In comments recently, Kelly, who runs the snack blog Sweet Pursuits, asked me if I felt that my tastes were "American" and if that influenced how I reacted to Japanese snacks. The interesting thing is that this thought had been on my mind quite recently while I was reviewing the Tyrant Habanero Anbiriba rods. However, my thought was not that my tastes were so American, but rather that I wondered if they had drifted so far from that of an average American's that my responses to various foods might be quite atypical now. In regard to the habanero rods, I was wondering if Americans, who have a lot more choices when it comes to very hot and spicy foods flavored with hot peppers (due to Mexican cuisine influences) might find the Japanese habanero snacks tame by comparison.
There are several reasons why I think my tastes may be different from those of my fellow Americans. I have been in Japan for 20 years so I've been eating food that has been altered for the Japanese market for nearly as long as I have spent eating American food. I left the U.S. when I was 24 years old, so I'm closing in on having spent as much of my life here as there. I have to imagine I've grown accustomed to the way in which food is presented for Japanese tastes.
When I first came to Japan, a lot of staples seemed to taste very strange to me. In particular, milk tasted very "off". To this day, I'm not sure why milk is so different in Japan than in the U.S., but I think it has something to do with the fact that Tokyo gets a lot of heat treated dairy products which are meant to last on the shelves far longer than milk back home. And, please note, that "back home" for me means rural Pennsylvania where cows are everywhere and the very freshest milk is never far away. Your mileage may vary.
These days, I only occasionally notice anything amiss in the milk products here, and generally those are the ESL (Extended Shelf Life) products which are probably radiated, boiled, and processed into a new incarnation of "dairy". Now, Japanese milk tastes "normal" to me. The same applies to butter. Japanese butter is far less sweet and creamy than American butter, but this is something I'd forgotten completely until quite recently. The butter shortage in Japan afforded me a chance to taste imported U.S. butter again for the first time in nearly two decades and it was amazingly good.
Also, after Kelly's question got me thinking, I looked back on my reviews. My reviews of Japanese snacks or those based on traditional Japanese cuisine (except the Oshiruko KitKat) like sembei, bean cakes, etc. are generally quite favorable. That means I actually tend to like Japanese traditional snacks. I think that I tend to be the least pleased with Japanese adaptations of any food based on cheese products or lame implementations of foreign foods or their concepts. Since I rarely eat Japanese processed cheese (and 95% of Japanese cheese is processed), this is probably one of the areas where I have had zero acclimation to this particular food as it has been modified for the Japanese market. Almost all of the cheese I eat in Japan is imported, mostly from Australia, New Zealand, England, and occasionally America. I haven't forgotten what real (and good quality) cheese tastes like, so I have a very low tolerance for the processed or artificial nature of related products.
The bottom line, however, is that all tastes vary among individuals regardless of where they live or what foods they grew up eating. One of the reasons I link to reviews of the same snacks on other blogs at the bottom of some of my posts is that I think there is value in different perspectives on the same product. No one can speak to or for the taste buds of other people. They can only speak for themselves. The best I can hope to do is explain my feelings about something well enough to help others understand what has shaped my perceptions so that they can consider if their response might be the same.
Showing posts with label food culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food culture. Show all posts
Friday, May 15, 2009
Friday, May 1, 2009
Variety Friday: Leftovers
One of my fellow Japan bloggers once remarked that her husband would not eat leftovers, so cooking was difficult as it required her to cook a fresh meal every night. In a pinch, he would eat leftovers if they were rolled into a new dish. My husband happily will eat the same meal two nights in a row, sometimes three, if I make a large quantity of something he especially enjoys. One of my friends has been known to make enough of the same dish for an entire week. I can't imagine eating tuna casserole for a week, but he'd prefer this to having to cook every night.
Americans in general don't love leftovers, but they tend to prefer them to the effort of daily cooking. Because of this, I thought my fellow blogger's husband sounded very spoiled in his refusal to eat leftovers, but I've come to learn since then that this isn't specific to her case. Most Japanese people do not favor leftovers.
I've asked quite a few people about this and their resistance to leftovers is multi-faceted. One reason is that they don't like to eat the same food two nights in a row. The emphasis on variety in meals is much higher in Japan than it is in the West. While we typically have three parts to every meal (protein, starch, vegetable), they often have five or more. Another reason is that freshness and food safety concerns are much greater in Japan. Japanese housewives often shop daily for the food they prepare for their family's evening meals. When there are leftovers, they tend to get folded into the next day's lunch rather than served as the next day's dinner.
Finally, I think the size of Japanese homes and appliances have a pretty big impact on a culture that hasn't embraced cooking for leftovers. In America, we often choose to cook more than we need, sometimes far more, in order to put some aside in the freezer for future quick meals. You can't really do that in Japan because freezer space is smaller as are most pantries.
I think that the Japanese way of handling food is actually very good. In particular, I think that the variety and freshness aspects are conducive to good health. On the other hand, it is a very labor intensive way of life. I can't imagine working full-time and doing the sort of work that Japanese women put into meal preparation. The acceptance of leftovers is, in part, an acceptance of a culture which says that women don't have the time to go shopping daily or to put efforts into what we might consider elaborate meals.
Americans in general don't love leftovers, but they tend to prefer them to the effort of daily cooking. Because of this, I thought my fellow blogger's husband sounded very spoiled in his refusal to eat leftovers, but I've come to learn since then that this isn't specific to her case. Most Japanese people do not favor leftovers.
I've asked quite a few people about this and their resistance to leftovers is multi-faceted. One reason is that they don't like to eat the same food two nights in a row. The emphasis on variety in meals is much higher in Japan than it is in the West. While we typically have three parts to every meal (protein, starch, vegetable), they often have five or more. Another reason is that freshness and food safety concerns are much greater in Japan. Japanese housewives often shop daily for the food they prepare for their family's evening meals. When there are leftovers, they tend to get folded into the next day's lunch rather than served as the next day's dinner.
Finally, I think the size of Japanese homes and appliances have a pretty big impact on a culture that hasn't embraced cooking for leftovers. In America, we often choose to cook more than we need, sometimes far more, in order to put some aside in the freezer for future quick meals. You can't really do that in Japan because freezer space is smaller as are most pantries.
I think that the Japanese way of handling food is actually very good. In particular, I think that the variety and freshness aspects are conducive to good health. On the other hand, it is a very labor intensive way of life. I can't imagine working full-time and doing the sort of work that Japanese women put into meal preparation. The acceptance of leftovers is, in part, an acceptance of a culture which says that women don't have the time to go shopping daily or to put efforts into what we might consider elaborate meals.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Variety Friday: American and Japanese "Tastes"
If you ask Japanese people who have been to the U.S. about the food, they will always say at least one, if not all of the following:
I can also agree that some food is sweeter and some food is oilier in the U.S. compared to Japan. That being said, some food in Japan is sweeter and some food is oilier than in than in the U.S. The latter perspective isn't one Japanese people tend to have because they view the foods which are sweeter or fattier from a Western perspective as being standard rather than unusual.
I've noted in multiple reviews that Japanese chocolate is richer than American chocolate. It is sometimes higher in calories despite being less sweet in many cases because of the higher fat content. This mainly affects the texture, but it also affects the taste to some extent. Chocolate isn't the only thing which tends to contain more fat and less sugar. Baked goods in particular are often loaded with more fat and have less sugar. This is why the muffins and cakes tend to be dry compared to Western versions.
The added fat doesn't stop with sweets though. Things like soup, particularly ramen, have a lot more oil floating around in them than their Western counterparts. There's also tonkatsu (breaded fried pork cutlets), Japanese curry and tempura (breaded fried vegetables or seafood) which are pretty well-known parts of Japanese cuisine. French fries and fried chicken get singled out as Western atrocities because they are deep fried, but it's not like the Japanese don't have deep frying in their food culture as well. What is worse, some of the tonkatsu is designed to be extra juicy by layering thin fatty pork rather than simply using one thicker bit of it.
Personally, I have no problem with people having fatty foods in their food culture. In fact, I tend to think that fat in general has been villified far too much. Consumption of fat makes you feel fuller than carbohydrates. It's only an issue when you eat too much or are eating damaged fats. The main reason I point out the fact that Japanese food has plenty of fat is that most people fail to recognize how prevalent it is in Japanese processed food and in food preparations outside of sushi and sashimi.
In regards to sugar, it is fair to say that most sweets are less sweet in Japan. You can't really say the same for some other foods though. Salted snack foods often have sugar or Sucralose added to them so you get a unique combination of salt and sweetness in various corn snacks in many cases. Bread products also often taste very sweet. In particular, various rolls and buns which are ostensibly designed for sandwiches are strangely sweet. It's not uncommon to see a package of dinner rolls or long buns that look like they'd suit a hot dog with an illustration picturing ham and lettuce artfully tucked into the buns. If you buy such buns thinking you'll make yourself a nice sandwich, you'll find that hey make appallingly bad sandwiches unless you like your ham or tuna salad with sugar sprinkled on it.
At one point in time, there even used to be Japanese toothpaste that contained sugar. I doubt that it is still on the market as I'm hoping someone figured out that sugar in toothpaste rather defeated the purpose. I was warned about said dental application when I first arrived in Japan and encouraged to use imported toothpaste to prevent cavities forming as a result of exercising good dental hygiene.
Finally, from an American viewpoint, you tend to notice that Japanese food on the whole is very salty. It's not only the use of soy sauce, but also the fact that a lot of simple food preparation comes with a good dose of salt. I had my gall bladder removed and was served apples with salt on them (and wasn't allowed to leave the hospital until I ate them as well as the rice I was served). It's also common to eat cucumbers encrusted with salt in the summer and to sprinkle salt on your watermelon.
Tastes are a matter of, well, taste. You get used to what you grow up with and everything else seems weird. Americans like American food and Japanese like Japanese food, and criticism comes from the deviations from the expected norm. The health problems in America tend to come from eating too much or eating imbalanced diets rather than from an overabundance of sugary and fatty foods in the cuisine relative to the presence of such foods in other cultures. Japan gets a good rap because the people are healthier, but they eat a much more balanced diet and have built-in portion control as well as run to the doctor frequently for the tiniest of medical problems (so small problems are caught and corrected early). It's not that they don't have food with lots of fat and sugar, it just isn't a problem for them given other factors
- the portions are very big
- the food is too oily/fatty
- the food is too sweet
I can also agree that some food is sweeter and some food is oilier in the U.S. compared to Japan. That being said, some food in Japan is sweeter and some food is oilier than in than in the U.S. The latter perspective isn't one Japanese people tend to have because they view the foods which are sweeter or fattier from a Western perspective as being standard rather than unusual.
I've noted in multiple reviews that Japanese chocolate is richer than American chocolate. It is sometimes higher in calories despite being less sweet in many cases because of the higher fat content. This mainly affects the texture, but it also affects the taste to some extent. Chocolate isn't the only thing which tends to contain more fat and less sugar. Baked goods in particular are often loaded with more fat and have less sugar. This is why the muffins and cakes tend to be dry compared to Western versions.
The added fat doesn't stop with sweets though. Things like soup, particularly ramen, have a lot more oil floating around in them than their Western counterparts. There's also tonkatsu (breaded fried pork cutlets), Japanese curry and tempura (breaded fried vegetables or seafood) which are pretty well-known parts of Japanese cuisine. French fries and fried chicken get singled out as Western atrocities because they are deep fried, but it's not like the Japanese don't have deep frying in their food culture as well. What is worse, some of the tonkatsu is designed to be extra juicy by layering thin fatty pork rather than simply using one thicker bit of it.
Personally, I have no problem with people having fatty foods in their food culture. In fact, I tend to think that fat in general has been villified far too much. Consumption of fat makes you feel fuller than carbohydrates. It's only an issue when you eat too much or are eating damaged fats. The main reason I point out the fact that Japanese food has plenty of fat is that most people fail to recognize how prevalent it is in Japanese processed food and in food preparations outside of sushi and sashimi.
In regards to sugar, it is fair to say that most sweets are less sweet in Japan. You can't really say the same for some other foods though. Salted snack foods often have sugar or Sucralose added to them so you get a unique combination of salt and sweetness in various corn snacks in many cases. Bread products also often taste very sweet. In particular, various rolls and buns which are ostensibly designed for sandwiches are strangely sweet. It's not uncommon to see a package of dinner rolls or long buns that look like they'd suit a hot dog with an illustration picturing ham and lettuce artfully tucked into the buns. If you buy such buns thinking you'll make yourself a nice sandwich, you'll find that hey make appallingly bad sandwiches unless you like your ham or tuna salad with sugar sprinkled on it.
At one point in time, there even used to be Japanese toothpaste that contained sugar. I doubt that it is still on the market as I'm hoping someone figured out that sugar in toothpaste rather defeated the purpose. I was warned about said dental application when I first arrived in Japan and encouraged to use imported toothpaste to prevent cavities forming as a result of exercising good dental hygiene.
Finally, from an American viewpoint, you tend to notice that Japanese food on the whole is very salty. It's not only the use of soy sauce, but also the fact that a lot of simple food preparation comes with a good dose of salt. I had my gall bladder removed and was served apples with salt on them (and wasn't allowed to leave the hospital until I ate them as well as the rice I was served). It's also common to eat cucumbers encrusted with salt in the summer and to sprinkle salt on your watermelon.
Tastes are a matter of, well, taste. You get used to what you grow up with and everything else seems weird. Americans like American food and Japanese like Japanese food, and criticism comes from the deviations from the expected norm. The health problems in America tend to come from eating too much or eating imbalanced diets rather than from an overabundance of sugary and fatty foods in the cuisine relative to the presence of such foods in other cultures. Japan gets a good rap because the people are healthier, but they eat a much more balanced diet and have built-in portion control as well as run to the doctor frequently for the tiniest of medical problems (so small problems are caught and corrected early). It's not that they don't have food with lots of fat and sugar, it just isn't a problem for them given other factors
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