallic fruit, fear not as deliberately slowing down at mealtimes might be enough to get your weight down.

According to the Osaka study, which was published in the venerable British Medical Journal (BMJ), obesity is partially caused by problems in signaling systems that tell the body when to stop eating. Furthermore, there appears to be a strong and measureable relationship between eating speed, feelings of fullness and obesity.

The study reported that just under half of the 3,000 volunteers told researchers that they tended to eat quickly or eat until they felt full. In this sample set, fast-eating men were 84% more likely to be overweight, while fast-eating women were twice as likely.

Food for thought, huh?

Need a few reasons to slow down and enjoy your food?

There is now an increasing body of scientific evidence to support the conclusion that eating fast could be bad for your weight. In fact, wolfing down your meal might actually interfere with a crucial signaling system that tells your brain to stop eating because your stomach is swelling up.

In other words, your stomach is a big balloon of an organ, which means that binge eating can cause you to – quite literally – overfill it!

Unfortunately, there are some seriously strong biological and evolutionary reasons why we display this troublesome behavior. Some anthropologists have concluded that we learn how to eat in this manner during infancy, and that this mechanism might have served us well in past times of famine. Medical researchers have also supported this claim, providing evidence that the way we eat seems to be formulated at a very early age.

According to Dr Jason Halford, Director of the Kissileff Human Ingestive Behaviour Laboratory at the University of Liverpool: “What the Japanese research shows is that individual differences in eating behavior underlie over-consumption of food and are linked to obesity. Other research has found evidence of this in childhood, suggesting that it could be inherited or learned at a very early age.”

Dr. Halford has stated that there is currently no evidence that trying to slow down mealtimes for children would have an impact on future obesity rates. However, this is not to say that parents shouldn’t take the time to set good examples for their children at the dinner table.

On the contrary, ‘slow-eating’ certainly increases the chances that your brain and your stomach will be in sync, and – at least in our humble opinion – food tastes a lot better if you take the time to properly chew it before swallowing.

Looks like our mothers were right all along!

** All images courtesy of the WikiCommons Media Project **

Big in Japan: Can’t get skinny? Eat a banana!

by Matthew Firestone on

You can never be too skinny or too rich, at least according to the old expression…

Of course, in a country where size S is the veritable norm, and hyper fashion demands perfection in every curve, the pressure to stay thin and beautiful can quickly consume every waking moment of your day-to-day life.

As you might imagine, Japan practically invented the fad diet, which means that every month or so, some new food item is reported by so-called experts to be the miracle cure for obesity.

While there really is no substitute for a healthy diet and exercise, Japanese women, and increasingly men, have chowed down on a pretty lengthy list of fad foods: boiled eggs, apples, chili peppers, soybeans, black tea fungus, cocoa, carrots, yam paste, beer yeast, and even baby formula!

So, what is the current fad food that has recently risen in price by 20% as a result of supply shortages? Bananas!

Yup, bananas, those elongated yellow pods that are high in fiber, packed with vitamins and minerals, and largely comprised of H2O.

So, how does the Morningu Banana Daietto (???????????????????????????????????????, Morning Banana Diet) work? Keep on reading to find out!

The Morning Banana Diet is attributed to a woman by the name of Sumiko Watanabe, a pharmacist in Osaka, who designed this diet specifically to help out her tubby hubby.

Here is how it works:

In the morning, you can eat as many bananas as you want, alongside room temperature water. This is the key as breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and a few bananas in the belly certainly helps in getting your digestion going.

For lunch and dinner, you can pretty much eat anything you want, along with a small afternoon snack, but you have to avoid desserts, stop eating by 8pm, and go to bed before midnight.

According to Mrs. Watanabe, her husband quickly lost 37 pounds, which prompted her to release the diet on mixi, the Japanese equivalent of Facebook or MySpace. The Osaka pharmacist has also published her Morning Banana Diet in Japanese, Korean and Chinese, and has thus far sold close to a million copies.

Of course, while Mrs. Watanabe is lugging her suitcases full of yen to the bank, food distributors are quickly realizing that their supply of bananas can’t meet demand, especially following a recent TV appearance by the Watanabes.

According to Takeshi Ozaki, a spokesperson of Life Corporation, which runs more than 200 supermarkets throughout Japan: “Bananas suddenly flew off the shelves, there was a 70%-80% increase in weekly sales compared to the same period last year.”

However, before you rush out and buy a few crates of Chiquita bananas, keep in mind that not everyone is convinced.

According to Professor Masahiko Okada of Niigata University School of Medicine: “The human body has three essential nutrients – carbohydrates, fat and protein. The golden rule is to balance these three nutrients and a daily calorie intake. Once you understand that, you don’t have to be swayed by the fad diet any more.”

Again, the secret to good health really is a balanced diet and regular exercise, though a few bananas in the morning might not be a bad idea!

** Front-page image taken by Eriko Sugita at Reuters. All other images courtesy of the WikiCommons Media Project **

David Sedaris with Rick Steves: Funny travel incidents and observations like when flight attendants pass gas

by Jamie Rhein on

Two of the things I remember from an interview I heard with David Sedaris on Travel with Rick Steves is that Business Class is known as ICU because passengers are in need of attention and flight attendants pass gas as they walk up the aisles because the sound covers the noise.

A flight attendant told Sedaris that. Not, Heather, our Gallery Gossip gal, someone else.

Here are two travel tips during the conversation that Sedaris passed on in his sardonic m wry wit sort of way.

  • When staying in a hotel, you don’t put your clothes in drawers because that’s how you lose things.
  • As a matter of fact, don’t let your belongings wander more than two feet from your suitcase.

And here’s a bit of irony that Sedaris has noticed when staying in high end hotels. He pointed out that these hotels have half-hearted attempts at going green. He points out that they may tout going green with missives like:

Save the earth. Don’t make us wash these towels, save the earth.

Then with the turn down service, they turn on the radio and the lights.

He also says that, “Sometimes, I turn on the radio and I think, “Who the hell was in this room?” . . .like if the music is heavy metal.

Both Sedaris and Steves talked up travel in Japan which our own Matthew Firestone who lives in Japan could verify.

About Japan, Rick Steves says, “People were so unbelievably kind. In Japan, ordering was terribly fun. Japanese are so gracious. Only country I’ve been in where people regularly stop me and ask, ‘You look lost, can I help you?'”

Living in Japan helped Sedaris quit smoking. He wanted to quit smoking because so many hotels don’t allow smoking anymore.

To listen to the Podcast between Steves and Sedaris, click here. What I’ve passed on are only tidbits of the wealth.

Big in Japan: Green tea is good for the body and the soul

by Matthew Firestone on

All this month, Big in Japan is bringing you a special series on Zen. From ancient scriptures and Buddhist mantras to austere minimalism and the sound of nothing, we’ll do our best to help you find your own little slice of inner peace and enlightenment.

Everybody knows that a cup of green tea (?????; ryokucha) is good for the body. High in vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants and a whole slew of anti-aging and cancer fighting compounds, green tea – a cup or two a day – will certainly keep the doctor away.

But, did you know that green tea is also good for the soul?

Believe it or not, the appreciation of this humble beverage is actually one of the key components of Zen (??). In fact, the Japanese tea ceremony or chad? (?????, literally ‘the way of tea’) has been strongly influenced by the core tenants of Zen Buddhism.

So, want to learn how you can turn an ordinary cup of Starbucks green tea into a vaulted object of philosophical admiration? Sure you do!

On that note, today’s post, the final in our special series on Zen, is all about the way of the tea.

The way of the tea or chadō is one of the most complicated aspects of Japanese traditional culture. Entire volumes have been written by learned scholars, expounding on the importance of every precise movement leading up to the first and last sip of green tea.

However, without having to dedicate the rest of your life to finding deep meaning in mere dried leaves, the take home message in both chadō and Zen is that new perspectives and insights on existence will lead you down the road to enlightenment. So, rather than just gulping down mouthfuls of hot tea in an effort to get your morning caffeine rush, slow down, and appreciate the beauty and sophistication of this humble beverage.

In chadō, each tea bowl, whisk and tea scoop is ritually cleaned before and after their use according to prescribed motions. This ritualized ceremony enables the practitioner to fully appreciate the amount of preparation that goes into making a single cup of green tea. While you can’t exactly replicate these motions at your local Starbucks, you can still find peace of mind in a seeping tea bag.

The next time you’re taking your teatime, stop and pause for a moment to reflect on the beauty in your cup. Green tea, served steaming hot without any milk or sugar, is a simple pleasure that refreshes the palette, warms the body, and tunes your mind into the ebb and flow of daily life. Considering that the key to Zen is discovering the Buddha-nature that inhabits the ordinary, perhaps Nirvana might truly be closer than you think.

Well, that concludes our special series on Zen (禅) – hope you learned a few new things! Be sure to tune into Big in Japan next month for our usual assortment of the weird, the wacky and the wonderful from the Land of the Rising Sun.

** All images courtesy of the WikiCommons Media Project **

Big in Japan: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

by Matthew Firestone on

All this month, Big in Japan is bringing you a special series on Zen. From ancient scriptures and Buddhist mantras to austere minimalism and the sound of nothing, we’ll do our best to help you find your own little slice of inner peace and enlightenment.

Zen (??) is all about explaining the unexplainable…

In ancient times, Buddhist monks would enter deep meditation in an effort to analyze k?an (?????), which are stories and parables that cannot be understood through mere intellectual reasoning.

Indeed, k?an generally contain philosophical problems that are inaccessible to rational understanding, such as the famous question,” Two hands clap and there is a sound, but what is the sound of one hand clapping?”

The answer, of course, is that you must transcend all sounds in order to reach the soundless sound!

While we certainly don’t have all of the answers, we do have a good number of k?an that are worth meditating upon. On that note, today’s post is a collection of some of the most famous k?an in the Japanese tradition of Zen Buddhism.

A Zen master received an eager young student, and proceeded to pour him a cup of tea. When the cup was full, the Zen master kept pouring, which caused the student to shout out, “No more will go in!” To this, the Zen master replied: “You are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

The emperor calls his trusted Zen advisor to ask him this question: “Where does the enlightened man go when he dies?” To this, the Zen advisor simply responded: “I do not know, because I have not died yet.”

A brash young man once boasted to a Zen priest: “The founder of our sect had such miraculous powers that he could hold a brush in his hand on one side of the river, and write on a piece of a paper held by his attendant on the other side.” The priest responded lightly: “Perhaps your fox can perform that trick, but that is not the manner of Zen. My miracle is that when I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel thirsty I drink.”

A Zen teacher asked his students if they considered a big stone to be inside or outside their minds. One replied: “From the Buddhist viewpoint, everything is an objectification of mind, so I would say that the stone is inside my mind. The teacher amusingly responded: “Your head must feel very heavy if you are carrying around a stone like that in your mind.”

And finally:

A foolish young man, desiring to reach enlightenment, told a famous Zen scholar: “The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received.” The scholar, who was smoking quietly at the time, proceeded to whack the young man across the head with a bamboo pipe. When the youth started to get angry, the scholar spoke softly: “If nothing exists, then where did your anger come from?”

Want to learn more? Sure you do!

Be sure to check Big in Japan all this month as we delve deeper into the subtle art of Zen (禅).

** All images courtesy of the WikiCommons Media Project **