私は日系アメリカ人だけど、正直食材にも問題があると思う。原因は分からないけど、アメリカの野菜は正直あまり美味しくない。両親が色々と工夫してくれて毎食野菜食べていたけど。それでも、そのまま食べるのは好きじゃなかった。だから、小さい頃、おばあちゃんの家で初めて食べた茹でブロッコリーに衝撃を受けた記憶がある。色がもっと鮮やかで、ブロッコリーってこんなに美味しいんだって思った。おばあちゃんに何の味付けしたのって聞いてみたら、不思議そうな顔で『茹でてちょっと塩をかけただけだよ』って言われてびっくりしたよ。牛乳だって日本の方が美味しい。レタスもシャキシャキしている。多分、アメリカの野菜は大事に作れられていないんだと思う。水道から出る水だって何か変な味がするし。ヨーロッパへ行った友達も言っていたけど、アメリカより何か食べ物が新鮮って言っていた。 後、子供の食育も大事だと思う。私の周りにピザやバーガーやジャンクフードしか食べない友達がいっぱいいます。みんなで違うレストランへ行こうとしても、新しい食べ物を試そうとしない。勿論、前に言ったみたいに食材にも問題あるけど、食育も大事なんだなって小さい頃から実感した。 Personally, I think our ingredients/the actual food is also the problem. I don't know what the exact reason for it is, but American vegetables don't taste that good. My parents always made sure I had my vegetables or tried to hide it in my food growing up. But even then I didn't like eating vegetables by itself. However, I remember as I a little girl when I was at my grandma's house in Japan, she always served steamed broccolis. Like even as a kid, I knew it was different just from looking at it. It was actually a really pretty green. I ate it, and I remember thinking "Broccolis can taste this good?!". And I asked her what kind of seasoning she used, and my grandma looking at me weirdly like "It's only steamed with a sprinkle of salt". The milk also tastes better in Japan. I remember my friends who travelled to Europe saying similar things such as the food tastes fresher over there. Also, I think food education is really important. Too many of us grew up on pizzas, hamburgers, etc growing up, so their taste buds aren't used to other foods.
Kyou-san You're so correct in mentioning what keeps Japanese slim. It's the WALKING !!!! So many food in Japan are not so healthy either in different ways and diabetes is becoming a big problem too. Some say Japanese are genetically susceptible to type 2 and people get it despite not as obese as Americans. It's the eating habits that kill so many so young. Know what you eat is what you are. I live in US so I know how humongous a person can get and scary thing is those obese people are not pro active in watching what kind of food they put in their mouth like they were never taught about food and sugar/fat intake. I'm 75 and have been getting treatments /surgeries for Kideny/Bladder cancer for a year and last few years my glucose level in blood tests coming back higher than ideal but still not so bad however it jumped by 30 points recently. I was told that medically my numbers indicate I'm diabetic. So I'm doing as much possible to stay with low carb/ low sugar diets for past 3months. No rice, no bread and curtailing any type of noodles but buck wheat noodles (Soba) but not easy composing what to eat all the time. So that's why people go for an easy solutions of take out fast food.