Is there less added sugar - and corn syrup - in Japan's processed foods?

August 26, 2019 6:32 PM

I've been losing weight kinda easily since I got to Japan and I want to know how? I eat more convenience store food here actually (because it's great) and yes portion sizes are smaller but I eat two things for the one I ate in the US. So I used google translate on a couple of ingredient lists and what I didn't see was corn syrup. So do they NOT use it here? Is that the magic bullet?
posted by rileyray3000 to Food & Drink (29 answers total)

Can't say much about Japan, but I'm feel fairly sure no other industrialized country pumps its food as full of corn syrup, and assorted crap as the US does. Japan's food is far better regulated than ours from what I understand. Quality of food supply is likely why you are losing weight. I lose easily in other countries for the same reason.
posted by shaademaan at 6:45 PM on August 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

I would be surprised if the average junk food in Japan is any healthier than in the US, but when you say convenience store food are you talking about chips and candy or ready-made onigiri and bento boxes? Because I could easily see the latter being much better for you than their US equivalent.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:01 PM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

HFC is imported primarily from the US and used much less widely.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:02 PM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Any chance you're eating less dairy? I always find that when I eat less dairy I lose more weight. Milk evolved to help a baby cow gain 500 lbs, so it kinda makes sense.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 7:12 PM on August 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

Are you doing more walking? Strikes me that Japan would be compact and easy to walk around compared to the US but I don’t know where exactly you’re from.
posted by EatMyHat at 7:18 PM on August 26, 2019 [14 favorites]

Are you eating with chopsticks? I find that when I eat with chopsticks I am a bit slower over my food - you just can't shovel it in quite as fast - and as such I end up eating less because I feel full on less.
posted by potrzebie at 7:18 PM on August 26, 2019

Corn syrup is actually fairly common in sweet foods in Japan, I learned in advance of a visit. (I'm allergic to corn). So it's not the absence of corn syrup. Also, sadly, I can attest that a lack of corn syrup won't lead to weight loss if you replace it with real sugar.
posted by rednikki at 7:33 PM on August 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

Even if you’re doubling up portion wise, food is so much more expensive in Japan so I bought a lot less of it when I lived there. And ordering L beverage sized anything is maybe an American S.

That and I had to walk or bike everywhere in Tokyo. I bet if you are tracking your steps you are probably logging a lot more than back in the states.
posted by WedgedPiano at 7:34 PM on August 26, 2019

Just as another data point, food in Australia almost never had corn syrup in it, and we're collectively fat as hell. It's almost entirely cane sugar. I'd go looking for another culprit.
posted by Jilder at 8:56 PM on August 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: So it's not walking more. If anything I drive more here in Southern Japan. My Apple Watch is showing my missing my move goal pretty much every day.

I do start with chopsticks but only for meals at Sukiya where, quite frankly, I resort to the soup spoon pretty quickly into the meals.

As for the majority of the food I'm eating, it really isn't that pricey in the 7/11 or the Lawson so I feel like I am still eating the same amount. So what is it? A lot of triangle sandwiches especially egg salad, chicken salad, tuna salad (you get the idea). If not that then a couple of breaded chicken cutlets, spicy. Then with that usually a sweet pastry of some kind, some bag of snack chip or cracker or...tube (I'm not sure) and a then a coffee and one of those cider zeroes. Which more or less approximates my US consumption. But like I said, it all tastes a little less sweet. Like the bread in the sandwich tastes less sweet. The chicken just tastes juicy and hot. And the chips just taste spicy or salty. There doesn't seem to be an underlying sweet. Which is why I looked for corn syrup where I could and didn't see it.

Maybe it's just LESS added sugar overall?
posted by rileyray3000 at 9:27 PM on August 26, 2019

Response by poster: I will say I was all in on the less dairy but I don't think I ate that much back in the US. Always a replacement dairy because it was more available. Like almond milk. Here there coffee is Caffe Late and it's in a bottle and that's what you're drinking.
posted by rileyray3000 at 9:28 PM on August 26, 2019

Unexplained weight loss is a symptom of several different diseases. You should keep an eye on it, and see your doc if it continues.
posted by Dashy at 9:36 PM on August 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Portion sizes has a great deal to do with it. Even if you think you’re eating the same amount, I your stomach has probably gotten smaller so that what feels ‘full’ to you has changed. Every time I have come back to the US after being in Japan, I’m surprised at restaurants because portion sizes feel astronomical.

Also, I imagine you are walking more often - the last mile in Japanese cities are usually dense and walkable. IIRC, the move goals are designed to be always just a little bit out of reach, so that you’re moving more and more. What does your health app on iOS say? If you’ve had an Apple Watch before living in Japan, you could compare your steps walked before and after moving to Japan.

Lastly, are you eating fewer processed grains (breads, crackers, flour products)?
posted by many more sunsets at 9:50 PM on August 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

I think it could very well be the corn syrup. When I moved to the US, I gained about 10 pounds even though I ate about the same amount and the same kind of stuff as before. I had several friends who experienced the same thing. When we started to read ingredient lists religiously and avoided all corn syrup, we went back to our respective equilibrium body weights.
posted by CompanionCube at 10:09 PM on August 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

You might be interested in learning about Seth Roberts and the Shangri-La Diet (see the "inspiration" section for the relevant connection). He would probably have speculated that there's a strong psychological component to your experiences.
posted by teremala at 11:27 PM on August 26, 2019

Whenever I go on vacation I feel like I'm eating five meals a day and then I come home and I've lost weight. And then, for just a little while, it makes me aware of how much my habits at home are to eat ALL THE TIME. Wake up in the morning, eat something before work even if I'm not hungry. Home from work, snack while making dinner. Taste tests while cooking. Doing chores later, eating from the leftovers as I put them away. Cookie from the pantry.

Even just the slightest barrier of needing to make a decision, or a little unfamiliarity, seems to be enough to reduce my idle eating. I don't know if it's true for you too, but it is a cliche that people are terrible judges of how much they eat - this is why food journals are a standard. Otherwise you forget that there were cupcakes in the break room.
posted by Lady Li at 12:58 AM on August 27, 2019 [4 favorites]

Anecdotally, my first thought was less sugar in general. I love sweets and fudgy chocolate, but whenever I go back to the States there's always a mild adjustment where things are just sugary. Almost too much so.

This also means I've learned that milder tastes like butter cookies and dark chocolate do the best as U.S. souvenirs for my office -- sweet things are just less sweet here.
posted by lesser weasel at 1:50 AM on August 27, 2019

I think you are right about the corn syrup, and sugar. I don't think convenience store food in Japan is healthy, but it is really delicious, and I'm pretty certain it's both less fatty and less sweet than the American counterpart.
posted by mumimor at 2:22 AM on August 27, 2019

Like the bread in the sandwich tastes less sweet.

I think it's possible that savoury foods in Japan have less or no sugar in them. Certainly in the UK standard white bread (such as used in the ubiquitous triangle sandwich office lunch) doesn't contain sugar or corn syrup. One of my great bugbears while living in the us was the difficulty of finding ordinary bread that wasn't 'sweet'.

Between that and slightly smaller portion sizes you probably have your explanation.
posted by plonkee at 4:55 AM on August 27, 2019 [5 favorites]

Data point: coming from Spain and a from reasonably balanced Mediterranean diet where no HFCS is used, I too lost weight —to a slightly scary degree— during my circa two years in Japan.

I blame it mostly on portion sizes: yes, I too would often get the XXL version of whatever I was eating, or a side dish or two, but I wouldn't do it every. single. time — and even when I did, I was barely approaching the size of a standard Spanish meal. My impression is that the slightly lower calories intake added up to quite a lot over time.

Towards the end of my stay, I became somewhat alarmed at my weight and started ordering two set menus for lunch, to the slightly puzzled/amused/terrified look of the waiters.

I'd also point out that the fat content of most Japanese food (even processed and takeaway stuff) is rather low by Western European standards. For example, most takeout bento boxes came with a good portion of white rice, which was pretty filling without amounting to much calories-wise.

Combine the above with a lifestyle that encourages walking, and a slightly fast metabolism, and boom, instant diet!
posted by doctorpiorno at 5:48 AM on August 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure why people are just ignoring corn syrup. The US uses massive amounts of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Corn is a subsidized crop in the US. HFCS is an import in Japan and used far less widely. Per capita consumption in Japan (7%) is minuscule compared to the US (55%), where HFCS is in everything including bread (?!?!) by default.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:18 AM on August 27, 2019 [6 favorites]

When I studied abroad in Japan, I lost 4 pants sizes in under a year. Moving to Japan on two occasions has been the only meaningful source of sustained weight loss in my life. So, yeah, there's definitely something there.

For me, walking was definitely a factor. On the dietary side, I think the sugar/corn syrup angle is a big one, because I would eat the less-sweet candy and drink the less-sweet Coke most every day (when I rarely eat candy in the US). I also think that there are more vegetables built into convenience food, which helps the balance of your diet a bit. One other possibility is less fat - when I've returned to the US after long times abroad, I've gotten a super upset stomach because the food here is just rich in a way it isn't in Japan. While there are definitely fried foods that I ate in Japan, I think that the combination of the amount of butter and deep fried food used in the US adds up.

Also, a related anecdote: A friend of mine was living in a homestay, and one day she received a care package from home. Inside was a box of crackers, which she was excited to share with her homestay older sister. The sister looked the nutritional facts and asked, with kind confusion, why she would prefer to eat 5 crackers when she could have a whole bowl of rice for the same calories. I think those little things over time make a big difference.
posted by past unusual at 6:37 AM on August 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

Study after study has found that people can't estimate caloric intake very well. Unless you're literally weighing and looking up everything you put in your mouth, or relying entirely on packaged food with listed calorie counts (and writing it all down!), it's highly unlikely that your baseline caloric intake is the same as it was in the US.

There's possibly a shift in your overall macronutrient intake - I'd guess more protein, less carbs. Plus the switch from mostly wheat-based carbs to rice-based, which definitely affects some people. Plus, as you say, less sugar, and a change in sugar type. But I would be hugely skeptical of any "magic bullet" conclusion unless you did some very controlled experiments with your diet. Not saying it's impossible, but if you want to know for sure it's going to be a lot of work.
posted by Jobst at 9:19 AM on August 27, 2019 [5 favorites]

In Chile, due to a foodcentric culture and precariously high food costs, low-nutrition carbs are a big part of the daily diet, including sugar carbs in the form of desserts, juices, sodas, candy. Candy in particular is ubiquitous: it's sold on the metro by independent vendors. Not surprisingly, a stevia/sucralose sugar substitute is omnipresent in cafés and restaurants.

So the diet is fairly comparable to the default US diet (the diet that many of us have to circumvent consciously), minus one critical ingredient: HFCS.

Despite a lot of opportunities and cultural / economic pressure to "fill up" on low-nutrition carbs, I don't see a lot of people on the street with visibly super-high body fat percentages, not at all what I'm accustomed to seeing in the US.

I do see ads for bariatric surgery in poorer parts of Santiago, where the need for cheap, filling food of any sort is higher. Even so, I don't see a lot of people that might even remotely "qualify". (FWIW I consider bariatric surgery to be a barbaric idea brought to us by a fat-hating, money-hungry professional class, but I know or have heard of several people who could see no way around it.)

Note that many Chileans don't eat a dinner in the US sense due to cost. They'll have a snack instead. Also, animal protein other than dairy and eggs is used sparingly except, of course, by wealthy people. So there are many factors at work.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 10:38 AM on August 27, 2019

Not to blow off the food questions, but - how's your sleep? Not sleeping enough/comfortably/whatever can do such a number on your body (bad way to lose weight!); alternately, getting better rest than you're used to could be helping your body let go of extra fuel storage, giving it time to clear out stress hormones, etc (un-bad way to lose weight!)

(Obviously, food/drink and exercise affect sleep, and sleep affects your appetite, it's all connected; but sleep is so easy to overlook. we're practically trained to ignore it.)
posted by Tess of the d'Urkelvilles at 12:54 PM on August 27, 2019

Sugar adds calorie density, so eating the same amount of fast food may be fewer calories overall, even if the food seems to be the same amount. Not having soda,not sweetening tea, etc., is a major calorie reduction. I also find that having my food be overall sweeter makes me crave even more sweets. Also, fat and protein. I don't know how much fat is in typical Japanese fast food. Americans often eat lots of protein; if you're eating less of it, it may affect your metabolism.
posted by theora55 at 3:33 PM on August 27, 2019

I'm not sure why people are just ignoring corn syrup. The US uses massive amounts of High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Off the top of my head:

- There are countries, like Australia, where HFCS is rare but where obesity rates rival those in the US.

- Consumption of HFCS in the US has been declining since its peak in 1999 but obesity rates continue to climb.

- Despite it being all the rage in the media circa 2010-12, a very long list of more recent studies from multiple, unrelated sources strongly suggest that HFCS is not any different to any other highly refined carbohydrate (like cane sugar) when it comes to disease, including diabetes and obesity.

- Overweight and obesity are complicated, multi-factorial diseases and there can be significant variations in root causes and drivers from person to person and between national populations and it's really simplistic to point the finger at the consumption of one ingredient while ignoring a very wide variety of other co-existing contributing factors.
posted by some little punk in a rocket at 7:32 PM on August 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

The US uses a massive amount of corn syrup. Australia uses the cane sugar in the same sorts of ways, and we're both fat. It's not the corn syrup itself, it's fucking shittonnes of calories snuck into fucking everything. Corn syrup just lets you add calories, that's all. If it were cane, agave, honey, whatever - no matter what the sweetener, having the extra calories in there adds up.

I'd also posit that one's recollection of what you were eating before is probably flawed. I did a food diary in the lead up to concieving and boy howdy was I eating way more than I thought I was. Just bits and pieces that don't register to the memory. Now that you're paying attention to what you're eating and trying to compare it, you're probably not remembering the odd can of soda or juice or underestimating how many cups of coffee or whatever, or how thick your butter is on toast. It's fully a thing. I would probably put money on smaller portions with less added sugar - of any source- in the processed parts of the meal.
posted by Jilder at 7:51 PM on August 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

High fructose corn syrup spikes your blood sugar and has an addictive effect because you're hungry 30 minutes later. I avoid anything with HFCS and always read the nutrition label.
posted by kinoeye at 7:49 PM on August 28, 2019