MANY HAVE WONDERED why Dr. Weston A. Price did not include Asian countries like China and Japan in his monumental cultural studies; and what he would have discovered had he done so. In answer to the first question, the major nations of the East did not fit his criteria in the 1930s—that of isolated, nonindustrialized groups whose foodstuffs were entirely indigenous, with limited foods coming in from the outside. China and Japan, while still relatively “traditional” in that time period, had a long history of trade with other nations; and both had a considerable amount of industry, even in the production of food.

However, Price would certainly have found it worthwhile to study the peoples of both nations and their neighbors, especially in light of recent controversy over high rates of degenerative disease among Western nations and the notion that China and Japan, with their low-fat, largely vegetarian diets, are relatively free of such problems. Indeed, popular books such as The China Study have portrayed the nations of Asia as regions in which a fiber-rich diet based on grains and vegetables offers substantial protection against cancer, heart disease and osteoporosis. Americans, they argue, should reduce consumption of meat, milk and animal fats and follow the Asian model.

CHINA IS A VAST COUNTRY with a wide diversity of ethnic groups and eating habits—and large differences between the lifestyles of rich and poor. In general, however, the Chinese recognize the relationship of diet to good health and believe that the ideal diet is one that stresses diversity and balance. Ancient texts focus on the importance of the five flavors (pungent, sour, sweet, bitter and salty); the five grains (wheat, glutinous millet, millet, rice and beans); the five tree fruits (peaches, plums, apricots, chestnuts and dates); the five vegetables (mallows, coarse greens, scallions, onions and leeks); and the five domestic animals (fowl, sheep, beef, horses and pigs).¹ Chinese tradition values meat, although not in excess, for its strengthening properties.

Chinese restaurant meals today—both in China and in the United States—are rich in animal foods, but for most of China’s history, the majority of Chinese people could not afford to include much in the way of meat or fish in their diets. Herein lies the great paradox of Chinese foodways. While a fundamental feature of Chinese diets today, and back in the 1930s, was the inclusion of a wide diversity of food items—everything from pickled ant eggs to dog hams—most Chinese, especially in rural areas, traditionally consumed a diet that was limited to just a few repeated foods. A 1946 survey of rural China indicated that 88 percent of the diet consisted of cereals and legumes, with only 5 percent vegetables, 3 percent meat and fish and 4 percent fats.²

Animal foods in the Chinese diet, while beyond the reach of many, are characterized by great diversity. The Chinese prefer omnivorous scavenging animals such as pig and chicken to beef and lamb, although beef and lamb—and more meat in general—were traditionally consumed by the northern Chinese, a population admired for their size and strength.

If the cowboy serves as the quintessential symbol of American food culture, the Chinese equivalent is the duck-herd—the peasant farmer guiding a line of ducks with a cane.^* Today, in this era of newfound prosperity, restaurants in China featuring duck are full!

Whatever the animal, the Chinese traditionally ate—and still eat—every part of it—organs, feet, tail and tongue. Packages of duck’s tongues are available even in Chinese markets in America, and shoppers in Chinese Walmarts can find chicken feet, live frogs, pig faces, whole dried fish, shark heads and sheep offal.³ Goose, pigeon, turkey, dog, frog, monkey and snake are available in Chinese open-air markets often sold live, for the Chinese put a great store on freshness. Even rat figures in accounts of traditional cuisine, and the aristocracy considered bear paw a great delicacy. Mouse testicles are popular for helping childless couples become pregnant,⁴ and a fast-food chain in Beijing called Baked Pig Face serves whole pig’s heads.^†⁵

Insects such as flies, gnats, earthworms, bees, cicadas, beetles, crickets, silkworm cocoons, waterbugs, locusts and stinkbugs all appear in Chinese cuisine, both as food and as medicine. The Chinese also cultivate caterpillars that have become infected with a fungus that roots in the caterpillar’s neck and grows upward to a height of six to eight inches. When both die, they become dry, hard and brown and are used as an ingredient in broth. Insects are a valuable source of protein and fat-soluble vitamins in the Chinese diet, especially that of the poor, but their use and importance are generally overlooked by researchers.⁶

Until recently, cooking fats included rendered duck fat or pig fat, along with small amounts of sesame oil. Traditionally vendors set up their stone grinders in the street and sold the oil immediately after extraction, so that it was fresh and healthful. Today most cooking oil is extracted in factories from rapeseed, soybeans, peanuts and cottonseed—processing that creates many toxic breakdown products.

Eggs are highly valued as brain food throughout Asia. One study found that mothers in the province of Chongqing followed a period of special feeding for the first four weeks after their baby’s birth. During this period they consumed up to ten eggs per day, along with large amounts of chicken and pork.⁷ The Chinese consume eggs preserved or fresh, often scrambled with vegetables and other ingredients. In the northern areas, a breakfast dish is prepared by placing a raw egg in a bowl and pouring hot soy milk over it. The mixture is eaten with a flat pancake. Sometimes a raw egg is mixed with hot rice and soy sauce.

RICE IS CHINA’S MOST IMPORTANT grain, consumed at all three meals in southern regions. Cultivation of domestic rice in China dates back eight thousand to thirteen thousand years, a practice that supplanted the use of wild rice varieties found in sites that date to the end of the Paleolithic era.⁸ These findings are consistent with what we have seen in other continents—the use of wild grains as a Paleolithic food.

A 1939 survey found that adult males in the region ate almost five hundred pounds of rice per year. In recent years, rice consumption in China as a percentage of calories has declined slightly, while consumption of meat and wheat have increased.^*⁹

Surprisingly, for the whole of China, consumption of rice lags behind consumption of wheat and sorghum. Millet and wheat production dominate the more arid regions of northern China—with millet consumed principally in the form of a fluffy porridge, and wheat made into noodles and bread, although in the poorest regions, wheat feeds the populace as a rough porridge. Barley, sorghum, corn, buckwheat, rye and oats constitute minor crops in China, but the total of them all adds substantially to the amount of carbohydrate food consumed by the populace.

In the distant past, rice and wheat nourished the population as whole grains or whole meal, probably after a long, slow steaming in the case of rice, or a fermentative soaking procedure in the case of wheat. Noodle production involved a period of stretching and sun-drying that amounted to a partial fermentation. Today these grains are consumed as white polished rice and white wheat flour, shorn of their valuable vitamins and minerals. But millet and the other minor grains are still consumed in whole form, as porridges, gruels or cakes. Congee, a watery porridge made from rice or other grains, is a common food, either eaten plain or with other ingredients such as meat, fish, vegetables or flavoring.

Since the end of the seventeenth century, those of the more prosperous classes have used hand grinders to remove the bran from rice, consuming the partially refined rice and giving the bran to animals, while the unpolished brown rice remained a food for the poor. Only since the advent of modern milling techniques has completely refined rice become the food for everyone.¹⁰

Surprisingly, we find fewer indications of fermentation of rice for food in the past than we do for other grains. A sour bread prepared from fermented rice is common in the Philippines. In China, special fermentation techniques for grains are mostly applied to wheat. A common food in northern China is meiminchin—wheat gluten inoculated with mold and fermented in molds for several weeks, then fermented longer after the addition of salt.¹¹

In general the Chinese do not add salt to food during cooking—rice is prepared without salt, for example—but because it is used in the production of condiments and pickled vegetables, Chinese food has a salty taste, and overall salt consumption is high. Most salt is produced by the evaporation of seawater in the coastal areas so that, unlike industrially processed salt in America, it provides a rich source of natural iodine.¹² Until recently, a large black market in salt thrived in China.¹³

SOY FOODS ARE WIDELY used in China as an adjunct to—not a replacement for—animal foods. The Chinese have perfected numerous ways of fermenting soy in order to neutralize phytic acid (which blocks absorption of minerals like zinc and calcium), enzyme inhibitors (which disrupt digestion), hemagglutinin (a clot-promoting substance that causes red blood cells to clump together), and goitrogens (which inhibit thyroid function). Soy contains high levels of phytoestrogens, which can cause endocrine disruption if eaten in more than small amounts—and these estrogenlike compounds remain even after a long period of fermentation. For this reason, soy provides only a limited number of calories in Asian cuisines. Soy consumption in China in the 1930s was estimated at about 10 grams per day (two teaspoons) or 1.5 percent of total calories, compared to 65 percent of calories from pork (meat and fat).^*¹⁴ Soy consumption is likely higher today due to the incursion of Western processed foods, most of which contain soy in the form of soy oil or soy protein.

Traditional preparation of soy milk begins with soaking until the beans become soft. The softened beans are ground into a mush on a stone grinder, using copious amounts of water. The mush is then put into a cloth bag and placed under a weight or heavy rock so that all the liquid is squeezed out. The resulting soy paste is then cooked in freshwater. Large amounts of scum that rise to the surface are carefully removed. To serve, raw egg or dried shrimp are placed in a bowl along with scallions, soy sauce, flavorings and vinegar, and the scalding soy milk is poured over. The vinegar causes the soy milk to curdle slightly. In traditional times, homemade soy milk was saved as a food for the elderly and nursing mothers in the belief that it stimulated breast milk, but was not used as a food for infants.^†¹⁵

Traditional tofu production in China combines fermented soybean paste with some interesting animal foods. Consider the following description in the memoir Sounds of the River by Da Chen, born in 1962:

Laid in the formation of a square were some of the typical Yellow Stone breakfast dishes called muie to accompany the rice porridge: salty baby sardines with shiny scales and popped eyes; tiny red fried peanuts, tiny because the red mountain soil compressed their growth, making them deformed and compact with flavor; and thread-thin slices of jolly blind jellyfish, the kind that swam along the warm coast with tiny little shrimps on their noses as seeing guides. Then there was the fermented tofu, so salty that I wondered where they got the salt from. As a child, I helped grind soybeans into pulp in a stone grinder and strain the pulp into a pure, milky liquid. Mom then treated it with some recipe that transformed the mixture into the tenderest tofu. She sliced the tofu thinly and had the sun bake it into curled bricks, which she dumped into a jar filled to the brim with fish sauce. The jar was sealed with mud, and when the lid was finally lifted months later, I’d see cute little worms swimming in the salty brine…

Sun-baked and fermented tofu, eaten with nutrient-dense animal foods like sardines, jellyfish, fish sauce and worms, is a far cry from modern tofu consumed with broccoli, the various steps in its production and the accompanying foods each playing a role in neutralizing or compensating for the various antinutrients in soy.^*

The real value of the soybean is that it serves as the basic ingredient in soy sauce and similar condiments, salty elixirs that give Asian food its unique character. The fermentation process for traditional soy takes six to eight months to complete. This long and careful procedure creates a mix of phenolic compounds, and naturally releases glutamic acid, that contribute to the unique taste and aroma of traditionally brewed soy sauce.^†¹⁶

An unsung dietary staple in China is mung bean starch, produced by an acidic bacterial fermentation that reduces the pH to about four and protects the starch granules from the spoilage and putrefaction that would occur in ground bean slurries.¹⁷ The resultant starch is the principal ingredient in clear “cellophane” noodles.

Various types of vinegars, fermented sauces made from oysters or fish, ginger, garlic, ginseng and a wide variety of peppers and spices contribute to traditional Chinese cuisine; these, too, have largely given way to industrial preparations in which MSG allows manufacturers to cut corners and use only minimal amounts of basic ingredients.

Since antiquity, the Chinese have used a number of sweeteners including honey, rice or barley malt, palm sugar (jaggery), sorghum syrup and dehydrated sugarcane juice, but only in moderation in accordance with the guiding concept of balance. Much like the other cultures explored in this book, the modern Chinese have adopted many Western habits of high sugar consumption. A recent study found that Chinese children in Malaysia derived as much as 30 percent of their total caloric intake as sugar in the form of candy, cookies, soft drinks and other sweets.¹⁸

Chinese cuisine includes a large variety of vegetables, although the diet of the poor can be limited to a very few, notably cabbage and various forms of radish. Sweet potato consumption is also high, especially among the poor.

Many vegetables are pickled by lactic-acid fermentation methods that provide vitamin C and valuable enzymes to a diet in which much of the other food is cooked. In his sixth-century BC Book of the Odes, Confucius stated, “having yan-tsai [salted vegetables], I can survive the winter…”

In traditional Chinese food culture, various fermentation methods accomplished the production of beers made from grains. These were opaque beverages, with a low alcohol content but rich in vitamins, minerals and enzymes, similar to opaque beers found in Africa.¹⁹ These opaque beers have given way to modern, factory-produced, pasteurized beers. The Chinese produce dozens of types of wine and distilled alcoholic beverages from rice.^* The national drink, of course, is tea. In Manchuria, fermentation of sweetened tea results in the delightful drink called kombucha, now trendy in the United States.

IN GENERAL, THE TRADITIONAL Chinese diet does not protect against cancer. The overall rate of cancer in China is comparable to that of Western nations. The Chinese have fewer cancers of the colon, lung and breast, but far greater levels of esophageal, stomach and liver cancer.^†²⁰ Heart disease mortality is greater in the United States, but the Chinese have more reported strokes.²¹ While the Chinese have made great strides in reducing the incidence of infectious disease and rates of infant mortality, these still remain major public health problems, especially in areas that are either crowded or remote. Tuberculosis and parasite infections remain common.

Of particular concern is the high rate of intellectual disability—over ten million cases in China, including hundreds of thousands with overt cretinism, especially in the central regions.²² This is blamed on a lack of iodine, and the United Nations has called for a World Bank–financed campaign to iodize salt in China. This will help the Chinese government eliminate the thriving black market in salt, but as naturally made Chinese salt already contains iodine, it is not likely to solve the problem. Another explanation is the blinding poverty of the region, where each village sports a population of intellectually disabled individuals whose families can afford to eat nothing more than wheat porridge.

In the 1980s, a group of researchers from Cornell University carried out a massive dietary survey—the so-called China Study—covering all twenty-five of China’s provinces, in an effort to determine food consumption and disease patterns. This study is often cited as proof that plant-based diets are healthier than those based on animal foods like meat and milk. Study director T. Colin Campbell claims that the Cornell findings suggest “that a diet high in animal products produces disease, and a diet high in grains, vegetables and other plant matter produces health.”^*²³ But the Cornell survey data, when carefully studied, does not support such claims.^†²⁴

What the Cornell data show is that meat intake in China was highest in the western border region and very low in a number of impoverished areas centering on Sian. They found that meat eaters had lower triglycerides and less cirrhosis of the liver—and that they took more snuff—but otherwise found no strong correlation, either negative or positive, with meat eating and any disease.

Some surprising and contradictory China Study findings were associated with egg consumption, with averages of about 15 grams per day in the northernmost parts of China, about 12 grams per day in the Shanghai region, and amounts bordering on zero in the impoverished area around Sian in central China. (An egg weighs about 50 to 60 grams.) However, another study found per capita egg consumption of 50 to 80 grams per day in the northern part of China,²⁵ which suggests that the participants in the Cornell Study were not truly representative of the Chinese population. The China Study found a positive association of egg consumption with the consumption of meat, beer, soy sauce, sea vegetables, sugar and “other oils” and a strong correlation with university education and employment in industry. Egg eaters had more cancers of the brain, lung and bowel, perhaps because egg consumption was highest in the polluted Shanghai region. They had less cirrhosis of the liver, fewer peptic ulcers and lower triglycerides. Egg consumption appeared to confer high protection against pulmonary diseases such as tuberculosis. There was no significant correlation of egg consumption with heart disease.

Fish consumption ranged from about 120 grams per day in seacoast areas to zero in remote inland regions. Fish consumption was positively associated with consumption of sugar, “other oils,” beer, liquor, meat and rice and negatively associated with consumption of salt, wheat and legumes. Fish eaters had more incidences of diabetes, nasal cancer and liver cancer, but less tuberculous, infectious disease, and rheumatism. Fish eaters had lower triglycerides. The data showed no significant correlation, either positive or negative, of fish eating with coronary heart disease, but did indicate a negative correlation of fish eating with pipe smoking.

Milk consumption was zero in the vast majority of the provinces. However, in the western border region, milk consumption averaged about one quart per person per day. (Whether this figure includes fermented milk products is not specified.) The rate of coronary heart disease in the western border region was about half that of Jiangxain and Longxian, where no milk products are consumed and where fat intake is under 10 percent of total calories. Milk consumption showed no strong correlation, either negative or positive, with any disease, but there was a high correlation of milk drinking with taking snuff.

Likewise, the percentage of caloric intake from fats, as determined by a three-day diet survey, showed no strong correlation, either positive or negative, with any disease. Fat intake ranged from 45 percent in the remote regions on the western border to as low as 6 percent in the impoverished Songxian district. Not surprisingly, people who drank milk and ate meat had the highest levels of dietary fat intake. Investigators lumped fats and oils together in the dietary recall questionnaire so that no conclusions could be drawn about the effects of animal fats such as lard and duck fat versus the effects of vegetable oils such as sesame, soy, cottonseed, canola and peanut; nor did the researchers look at consumption of organ meats or insects and concentrated animal foods like shrimp paste, all of which provide important fat-soluble vitamins in the Chinese diet. They did, however, find that the high-fat group tended to take snuff while people on low-fat diets smoked pipes.

In his introduction to the research results, study director T. Colin Campbell claims considerable contemporary evidence supporting the hypothesis “that the lowest risk for cancer is generated by the consumption of a variety of fresh plant products.”²⁶ Yet the Cornell researchers found that the consumption of green vegetables, which ranged from almost 700 grams per day in Jingxing to zero on the western border, showed no correlation, either positive of negative, with any disease. Dietary fiber intake seemed to protect against esophageal cancer, but was positively correlated with higher levels of tuberculosis, neurological disorders and nasal cancer—perhaps because there was a strong correlation between total fiber intake and pipe smoking. Fiber intake did not confer any significant protection against heart disease or most cancers, including cancer of the bowel.

All these correlations—and they are only correlations—make clear that the China Study does not provide us with much useful data, except perhaps on tobacco habits. This “study” is actually a survey, one that includes too many geographic and lifestyle variables to allow any conclusions as to cause and effect. Yet today, advocates of a plant-based diet invariably cite the China Study as conclusive proof that eating lots of plants and avoiding animal foods is the recipe for good health.

Given the current emphasis on soy foods, it is puzzling that the Cornell China Study researchers did not single out soy foods for study as a separate food item. Instead soy foods are lumped together with other pulses in the category of legumes. Legume consumption varied from 0 to 58 grams per day, with a mean of about 12 grams (less than one tablespoon). Assuming that two-thirds of legume consumption is soy, then the maximum consumption is about 40 grams (about three tablespoons) per day with an average consumption of about 9 grams (about two teaspoons). However, the Cornell study found that consumption of legumes was not strongly correlated with the prevention of any degenerative disease, results that cannot be extrapolated to the extravagant health claims of soy promoters, who advocate industrially processed soy products in amounts far greater than those found in the typical Chinese diet.^* (Actually, the most important legume in the Chinese diet is not the soybean but the mung bean, which germinates into beautiful crunchy sprouts and also serves as the chief ingredient in cellophane noodles, made from mung bean starch.^†)

The Cornell researchers found a relatively strong correlation between salt consumption with esophageal cancer and hypertension. Salt eaters had higher triglycerides, but no significantly higher rates of stroke or coronary heart disease. Salt eaters ate less fish and consumed less liquor that those with lower dietary levels of salt.

The Cornell project did not take data on the amount and extent of osteoporosis in China, so it is difficult to assess claims that bone loss is rare among Asians. They did determine that dietary calcium was low in China.^‡ The many references in Chinese medicine to the use of broth for old people and pregnant women indicates that bone loss is indeed a problem. Dishes considered important for pregnant women include fish heads in broth, eggshells dissolved in vinegar, pork ribs cooked in a sweet-and-sour sauce made with vinegar, and pickled pig’s feet prepared with vinegar and sugar. Pig’s feet chopped into small pieces and cooked in rice vinegar for as long as twelve hours, then sealed in containers, are traditional gifts for pregnant women and nursing mothers. A 1978 survey of the Peking (now Beijing) area reported mild rickets in 20 percent of children under seven years of age, but rickets appear to be rare in southern China, where consumption of seafood is high.²⁷

While the Cornell study, for all the millions spent on it, does not tell us much about the various effects of food on the etiology of disease in China, it does present some intriguing findings about tobacco habits. Those who consumed more animal protein were more likely to take snuff, while those who consumed more plant foods tended to be pipe smokers. Snuff takers had a higher caloric intake than pipe smokers, but total caloric intake had no strong correlations, either negative or positive, with any disease.^* In other words, the China Study does not tell us much at all about the Chinese diet.

Proponents of plant-based low-fat diets have argued that the Chinese cannot afford to devote more land to animal husbandry. Consider, however, the fact that the Chinese grasslands, concentrated in the semiarid lands of the north and west, cover nearly 40 percent of China, an area three times that under cultivation. Such lands do not support crop production but are highly suited for grazing purposes—for the production of meat and milk—and many Chinese have proposed efforts in this direction. During the 1980s, the Beijing Food Research Institute opposed any increase in beef or dairy production, opting instead for increased cultivation of valuable agricultural lands in soybeans in order to provide factory-produced, mineral-blocking, protein-poor soy-based foods as a substitute for meat to the populace.

Traditionally, the Chinese kept cattle mainly for draft purposes. However, in the early 1990s, economic reform aroused farmer enthusiasm for beef production; the rapid development of the beef cattle farming, slaughtering and processing industries soon followed. The cattle farming industry has adopted the free-range rather than the confinement model. Beef production rose from just over one million tons in 1990 to almost seven million tons. Today, China is the world’s third-largest beef producer after the United States and Brazil! The increasingly prosperous Chinese nation prefers to nourish itself on beef, not soybeans.²⁸

More beef is a good thing for the Chinese; the real threat is the influx of processed vegetable oils—newspaper articles on supermarkets in China show row upon row of industrial seed oils in plastic bottles, which the Chinese will embrace in response to Western propaganda against cholesterol and saturated fat in China’s traditional cooking fats rendered from ducks and pigs.

JAPAN IS PRESENTED TO the American public as a nation benefitting from all the dietary paradigms deemed politically correct. Their diet is low in fat, high in carbohydrates from plant foods, devoid of dairy and rich in soy foods, we are told, and for this reason the Japanese enjoy the longest life span in the world, with much lower rates of heart disease, osteoporosis, and breast and prostate cancers than the United States.

These are partial truths, and the relationship between diet and disease in Japan is more complex than we are led to believe. Close examination of the traditional Japanese diet proves that, although very different from the Western diet, Japanese cuisine embodies all the principles of nourishing traditional foodways: it is rich in fat-soluble vitamins from seafood and organ meats and in minerals from fish broth and seaweed, and contains plenty of lactofermented foods. Japanese preparation techniques eliminate most of the antinutrients in grains and legumes. As long as the Japanese get enough to eat, their diet is a healthy diet in many surprising ways.

As in many parts of China, rice is the main carbohydrate food in Japan, consumed with every meal. For the poor, it is the chief source of calories. However, the real basis of the Japanese diet is not rice but fish, consumed at more than 150 pounds per person per year ²⁹—almost one-half pound per person per day. This is about the same amount by weight as rice, but in terms of calories, fish provides a greater amount for most Japanese.

Fish consumed in Japan come from waters surrounding the island nation and from around the world. Japan imports millions of dollars’ worth of shrimp, salmon, trout and tuna every year. The Japanese also enjoy carp farmed in inland waters.

The Japanese usually consume fish fresh—even delivered directly to their doors by fishmongers—but they also eat fish in salted, dried and pickled forms. Fresh fish is grilled or baked and also eaten raw as sashimi. Generally there are two fish courses at each meal, one of cold fish and one of hot.

A typical Japanese fish dish is hoshizakana, fish that has been marinated for twenty hours in a mixture of soy sauce and sweet white wine, then hung up to dry for one day. It is then baked and served plain, without any sauce.³⁰

The Japanese value soups made of fish, including the organs and bones, as strengthening foods and good for anemia. Carp soup is the traditional food for women after childbirth. The soup, cooked for four to eight hours, contains whole carp, including the head, bones, eyes and all the organs except the gallbladder, along with barley miso and burdock root. After the birth of her child, the new mother consumes this nutrient-dense dish for four days in a row, or even longer if she has difficulty producing milk.³¹

The Japanese also eat many other animal foods including beef, pork, chicken, duck and eel. Beef consumption has climbed in recent years, some of it locally raised but much of it imported. The famous Kobe beef is tender and full of fat. The Japanese even import large quantities of beef offal.³² Consumption of beef liver, tripe and other organ meats is commonplace. Various organ meats are on the menu at specialty restaurants. Eel served at restaurants is often accompanied with a soup containing eel innards.

Beef, pork, and chicken are usually grilled and served with a sauce that contains soy sauce along with other ingredients such as mirin (a sweet wine), sake (alcoholic rice wine), vinegar, or sugar.

Almost without exception, Japanese sauces and marinades are based on soy sauce. But it would be a mistake to call soy a “staple” in the Japanese diet, in the way that fish and rice are staples. Dietary surveys indicate that the Japanese consume an average of about one-fourth cup of soy products per day, including the ubiquitous soy sauce.³³ Other soy foods include tofu, a precipitated product, and fermented soy foods such as miso, tempeh and natto. Until recently, these foods were produced at home or by artisans and added in small amounts to soups or used as seasonings. Natto has such a strong smell that restaurants serving it have separate natto -eating sections so that non-natto eaters can be spared the overpowering odor. Natto is a rich source of vitamin K₂—one of the few sources in the Japanese diet.

The Japanese recognize the fact that mature soybeans need careful processing to remove naturally occurring toxins.^* When they eat beans that are simply cooked, they use small red ones called azuki (or adzuki) beans. A dish of cooked rice and red beans serves for festive occasions, such as weddings and births. Red beans are also an ingredient in sweet cakes.

Japan is not a milk-drinking nation, so they say, but the statistics prove otherwise. Average consumption of dairy foods in Japan is about 186 pounds per person per year, more than the total for fish.³⁴ This is only one-third the amount consumed in the United States, but it is not negligible. Dairy products used in Japan include milk, yogurt, butter and ice cream. Japan has a small dairy industry but also imports milk products from Australia and New Zealand.

In general, the Japanese do not like sugary desserts. But they enjoy pounded rice (mochi) covered with sweet bean paste. Another dessert is mashed sweet potato or chestnuts covered with breading.

Noodles made with wheat flour, egg yolks and salt are an important feature in the Japanese diet; rice, mung beans, sweet potato or buckwheat may substitute for wheat. Noodles accompany chicken or duck, sometimes lobster, and often in broth.

A great variety of vegetables and fruits are on display in the shops and markets. Favorites include daikon radish, eggplant, bamboo shoots and many types of mushrooms. Most vegetables are consumed cooked, not raw. Instead of salads, boiled spinach or watercress is served cold, seasoned with soy sauce.

The Japanese diet may seem monotonous to Westerners, but the Japanese actually put a great emphasis on variety. In nutrition classes, Japanese children learn to eat thirty different foods a day, and to aim for one hundred different foods each week.³⁵

A fundamental component of the Japanese diet is fish broth, made in a variety of ways. Japanese chefs take pride in developing an individual style with broths. Fish soup made from arajiru, the discarded portions of the fish such as the head and bones, is a common traditional breakfast food. (The breakfast eater uses chopsticks to deftly remove the meat from the head, especially the meat behind the eye, which is extremely rich in vitamin A.) Usually, however, fish stock is made with dried sardines (niboshi) or dried bonito flakes or powder (katsuobushi). In the old days, housewives purchased bonito as a block of dried fish. The block was shaved into flakes with a “shaving box,” a wooden box with a thin slot lined with a blade. The shavings would fall into a drawer inside the box. When the desired amount of shavings filled the box, the capable cook pulled out the drawer and dumped the contents into a pot of boiling water. Sometimes broken-up chicken bones go into the stockpot as well. The addition of vegetables, chicken, pork, tofu or eggs transforms the broth into soup.

Dried kelp (kombu) and dried shiitake mushrooms are frequent ingredients in nourishing Japanese broths. The mushrooms are placed in a pot of water and removed just before the water comes to a boil, then replaced by dried sardines or bonito flakes.

Egg consumption in Japan is higher than in America (forty pounds per person per year, versus thirty-four in the United States).³⁶ The Japanese consider eggs a brain food.^* Eggs are consumed as omelets and custards and in soups. They are also an important ingredient in noodles and batters.

Another brain food in the Japanese diet is seaweed, which is added to soups, served as a vegetable, and used for wrapping sushi. Agar-agar, a gelatinlike product used extensively in Japan, is derived from seaweed. Seaweed provides an abundance of minerals, particularly iodine, which is so vital for normal thyroid function—which, in turn, is vital for normal brain function. Most likely, it is the presence of adequate iodine in the traditional Japanese diet that makes it possible for the Japanese to consume goitrogenic (thyroid-depressing) soy products on a daily basis without adverse effects.

The Japanese have traditionally used a variety of fats and oils in their cooking. In the past, delicious tempura—vegetables and fish dipped in batter and then deep-fried—went into a vat of hot sesame oil, rapeseed oil, whale oil, or rendered lard or beef tallow. Today, the Japanese are more likely to fry in cheap commercial vegetable oils, but lard is available at grocery stores in squeezable bottles, and beef fat and lard grease the skillets in the better restaurants. Use of shortening and margarine is rare.

Since World War II, the pattern of lipid intake in Japan has changed markedly. A threefold increase in the intake of saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids is a reflection of increased prosperity, which has allowed the Japanese to enjoy foods more interesting than fish heads and rice. Unfortunately, with the advent of cheap vegetable oils and processed foods, the Japanese diet has seen an increase in omega-6 fatty acids and a reduction of omega-3 fatty acids—just as we have in the United States. In a milestone review published in 1997,³⁷ Japanese investigators blamed the increase in cancer, heart disease, inflammatory disease such as asthma and allergies and even behavioral problems in Japan not on increases in saturated fat but on increases in omega-6 vegetable oil. According to the researchers, “Decreasing the n-6/n-3 ratio of foods is recommended for the suppression of ageing, carcinogenesis and atherosclerosis. This is because n-3 fatty acids suppress but n-6 fatty acids stimulate ischaemia/inflammation which causes increased free radical injuries. We suggest that a relative n-3 deficiency as evidenced by the very high n-6/n-3 ratios of plasma lipids might be affecting the behavioral patterns of a significant part of the younger generations in industrialized countries.” The Japanese are willing to acknowledge the adverse effects of vegetable oils, but in America, the blame still goes to saturated fats.

Fermented vegetables in the form of pickles accompany all traditional Japanese meals. They range from pickled cabbage to eggplant to daikon radish. Pickled foods are an important adjunct to a diet that includes raw fish because they help protect against intestinal worms, which can be a frequent problem in Japan. One folk custom is to consume pickled daikon radish with sushi and sashimi to “neutralize toxins.” Daikon radish is one of the best vegetables for supporting the growth of protective lactobacilli.

A typical recipe for pickling lettuce, cucumber and turnip calls for sprinkling the chopped or sliced vegetables with salt and allowing them to stand for about two days.³⁸ This combination is eaten as a separate course with rice. Pickled melon, prepared by covering melon slices with sake and mirin and sprinkling them with salt, stands for five days before serving as the last course of a meal.

An interesting fermented fish product called kusaya comes from the island of Izu. Mackerel and similar fish are soaked in a brine or “kusaya gravy,” which was used over and over again because salt was a rare material. After soaking, the fish was dried. In the unused period, the “gravy” was kept alive by adding just one fish fillet. Kusaya is distinguished from other dried fish by its strong, unique, peculiar odor. “If you broil kusaya in your house, the odor will not leave for three months,” say the Japanese.³⁹

The typical Japanese dish of sushi originated with funazushi, a type of round shellfish from Lake Biwa in the Shiga prefecture of Japan. The shellfish was cleaned, salted, washed and fermented for four to twelve months. During fermentation, funazushi develops several kinds of organic acids such as lactic acid, acetic acid, propionic acid and butyric acid, all of which contribute to its distinctive sour taste and peculiar odor. The pickled crustacean was sliced and served on rice. In former times, those who could enjoy funazushi received recognition as gourmets. Once an important dish in the area around Lake Biwa, the catch of shellfish is decreasing year by year due to water pollution, introduced species and shoreline destruction, thus making funazushi a rare and expensive food.

The main fermented drink in Japan is a rice drink called amazake, prepared by boiling a block of malted rice until it becomes soft and drinkable. Salt and sugar are added to taste. In the winter, amazake is available from vending machines.^*

All meals in Japan are served with a weak green tea, made with one teaspoon of tea to six teacups of water. Black tea, coffee and milk are also common beverages. Whole milk is available to schoolchildren and is recognized as a healthy food, one that helps Japanese children grow taller than their ancestors.

The Japanese have interesting ideas about beverages. On a hot day, most Japanese people, especially older Japanese, prefer hot green tea to anything cold. They say they want something the same temperature as their body, or that something cold will make them sweat more. In wintertime, they often add ginger to warm drinks, as ginger is said to be a warming food. The Japanese believe that drinking water is likely to make you fat!⁴⁰

Beer is a common beverage, and also recognized as one that causes weight gain. Sumo wrestlers, who can weigh as much as five hundred pounds, put on weight by consuming large quantities of beer, as well as lots of rice and a nourishing stew called chankonabe.

While the Japanese diet is held up as the paradigm of natural eating, Japan is also home to the world’s quintessential imitation flavor: monosodium glutamate (MSG). Originally extracted from seaweed, MSG activates glutamate ^* receptors on the tongue and tricks the body into thinking it has eaten meat. Today most of the world’s MSG is produced through a chemical process by Ajinomoto, a Japanese company, and is no longer derived from natural sources.

MSG is used to make cheap soy sauces, thus driving out artisanal producers who traditionally took great care and up to three years to produce the delicious fermented elixir. Factory-produced soy sauce can be turned out in the space of three days and contains, besides neurotoxic MSG, many carcinogens.

MSG was the main flavor for Japanese rice rations during World War II, and it is said that Americans who loved the taste of these rations helped introduce the flavoring into the United States. Today it flavors almost all processed foods, including those manufactured in Japan. Yet health-conscious Japanese recognize the dangers and search for the label “No MSG” on more expensive noodles and processed foods.

Many Japanese also recognize the dangers of McDonald’s and other fast foods that are making inroads in Japan, and they deliberately adhere to traditional foodways. Some home cooks still make all traditional foods by hand, from amazake to miso. Typical of foods still produced by traditionalists and artisans are various preparations of the famous umeboshi plum. The plum trees grow in the region of Mito, in Ibaraki Prefecture, where a park is home to two thousand plum trees, attracting three million visitors per year. Each year thousands of Japanese women gather the famous umeboshi plums to make all sorts of delights, including salty pickled plums. Well-aged pickled umeboshi plums are a great delicacy—some of them are fermented for as long as thirty years!^†

The manner in which the Japanese present their food is always attractive and distinctive, usually with handsome serving dishes and a great sense of proportion and harmony, and often with elaborate ceremony. On ceremonial occasions and at banquets, a number of bowls and dishes are set before guests so they may have a wide choice. Leftovers are carefully packed in decorated boxes and presented to guests when they leave.

Even lunch boxes—called bento boxes—are an art form in Japan, containing beautifully arranged foods such as large shrimp, rice rolled in seaweed, fish and pieces of fruit. One company in Japan prepares as many as fifty thousand of these lunch boxes per day.⁴¹ Many Japanese mothers get up very early to make lunch boxes containing neatly arranged portions of fish, meat, rice balls, pickles and fruit for their children and husbands.

The Japanese suffered greatly before and during World War II. There were many food shortages, particularly of fats and animal foods. Tuberculosis was common. Many Japanese lived almost entirely on rice during the war.

It was during the postwar years that the American researcher Ancel Keys wrote his famous Seven Countries Study in which he included groups from the Japanese districts of Tanushimaru and Ushibuka. He noted that the Japanese in these two regions had very low levels of serum cholesterol, consumed a diet extremely low in saturated fat and cholesterol, and had low rates of coronary heart disease. It was primarily this Japanese data that allowed Keys and others to conclude that consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol caused heart disease.

Critics have pointed out that Keys omitted from his study many areas of the world where consumption of animal foods is high and deaths from heart attack are low, including France—the so-called French paradox. But there is also a Japanese paradox. In 1989, Japanese scientists returned to the same two districts that Keys had studied. In an article titled “Lessons for Science from the Seven Countries Study,”⁴² they noted that per capita consumption of rice had declined, while consumption of fats, oils, meats, poultry, dairy products and fruit had all increased. Between 1958 and 1989, protein intake rose from 11 percent of calories to about 15 percent and fat intake rose from a scanty 5 percent to over 20 percent. Mean cholesterol levels increased from 150 mg/dl in 1958 to 188 mg/dl (still low) in 1989. During the period, mean body mass gradually increased, with the percentage of the population that was overweight rising from 8 to about 13. High blood pressure became more common, while the percentage of smokers decreased from 69 in 1958 to 55 in 1989.

During the postwar period of increased animal consumption, the Japanese average height increased three inches and the age-adjusted death rate from all causes declined from 17.6 to 7.4 per 1,000 per year. Although the rates of hypertension increased, stroke mortality declined markedly. Deaths from cancer also went down in spite of the consumption of animal foods.

The researchers also noted—and here is the paradox—that the rate of myocardial infarction (heart attack) and sudden death did not change during this period, in spite of the fact that the Japanese weighed more, had higher blood pressure and higher cholesterol levels, and ate more fat, beef and dairy foods.

Misconceptions about the state of health in Japan abound. It is true that the Japanese have lower rates of cancer than the United States, although they are by no means cancer-free.⁴³ Japanese have low rates of lung cancer (even though they smoke far more than Americans) and low rates of breast, prostate, reproductive, colon and rectal cancers compared to the United States, which is attributed to the fact that they consume more soy and less meat, fat and dairy than Americans. But cancer rates went down in Japan during the period when consumption of animal foods went up. And the Japanese actually consume far less soy than Americans, because even today, they do not consume much soybean oil or many foods containing isolated soy protein. In fact, the most likely explanation for high levels of breast and prostate cancer in the United States compared to Japan is the high levels of altered and damaged fats from industrially processed seed oils in American convenience foods.

Fresh fish, rich in vitamin A and omega-3 fatty acids, is one component of the Japanese diet that protects them against lung cancer. A study carried out at the Cancer Centre Hospital in Aichik Mapan looked at the diets of more than four thousand healthy people and another thousand with lung cancer.⁴⁴ They found that both men and women who ate large amounts of fresh fish were significantly less likely to develop lung cancer. A diet that included salted or dried fish in place of fresh fish did not confer the same protective qualities.

The Japanese suffer from very high rates of stomach cancer, and relatively high rates of cancers of the pancreas, liver and esophagus, the so-called “Asian types” of cancer. There are many explanations for this trend, none of them proven. As with the Chinese, the most common theory blames the use of highly salted foods such as soy sauce and salted pickled vegetables. But other dietary components are equally suspect, including high levels of irritating talc present in white rice and carcinogens in modern processed soy sauce. A final explanation—one not accepted by mainstream science—is the widespread use of microwave ovens by modernized Japanese. Japan was the first country to adopt the microwave, which seemed to many a safer and more sensible way to cook food in tiny Japanese kitchens than the old-fashioned gas burner or stove.⁴⁵

Japan has many lessons to teach us about the risk of generalization in scientific studies. All claims about heart disease in Japan should be viewed with skepticism because the Japanese consider it shameful to die of heart disease but honorable to die of stroke.⁴⁶ Predictably, deaths reported on Japanese death certificates as due to stroke are much higher than deaths reported as due to a heart attack.

Japanese women do not suffer from hot flashes, we are told, but some investigators believe that hot flashes are “underreported,” due to the shyness of Japanese women. Soy food promotion material states that “there is no word for hot flashes in Japan” without acknowledging the fact that there is no word for hot flashes in English, either. We use two words to describe the condition, and it is likely that Japanese women use some sort of euphemism.

Another claim is that the Japanese do not suffer from osteoporosis. But according to a 1998 study carried out by the Tokyo Institute of Gerontology,⁴⁷ Japanese women have much higher rates of osteoporosis than American women—one in three versus one in eleven. Furthermore, they found that bone mass deterioration begins much earlier in Japanese women, at age twenty versus age thirty-four in the United States.

According to the statistics, the Japanese have the longest life span in the world. Built into those numbers is a very low rate of infant mortality compared to the United States. Japan was one of the first countries to practice widespread birth control; the Japanese deliberately keep their families small. Great care and attention is lavished on children, starting with the mother’s diet during pregnancy, and outright poverty in Japan is rare. When the high infant mortality rate in America is discounted, American men have life spans equal to those of Japanese men and American women live a little longer than Japanese women.⁴⁸

In his doctoral thesis about coronary heart disease in Japanese emigrants, British physician Dr. Michael Marmot described another Japanese paradox.⁴⁹ Dr. Marmot discovered that when the Japanese in Hawaii maintained their cultural traditions, they were protected against heart attacks, even though their cholesterol increased as much as in Japanese emigrants who adopted a Western lifestyle and who died from heart attacks almost as often as did native-born Americans. The most striking aspect of Dr. Marmot’s findings was the fact that emigrants who became accustomed to the American way of life, but preferred low-fat Japanese food, had heart disease twice as often as those who maintained Japanese traditions but preferred high-fat American food.

Dr. Marmot proposed the theory that certain factors in the traditional Japanese culture protected the Japanese from heart attacks in spite of a high-fat diet. He noted that the Japanese place great emphasis on group cohesion, group achievement and social stability. Members of the stable Japanese society enjoy support from other members of their society and thus are protected from the “emotional and social stress” that Marmot believed to be an important contributing factor to heart attacks. The Japanese traditions of togetherness contrast dramatically with the typical American emphasis on social and geographic mobility, individualism and striving ambition, said Dr. Marmot.

But is life less stressful among the traditional Japanese? “Group cohesion” and “group achievement” can also translate into unrelenting pressure and stress. Is the traditional Japanese family man, striving to perform and bring honor to his family, under less pressure than the Westernized Japanese bloke who has decided to chuck it all and hang out on the beach? And is the Japanese American living under America’s wide-open skies, where opportunity abounds, under more pressure than his relatives in Japan, where opportunities are fewer and where crowding is commonplace? The Japanese people, including schoolchildren, work long hours, travel miles to school and work, and often have only one day a week free. The pressure on children to do well in school is intense, and the suicide rate among Japanese young people is among the highest in the world.

What Dr. Marmot’s study really tells us is that increased animal fat in the Japanese diet protects them from heart disease in spite of their stressful lifestyle, not the reverse. High rates of heart disease among Americans should be blamed on processed foods based on industrial seed oils, not animal fats and a high-stress lifestyle.

Researchers espousing the dogma that saturated fats cause disease have consistently ignored evidence showing that saturated fats actually protect against heart disease and cancer. The many studies of the Japanese also ignore two very important sources of saturated fat in their diet.

One of these sources is Spam, the canned pork product provided to American soldiers during World War II. Americans may have loved the taste of Japanese rice rations, but the Japanese loved our rations even more. Spam provided exactly those dietary components that had been missing through the years of poverty and privation—animal protein and fat. In a nation with a history of resistance to foreign influence, Spam immediately became popular as a snack food. Spam musubi consists of a slice of Spam soaked in soy sauce on top of a bed of rice and wrapped in seaweed—a convenient morsel resembling sushi. Spam musubi sells at local convenience stores, including 7-Eleven stores, in Hawaii. In fact, Spam consumption in Hawaii is higher than total Spam consumption in all the other forty-nine states combined due to its popularity among Japanese Americans.

The other source of saturated fat in the Japanese diet is, surprisingly, white rice, a refined carbohydrate that the body efficiently turns into saturated fat. As long as the diet is rich in fat-soluble vitamins from fish and organ meats, and minerals from broth and seaweed, white rice can be consumed without adverse effects. In fact, for the Japanese eating a traditional diet, it is beneficial, providing the substrate for saturated fats that the diet may lack. Macrobiotic proponents claim that the traditional Japanese diet was based on whole brown rice, not refined white rice. It is said that the first samurai ate brown rice while the rest of the nobility ate white rice. Then the samurai slowly “softened” and started eating white rice. But the true explanation for the use of white rice may be somewhat different. Brown rice that is not soaked and fermented, as was done traditionally in India, may block mineral absorption and cause intestinal problems. The Japanese prefer the taste and texture of white rice, and this preference may reflect a profound intuition that when rice is consumed on a daily basis, it should be refined, not whole, unless a long and careful preparation is observed.

The challenge for the Japanese, like the challenge for all countries in the process of modernization, is to resist the temptations of processed foods. But Japan faces an additional challenge, and that is to resist the advice of meddling American health researchers who are telling them to eliminate vital components of their traditional diets—beef, pork, lard, tallow and even white rice. Better to pay attention to a few problematic additives such as MSG, talc in rice and impurities in salt, and to protect artisanal food production from the cutthroat policies of the food processing industry. And one more piece of advice to the Japanese: throw out the microwave.

THE FOOD OF KOREA holds special interest in today’s climate of political correctness, for while Korean cuisine is heavily influenced by China, it differs in one important respect—a reliance on beef as the main source of meat. Pork is the main meat of China, and fish serves as the preferred meat in traditional Japanese cuisine; Koreans eat plenty of seafood and pork, as well as some chicken, but the distinguishing characteristic of this Asian diet is the frequent use of beef. Consumption of beef is more common among the affluent who typically eat beef several times per week; the less-well-to-do consume more pork.

Beef consumption and preparation in Korea reflects a historical Mongol influence. A popular beef dish in Korea is one of the fattiest cuts—beef short ribs—prepared with a spicy sauce; or thinly sliced flank steak or brisket, marinated in a sauce made from toasted sesame oil, garlic, onion, sugar, pepper and soy sauce and broiled on a small charcoal grill. Skewered beef, ground beef, boiled beef and salted beef feature prominently in Korean cookbooks—along with recipes for offal including liver, tongue and tripe. A popular hors d’oeuvre or snack is dried beef, similar to beef jerky. Thinly sliced beef is marinated in a spicy sauce made from soy sauce, garlic, ginger and toasted sesame oil and dried in the sun or in a very low-temperature oven. Beef is also frequently eaten raw.

Since 1970, consumption of livestock products such as meat in Korea has increased almost fivefold, while consumption of rice has declined. Korean farmers raise over two million head of Korean native cattle per year, mostly on small farms owning just a few steers. As beef consumption has increased with recent prosperity, so have imports; today less than half of all Korean beef comes from domestic cattle; much of the rest comes from the United States.⁵⁰

Whatever the animal, the Koreans eat every part of it. Eating chicken means eating the meat, skin, gizzard, liver and feet—chicken feet roasted in spicy sauce is a popular side dish to accompany alcoholic beverages. All parts of the pig are used, including head, intestines, liver, kidney and other internal organs. The Koreans enjoy their pork steamed, stewed, boiled and smoked—they especially enjoy grilled fatty pork belly. Korean stews can include just about any kind of meat or organ meat, even blood sausage and Spam.

Another important source of protein in Korea is dog meat—even as late as 2006, dog meat was the fourth most commonly consumed meat in South Korea.⁵¹ Korean tradition views dog meat as a kind of health tonic rather than a dietary staple.

Koreans enjoy seafood of every type, including shrimp, oysters, squid, crab, clams, abalone, snapper, cod, perch and whiting. Fish and shellfish are steamed or eaten raw. Nutrient-rich shrimp sauce, made of tiny preserved shrimp cured in salty brine, serves as a flavoring, and small dried shrimp are added to many dishes.

Eggs find their way into the Korean diet as egg custard, egg batters and egg pancakes, and not separately as a breakfast food. In fact, Koreans eat the same foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

With postwar prosperity, Koreans have increased their consumption of both fish and flesh. By the late 1990s, meat consumption in Korea was 88 pounds per year and fish consumption 110 pounds per year—that translates to over one-half pound of animal protein per day. At the same time, rice consumption has declined while consumption of bread and noodles has increased.⁵²

In the pre-modern era, barley and millet were the main staple grains of Korea, along with wheat, sorghum and buckwheat. Rice is not indigenous to Korea but was introduced from China during the Three Kingdoms period (57 BC to AD 668); as imported rice was expensive, most Koreans stretched it with other grains—consuming rice with barley and rice with beans. The Koreans have preferred white rice since its introduction. Rice serves as the main ingredient in cakes and beverages as well as cooked down into congee or gruel.

Typically, Koreans prepare rice by soaking it overnight—a practice we have not seen in other Asian countries. The next day, the rice is brought to a boil, cooked for about a half hour, and then gently steamed for several hours. Rice shows up in various types of rice cakes, which are colored white, green and pink, or mixed with nuts and other seeds, and sold as convenience foods. “Five-grain rice,” a combination of glutinous rice, black beans, sweet beans, sorghum and millet, often replaces plain rice at family meals. Additional carbohydrates are provided by potatoes and sweet potatoes; noodles made from wheat, buckwheat, sweet potatoes, mung beans or rice; or from various types of dumplings and cakes.

Traditionally the Koreans fermented, roasted or malted grains before turning them into dumplings and noodles—Korean markets carry wheat malt flour, barley malt flour, fermented soybean flour, roasted five-grain powder and potato starch, all of which are easier to digest than flours made with whole grains and legumes that have not been properly prepared to neutralize phytic acid and other antinutrients.

Soybeans play a minor but important role in Korean cooking, as soy sauce, as tofu or bean paste added to soups as a thickener or mixed with eggs. Mung beans are an overlooked staple, ground and made into a porridge, as an ingredient in pancakes, or fermented to extract the starch for cellophane noodles. These are consumed with a variety of ingredients including vegetables and blood sausage.

The Koreans eat vegetables with every meal, including radish, cabbage, cucumber, potato, sweet potato, spinach, bean sprouts, scallions, chiles, seaweed, zucchini, mushrooms, lotus root and lots and lots of garlic. A unique feature of Korean cuisine is its emphasis on wild roots, wild mushrooms and fern shoots, gathered from the forests and mountainous areas. Koreans also frequently consume seaweed, particularly kelp, which is an excellent source of iodine and trace minerals.

Enzyme-rich fermented foods accompany every meal, principally as kimchi, a spicy condiment made from cabbage, radish, cucumber and fermented fish or shrimp sauce. In the summer, Koreans still make kimchi every day. In the autumn, the whole family joins in to make winter kimchi, which is stored in large earthenware jars and buried in the ground so that just the mouth of the jar protrudes above the surface. South Koreans eat an average of forty pounds of kimchi per year.

Korea boosts a bewildering variety of fermented condiments such as pickled cucumbers, garlic, fish, crab, squid, anchovies, jellyfish, shrimp and many flavorful fermented sauces and pastes made from fish, shrimp, red beans and soybeans. These combine with typical seasonings, including red and black pepper, cordifolia (an herb of the mallow family), mustard, schisandra,^* garlic, onion, ginger, leek, scallion and delicious toasted sesame oil, with its unique smoky taste.

Sesame oil is the chief oil used in Korean cooking, although meat fats are used for cooking noodles. Wild sesame oil, also called perilla oil, rich in omega-3 fatty acids, is not used for cooking but consumed by the spoonful as a health food, or mixed with raw egg.

On the whole, Korean cuisine is low in fat compared to that of China. Chinese food is characterized by the stir-fry technique and the use of rich sauces. The Japanese eat many things raw or deep-fried, but most Korean dishes are grilled or prepared as stews.

Medicinal foods include ginseng, chicken, black goat, abalone, eel, carp, beef bone soups, pig kidneys and dog. A soup of beef broth with added kelp and rice is considered an important dish for pregnant women.

As we have seen in the South Seas and in Africa, the centerpiece of any Korean meal is the staple carbohydrate food, such as rice or other grains; everything else is a side dish (called banchan)^† or a soup or stew (which are not banchan).

A distinguishing feature of Korean cuisine is the use of bone broth. Most meals begin with soup based on a mineral-rich broth made from long-simmered beef bones, sometimes with the head and intestines included in the pot. Korean stores carry powdered bone and fish powders to facilitate the process of making broth. Dried anchovies along with kelp form the basis of a common fish stock. The addition of vegetables including radishes, cabbage and mushrooms, as well as meat, tofu, seafood, rice, noodles and spices turn broth into a soup.

Banquet chicken broth from the period of Korean kings (lasting until the end of the nineteenth century) calls for five chickens, five abalones, ten sea cucumbers, twenty eggs, half a bellflower root, mushrooms, two cups black pepper, two peeled pine nuts, starch, soy sauce and vinegar.

Korea is famous for seolleongtang, a broth made of beef bones to which slices of beef brisket, rice and noodles are added. Seolleongtang may be eaten at the beginning of a meal, but it also serves as a popular snack food, eaten morning, noon and night, and available at numerous mom-and-pop-style cafés—the Korean equivalent of McDonald’s, the difference being that the fast food of Korea, produced by traditional methods, is actually good for you!

In general, Korea is not a tea-drinking nation. In the old days, the water in China and Japan required boiling in order to make it fit to drink—and tea was added to make the hot water palatable. Korea, however, was blessed with pure mineral water that did not require boiling, so widespread tea drinking did not take hold. Today, ginseng is often used as a base for herbal drinks, and as a hot drink. Other hot drinks feature roasted barley, cinnamon or lemons. A variety of punches made from peaches, strawberries, cherries, lemons, pomegranate seeds and persimmons can be found in Korean cookbooks. One popular beverage is sweetened and fermented rice water. Korean alcoholic beverages include a weak medicinal wine brewed from rice, and a stronger distilled beverage made from grain. Often flowers or fruits are added to these brews to produce plum-ginger wine, magnolia wine, hundred-flower wine and chrysanthemum wine.

An opaque Korean “beer” called makgeolli or takju reminds us of similar beverages from Africa. Also called “farmers’ alcohol,” the milky, sweet beverage is made from rice and has an alcohol content of 6 to 7 percent. Production involves using mold grown on wet rice as a starter, rather than malting, and fermenting the mashed rice for about a week. In addition to alcohol, takju contains enzymes, lactobacilli, lactic acid, amino acids and B vitamins. Folk medicine in Korea values this opaque beer for boosting metabolism, relieving fatigue and improving the complexion.

Despite the impact of the West on South Korea, and its embrace of industrialization, traditional Korean cuisine has changed relatively little. Like the French, the Koreans take food very seriously. Koreans believe that the happiness of a family depends on the quality of food served in the household. For Koreans who have emigrated to the United States, the ties to their native diet are less strong. While Korean markets in the United States are filled with a huge variety of Korean foods, from fresh seafood to fermented condiments, they also sell bread, cakes and pastries made with white flour and industrial seed oils. Candies made with sugar and high-fructose corn syrup take up far more shelf space than traditional sweets based on grains, seeds and honey or malt syrup.

The challenge for Koreans in their homeland will be to remain faithful to their traditional diets, while increasing the amount of animal foods, particularly animal fats, available to the poor, and reducing carcinogens in their environment and food supply. The great challenge for Koreans in America will be to resist adding sugary, devitalized foods to their healthy traditional cuisine.

THE FOODS OF THAILAND do not fit the low-fat, high-fiber, largely vegetarian paradigm said to protect us against disease. There’s no denying that the delicious, spicy cuisine of Thailand is rich in saturated fat from coconut oil and lard, relatively low in fiber, and features many and varied animal foods. Yet a 1962 comparison of autopsy reports on a group from Bangkok with a group from the United States found that coronary occlusion or myocardial infarction was eight times more frequent in the United States, diabetes was ten times more frequent, and high blood pressure about four times more frequent.⁵³ Even more intriguing is the fact that Thailand has a very low rate of cancer compared to other countries around the world; in 1996, Thailand rated fiftieth in frequency of cancer compared to other nations.⁵⁴ Today, Thailand is not even listed among the fifty nations where cancer rates are the highest.⁵⁵ Here is yet another paradox—like the French paradox or the Japanese paradox—that the “experts” would rather ignore than explain.

“Thai cooking is an art form,” writes Pinyo Srisawat in The Elegant Taste of Thailand,⁵⁶ and as anyone who has frequented a Thai restaurant knows, a particularly delicious art form. Mouth-watering curries and soups made from chicken or fish broth, creamy with whole coconut milk, offer the palate a variety of delicious spices and flavors, including coriander, anise, cumin, nutmeg, lemongrass, chile, ginger, turmeric, basil, mint, garlic and lime. Seafood is plentiful in the Thai diet, including fresh saltwater and freshwater fish, mackerel, shrimp, crab and eels, along with salted fish and dried fish. Fermented fish sauce and shrimp paste are popular seasonings. Pork and beef are consumed by those who can afford them, often raw or pickled. Other animal foods less likely to feature on restaurant menus, but consumed in the villages, include duck and chicken and their eggs, water buffalo, and more unusual items like snails, caterpillars, lizards, frogs, rats, snakes, squirrels and other small animals.

Plant foods include eggplant, onions, cabbage, baby corn, mushrooms, kale, mustard greens, radish, celery, cucumber, lettuce, several varieties of vegetable gourd, water chestnuts and swamp cabbage, which grows in ditches and rice paddies. Fruits include plums, tamarinds and bananas. Two plant foods are particularly associated with Thai cuisine. One is the kaffir lime (Citrus hystrix), with a distinctive wrinkled skin. The rind and leaves give a wonderful flavor to soups and curries. The other is bitter melon (Momordica charantia), of which there are several varieties. Bitter melon looks like a lime-green elongated cucumber with a furrowed, convoluted rind. The pulp is very bitter—an acquired taste for Americans—but the Thais are fond of it and believe it has potent healing qualities.^*

Soy foods play a minor role in Thai cooking. Bean curd is a common ingredient in soups, while fermented soybeans, soybean paste and soy sauces serve as flavorings. The Thai consume other legumes in larger quantities, such as black beans and mung beans, either sprouted or as an ingredient in sweets. Yard-long beans and winged beans serve as vegetables.

Overall, the traditional Thai diet uses sweeteners sparingly. Unrefined cane sugar or palm sugar go into desserts made from coconut, fermented glutinous rice and bean pastes.

Thai dishes are always served with rice. In fact, the generic term for anything served with rice is “not rice.” Long-grain, nonglutinous rice is favored in the central and southern parts of Thailand, while sticky or glutinous rice is the mainstay in the northern and northeastern regions of the country. With few exceptions, the Thais use polished white rice. Fermented glutinous rice flour features in noodles, cakes and other products.

In the early 1950s, as a kind of practice session for the larger China study (which began in 1983), a group of investigators from Cornell University made a detailed survey of food habits in Bang Chan, a village in the rice-growing region twenty miles northeast of Bangkok.⁵⁷ According to their surveys, about four-fifths of calories came from rice in prosperous households as well as those less well-off. A few families still consumed home-milled rice, a method that removed most, but not all, of the bran and other nutrients. The vast majority, however, took their rice to a local machine mill which returned the product to them in the form of thoroughly refined white rice. Although the machine mills are relatively new to Thailand, the practice of hand-milling or home pounding seems to date from ancient times, and was carried out even though it involved a good deal of work. If brown rice was ever used in Thai cooking, the memory of this custom is buried in antiquity. The bran or polishings from hand-milled rice go to chickens and other livestock, and were never consumed by humans. In fact, one peasant explained to the investigators from Cornell that the reason he continued to hand mill, when machine milling was readily available, was that if he took his rice to the local mill, the miller would keep the polishings for himself, and rice bran made excellent chicken feed!

According to the Cornell study, common protein foods for the villagers of Bang Chan included fish—mostly freshwater fish raised in ponds—some pork and eggs. The researchers admitted that the villagers used lard for frying. Chicken and other fowl were foods for feast days. The meat of water buffalo was available when a buffalo became too old to work, and dried beef paste was also used as a flavoring in cooking. The Cornell researchers did not discuss what was done with the internal suet and slab of back fat from the older buffalos that were butchered. The amounts can be considerable—one animal may yield well over one hundred pounds of valuable suet and tallow. We never learn what happens to the voluminous organs and intestine of the culled cow, but it is reasonable to assume they were not thrown away.

Other animal foods enjoyed by the villagers included turtles, snails, eels, frogs, cobras and other snakes. Field rats, available all year long, were roasted. In general, the villagers prepared their own fermented shrimp paste and sauce. Many families grew herbs and bananas in kitchen gardens, but few vegetables. Instead they gathered swamp cabbage from the canals, or purchased vegetables.

Given the emphasis on white rice in the Thai diet, it was not surprising to find that one of the country’s chief health problems, particularly among the poorer families in the villages, was beriberi, a vitamin B–deficiency disease. The Cornell investigators were obliged to note that those families who did not suffer from the disease ate more animal foods, particularly beef, which they could afford to purchase. Ironically, those families with few chickens ate more eggs because those with numerous fowl sold their eggs in the market.

The Cornell investigators noted that overall intake of protein, vitamins and minerals among all but the poorest villagers seemed adequate, with the exception of calcium, although there were few signs of calcium deficiency except for short stature. Probably calcium levels were higher than those measured in staple foods, due to the use of bone broths in soups and unshelled shrimp in shrimp paste.

The other major health problem in Thailand is that posed by parasites and other pathogens in drinking water, and overall conditions deemed unsanitary. The Cornell investigators noted that “untreated water was the customary beverage with meals. Ordinarily no distinction was made in the source of drinking water for children and adults, although boiled water was given to mothers and infants to drink during the post-partum rest period.”

The investigators noted that during the monsoon season, rain caught in tubs provided water for drinking and washing. Stored rainwater may be relatively clean, but overall conditions make germ-conscious Westerners squirm. During the rainy season, high water flooded the ground in Bang Chan but “caused time-consuming inconvenience only in the earth-floored cottages where it was necessary to keep the rice stores and chickens dry, move the cook-stove, and either build plank walks or cook standing ankle deep in water.”

When the supply of rainwater ran out, villagers drank water from the canals, rice paddies and fishponds. In general, there were no sewage plants or garbage collection systems in the villages—all garbage and human and animal waste went into the fields and waterways. Given the fact that until recently, most Thai people—and their livestock—consumed water that can only be described as filthy, and that both animal and plant foods serve as hosts to numerous parasites and pathogens,⁵⁸ it seems miraculous that the entire nation did not succumbed to food-and water-borne illnesses. On the contrary, most Western tourists express amazement at the sight of healthy, smiling children swimming in the murky waters of Bangkok’s canals.

The answer lies in the protective factors inherent in the traditional Thai diet. Pickled garlic, onion and peppers, consumed frequently as condiments, inhibit the development of parasite eggs.⁵⁹ The practice of fermenting pork and other meats kills the larvae of the trichinosis organism.⁶⁰ Native maklua berries are an effective treatment for hookworm.⁶¹

But the most protective factor in the Thai diet—and one most ignored by investigators back in 1950—is the lauric acid found in coconut products. Coconut oil contains almost 50 percent of this twelve-carbon saturated fat, which the body turns into monolaurin, a substance that efficiently kills parasites, yeasts, viruses and pathogenic bacteria in the gut.

Coconut oil provides additional benefits: it strengthens the immune system; it promotes optimal development of the brain and nervous system; it protects against cancer and heart disease; and it promotes healthy bones. Finally, coconut oil seems to be the best fat for ensuring the proper uptake of omega-3 fatty acids into the tissues.⁶² This may explain the beautiful, velvety skin tone of the Thai people. Tiny dried shrimp sautéed in coconut oil and formed into a cake is typical of Thai dishes that are both delicious and nutritious—rich in vitamin D, calcium, high quality protein, omega-3 fatty acids and protective saturated fats.

The Cornell investigators claimed that the Thai diet was low in fat—about 15 percent of calories was the consensus among “experts.” Most of this fat was saturated coconut oil or relatively saturated lard. Poor families used watered-down coconut milk for curries, and lard very sparingly. But more affluent families ate pork and beef frequently, made their daily curry with luscious thick creamy whole coconut milk, and used coconut oil or lard for cooking.

It can be argued that even among poor families, fat consumption was higher than the accepted 15 percent figure. The Cornell investigators made their own determinations of the amount of fat supplied by coconut milk, because “use of figures now available in food value tables, for coconut milks as prepared in Bang Chan, would lead to gross overestimate of caloric value and fat content of the diets.” In other words, the researchers changed the fat value of coconut milk in order to get the low 15 percent total fat demanded by the “experts.” What an amazing confession!

In an effort to improve the health of Thai villagers, medical workers over the years have encouraged the boiling of water, consumption of whole rice or rice polishings, and the use of industrial polyunsaturated oils—known to depress the immune system—instead of healthy coconut oil and lard. It is probably impossible to install Western-type sewage systems in the soggy Thai rice lands, and also unwise in that such systems would deprive the land of valuable manuring. A more rational—and certainly more effective—approach would encourage protective traditional foodways and higher prices for cash crops, so that this nation of subsistence farmers could afford more fish, meat and coconut milk to balance their intake of rice.

It seems unlikely that the Thai will accept brown rice—and probably foolhardy as well, given that phytic acid in rice bran blocks calcium, already low in the Thai diet. Instead, millers could receive subsidies to return rice polishings to farmers, and farmers could be encouraged to eat more vitamin B-rich eggs from chickens given rice bran.

The body stores the carbohydrates from white rice as fat. Thus, white rice may be a vital factor in the diet if overall fat consumption is low. But with white rice as the basis of Thai cuisine, it is imperative that “not rice” foods be rich in nutrients from adequate amounts of animal foods grown on mineral rich soils, seafood and, above all, healthy, protective coconut oil.

ASIAN CUISINES FEATURE many exotic ingredients and strange animal foods that Westerners may find unacceptable. But the underlying principles mirror those of every other healthy traditional diet: the recognition of animal foods as important for health, a preference for foods rich in fat-soluble vitamins, and the use of bone broths and fermented foods. The one variance from the other diets we have looked at so far is the widespread use of white rice, rather than whole-grain rice that has been soaked or fermented. But as we have seen, in the context of a diet that is very rich in nutrients, the body can make this refined carbohydrate into the saturated fat that is otherwise lacking in the diet. For Westerners who blanch at the thought of eating all those weird, nutrient-dense foods, eating a lot of white rice may not be such a good idea.

CHAPTER 6

Asia

Variety and Monotony