I’ve been lazy and wallowy this week and as such have not contacted my private lessons to organise beginning lessons again. At 5:20 I get a call from the mother of the two girls I teach on tuesdays at 5, asking if I was coming today. I so thought we had arranged to continue once I called :-/ Eep. Not only that, but she’s been wanting to make her special okonomiyummy for me and had everything ready for tonight. So on my bike I got and peddled furiously – through cold rain – to get there and teach. I took twister with me – a no-brainer end to a lesson (thanks whitmanschild).
Some interesting theories came up over dinner which I am compelled to share:
1. Japanese cooking uses a lot of sugar and salt which is why Japanese people don’t need dessert. Western people crave it because we don’t use much sugar in our cooking. (mmm….I can see _some_ plausibility in that one)
2. Japanese people have longer intestines, therefore eating meat doesn’t suit them because it stays inside too long and starts to go off. This is why they are a fish-eating culture. (nothing at all to do with being an island nation with very little grazing land…)
3. Western people are all fat because we eat desserts…but it’s ok on us cos we’re tall. (I’d like to note that the teacher before me was a size 10)
I really had to work to quell my initial response of laughter at some of these comments. I’m trying to see her point of view, but the longer intestines bit really gets me. Please, feel free to correct me and say “well, actually…” and I shall stand suitably abashed. In the meantime I’ll stay amused.
I don’t see any flaws in your response of laughter.
I’m busy sniggering as I type.
ooooh the japanese intestines… I was told over lunch that the teachers’ delivery bentos full of fried stuff were better suited for someone like me, this man actually said “molly-ra”! This was while I was eating something absurdly healthy, like carrots and brown rice or something. Then I asked about 2nd generation Japanese Americans and that didn’t phase them. Then I had to look up the word “genetic” (idenshi) so I could tell them it wasn’t genetic…
then I had to give up.
I believe #1 though. And I’ve just realized too about how I snack all the time, here and at home, but here the healthy snacks are so limited that I eat crap all the time. I need fat-free pretzels! Hummus!
Western people are fat because we eat too many fat-reduced “diet” foods.
The reason this makes us fat is two-fold:
1. They tend to include a lot of sugar to make up for the lost taste, and sugar is very quickly converted into fat by our bodies.
2. Fat helps to make you feel full, so people who eat low-fat foods tend to have bigger appetites and thus eat more.
I think the outcome of all these three points is that Westerners who stopped eating dessert and started eating fish would evolve into Japanese people. Genetics is an outmoded theory anyway. Long live dietary morphic resonance!
Hey…does that mean if I start eating snails and brioche I’ll become French??
#’s 2 and 3 are patently crap. I’m not sure I believe #1, either.
Nihonjin are more suited to eating seafood because a)they live on an island nation where there is an abundance of it and b)imported beef and other meat is stupidly expensive. They’ve been doing it all their lives and their bodies are adjusted to it–that’s all. It’s the same reason that people in Oklahoma eat beef and bread instead of lobster tails or fresh mangoes or borscht. It’s got nothing to do with how long anybody’s intestines are.
Tall or not, most westerners (especially Americans) are fat because we have very distended view of proper food portions, unhealthy eating schedules, and lack appropriate physical activity–at least as much as we have bad content to some of our food. To say that we eat desert and are therefore fat is like saying that a kid who plays baseball will be bad at math. He might be–if he devotes absurd proportions of his time to baseball, plays sports instead of studying, and never does anything that might work the logical-analytical parts of his brain. It’s the same damn thing. It’s all about balancing things properly. These of course both preclude any genetic disposition to body shape or mathematical aptitude.
In my case, at least, being fat at home has nothing to do with desert. (I routinely gain at least 20-30 lbs. when I go home.) The things that kill me in the weight-gain department are a)sugar, usually in the form of cola and sweetened tea (I am from the South, after all), b)overeating, a bad habit bred into me by a childhood of near-poverty where wasted food was unforgivable and an adulthood where huge American portions are layed before me on a regular basis, c)eating late at night while stoned, and d)not getting enough physical activity to account for the caloric intake. Beyond that, all the men in my father’s family are big, barrel-chested, beer-bellied men–a definite picture of what my body is wont to do, genetically speaking.
The cluelessness and personal mythologies that persist in this highly ignorant culture never cease to amaze me. Trust me, laughing at your students was the politest thing you could do in the face of these comments…
I don’t think that the idea of meat going off in someone’s gut after it’s visited Mr Small Intestine is particularly valid. How does shit go off? A large perentage of fecal matter is made from dead bacteria anyway, and your body is highly effective at containing it.
When I’ve been in asian countries I’ve usually lost weight despite eating more. I was in Singapore for two weeks once, and lost weight despite eating constantly. The secret is small portions frequently, and a low amount of refined sugars.
totally! people laugh when I say I find it hard to eat healthily here sometimes, but it’s true! There is so much crap!
but last I checked, not *all* westerners were actually fat.
I thought my skin was darkening and my eye shape changing.
Help! I really am truning Japanese…. *runs away screaming*
I love you, Ches. Anytime I come across a situation where I wonder if I was being a bit too skeptical or judgemental, i talk with you and discover I haven’t been skeptical enough!
by the by, like the current icon!
Fair call, but obesety is at epidemic levels and rising, and scientists are only starting to understand why this is the case despite the “health-craze” of the last two or three decades.