I think as nations prosper, special "holiday" food becomes the norm available in restaurants/food stalls, and that just isn't healthy! I think that is leading to obesity and widespread diabetes and heart disease throughout the world. Sure, Asian food was "healthy and the people stay thin"-- when they mainly ate a few tiny bowls of rice with dried fish and vegetables, and maybe tofu and some clear broth! That certainly isn't the case nowadays. Bubble Tea, croissants, french fries, KFC (and Korean Fried Chicken), Tempura, coconut curries, butter chicken, spicy sweet mayo sauce on sushi-- they are delicious, rich, and often sweetened. Thai food uses even more sugar than before, Chinese food becomes lard-ier, because they CAN. It certainly doesn't mean you have to eat it either. It's certainly a balance.
We live in Bangkok, and getting older means we need to eat less, and better-- that means brown rice and whole grains and plenty of vegetables, tofu, chicken breast, fruits, and salad...maybe 85% of the time. Our "Longevity Check Up" we had at a local hospital reminded us that yep, we need to eat more veggies and skip anything buttery, oily, and fried, and sweet. UGH.
As for the rest, I also don't like durian, stinky tofu, century eggs, and I am Chinese-American!
Some things you just have to grow up with-- chicken and fish chopped up with bones are a pain (and sometimes dangerous), but just the way we ate-- with chopsticks, and spitting out the bones. The gelatine-like textures of tendon, or chewy tripe (quite good, btw), or smooth cooked pork blood (doesn't taste like anything besides broth, at least in Thai soups) are something you learn to actually crave after awhile, ha-ha.
Just like there is a huge variety of the types of "American" food, good and bad, there's the same in China and Asia. It's just a matter of preference. I hate cilantro, mustard greens, liver, raw fish-- my husband hates brussels sprouts and cream cheese-- in his sushi, ha-ha!
Very comprehensive and interesting! On one note, I think that some of the chicken breast being "better" and "healthier" than chicken thigh thing has evolved in the past couple decades or so here in the States. Julia Child herself thought thighs to be a better cut of chicken than the breast, and more and more chefs are using thighs as the preferred cut because, as you say, they tend to stay moister longer. I don't feel that nutritionists have super-strong feelings of preferring one over the other anymore, particularly since "low-fat" is not always considered the pinnacle of dietary success.
Just curious....if you didn't have access to Asian food, what would you both eat? "American" food? Italian? French? Just wondering if you both prefer lower salt and fat food in general. I love Asian food while I'm in Asia - for a while. After about 2 weeks, I need a fix of American or European food. And similarly, when I'm stateside I need my Asian or Mexican or French fix.
Indian tends to be our "go to" cuisine in a lot of countries. But I think our ideal diet is a mix of lots of things, from Indian to Italian to Mexican to Middle Eastern.
We eat a lot of vegetarian meals that I make at home: tofu, beans, pasta. I used to make a killer pizza but I no longer have access to my yeast and pizza pans. And yeah, it's pretty low fat.
Reminds me of when I was in Atlanta for E3 back in the Nineties when that's where they held it—EVERYTHING was deep-fried, and I got so sick of it that by the end of the trip I saw a regular non-deep fried burger with lettuce as "Health Food"! 😂
So glad you shared this, as history shows it didn't used to be this way. While taking nutrition courses at Cornell, we had to read The China Study. As much as I didn't want to, I'm forever grateful that I did.
Your mention of tempura reminds me of the best shrimp tempura I ever had--it was made by a Korean restaurant in North Philadelphia, one of the "crossover" dishes they had. Extremely light, crispy, non-greasy, it was a dream. We were so sad when they took it off the menu. Most tempura I've had any other place is too heavy; I'm not a big fan of batter-dipped anything (with the exception of Korean fried chicken!)
Also I think another commenter pointed out that there are places in the US where you run into similar problems eating out: entire swaths of non-urban areas where you can hardly find a green vegetable, or an entree that isn't fried or smothered in gravy. Last summer we were in a remote area of the Northwest where the only restaurants within 30 miles of us only served pizza, hot dogs, and burgers. I fell upon the black-bean burger and zucchini fries at the burger place as bearable, but told my husband I didn't care how far we had to drive the next night, we were going to find real food!
Oh, and ironically--when traveling in small-town USA, often the restaurant we'll go to when we are really pining for vegetables is the local Chinese or Thai place, because in America they're the ones that reliably have veggies like broccoli and snow peas!
Thinking about this, Michael, this doesn't surprise me that much—a lot Asian food is the way it is because of the huge populations compared to the amount of arable land, so the meals need to really pack in the calories. It's similar to what happened in the United States (and Canada?) following WWII, where we went from an economically-unequal culture to one that was more equal—because of all those things Republicans and the Billionaire Broligarchs' Club hate like unions, high wages, taxes that pay for a robust social safety net, etc.!
The upside is we consume more calories and live longer as a result—the downside is we're still eating like food is scarce, which in many cases cancels out the health benefits of those calories. When I grew up my parents made a huge issue of "clean off your plate" even though most of the food we were eating was canned vegetables (which I hated then and hate even more now!), tomato sauce or ketchup and american cheese (blech!), and American "Chinese" food like store-brand chop suey, chow mein, eggrolls, and sweet&sour everything. (I've said before I didn't know I even LIKED Chinese food until I had Chinese food that didn't come out of a can!) I still think of red meat as "better" than chicken or fish even though I intellectually know I'm far better off eating salmon and chicken than beef, pork or lamb—oh, and when it comes to chicken or turkey? I always prefer dark meat to white meat!
That's happening in Asia as well, especially among the "Economic Tiger" countries like Japan, South Korea, (the wealthier parts of) China like Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, and Singapore. I suspect you and Brett are of the generation right after mine where Eating Healthy became more important than Not Starving, so your notions (and mine, honestly—I once mistakenly told the vegetarian daughter of a friend of ours not to worry about visiting China because of all the vegetable-based dishes! 🤦♂️) of Asian food are based on Americans' belief that Asian food is "healthier" than what passed for mid-20th Century American food.
Best thing that ever happened to my family was my dad had a (minor) heart attack at age thirty, and my mom transformed the family diet into a much healthier one. Ironic!
Much food for thought here Michael. I’m curious, how often do you guys cook at home? I think that might be the secret to avoiding the heavy salt loads!
I was in Singapore the last 10 days and am now in Thailand. In Singapore I loved how affordable the food was there. I did notice though how meat-heavy the dishes are. I enjoyed it once a day but my appetite for meat can’t go past once a day I found. I read that SE Asian diets are becoming more westernized and I think I do see that with less plant-based options, though one could argue they are just as available but you have to specifically seek it out. I ate vegetarian dosas when I could and that was a great option!
It depends on how often we have a decent kitchen to cook with, though, to be fair, we are pretty basic cooks -- lots of veggie stirfrys, spaghetti, etc. But sometimes we barely have a kitchen at all. In Hong Kong, it was a single propane burner that was ridiculous. So we ate out a lot! And you are absolutely right about the SEA diets becoming more Western -- and it's not a good thing.
I loved reading this. I haven’t traveled as much as you but every time ( Turkey, Morocco, France, Amsterdam, Croatia, Spain, Prague) I’ve remarked that we have more variety of food here in the US. Each area has their specialty ( French pastries, Spanish tapa) but overall if you aren’t a high meat and gravy eater it disappoints. I’m always looking for international restaurants to get some variety ( Thai in Spain, Italian everywhere). I thought Morocco would have Northern African spices but I found everything bland. The best for me was Viet Nam. I didn’t care about the fatty chicken. It was amazing. Thanks for being honest about the food.
Hi Tony, You are 100% right that it can be hard to find anywhere near the variety of food in the U.S. I guess the whole melting pot thing! I will say, in big cities like Osaka, it's easier to find a variety of foods than in, say, Levanto, Italy, where it was pizza, pasta, pasta, pizza, pizza, pizza. Both of which I love, but enough is enough!
I'm in Osaka now also, and I found myself wondering if the reason Japanese live so long is because of all the walking and stairs, not the food.
But I find myself eating very well in Japan. Seems like quality ingredients and less processed. And you can live very well just eating western food in Japan.
In China, when I wanted to eat something healthy, I'd go to McDonald's. That's how salty their regular food was. Wake up in the middle of the night parched. But it tasted soooo good.
Great piece! This reminded me of how shocked I was when I first started living in Singapore about the dichotomy between what i thought was Asian food and what actually was! At the time, I also found there were not nearly enough vegetables provided when eating out and the portions were also relatively small at the Singaporean hawker centers, resulting in me having to go for seconds nearly every meal. Having said that, I'm still grateful to this day for how that experienced greatly increased my tolerance for spicy food.
Yeah, the lack of vegetables can be a bit frustrating here in Japan. Which is why we make a point at least once a week to do a stir fry of just veggies. But I'm still working on my spice tolerance!
Could not agree more with this! We also love Asian food and cook it ourselves every week. Also we love Australian Asian restaurants - particularly Vietnamese, but when we were in Vietnam it was very different. The amount of msg in all dishes was incredible and we had bad reactions to so much of it. Probably the best Asian food we experienced was in Thailand, but after 3 months we were more than happy to have some change. The joys of travel!
Hard agree about Thailand having the best Asian food -- well, at least for us! But also, after three months, was happy to go somewhere else to eat something else.
I lived in both Seattle and Oakland/San Francisco for decades, and loved the variety of delicious, authentic Asian food.
We move to Portugal over 4 years ago where it’s not so easy to find great Asian food despite Macau and Goa being former colonies. It has improved in the past couple of years. We’re now traveling in SE Asia - Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore and Indonesia, and I have to say I’m
getting a little weary of Asian for every meal! But, it’s a first world complaint. I should be grateful!
Sure, there’s a lot of what you would call “typical” Americanized Asian food , but in some areas like the peninsula south of San Francisco and even in the city and in San Jose where only Asian people go. My best friend.is an Asian American chef whose mother is from Shanghai. Believe me, she knows authentic Asian cuisine. It’s out there if you know where to look.
Sadly, that's not nearly as true as it used to be. In Malaysia, Thailand, the Phillippines and other countries, rates of obesity and diabetes are rising very quickly.
I wonder if this is, in part, because people in Asia eat out less so, when they do, they want something really celebratory and fun and rich? Maybe they don’t eat as much rich, fatty, meaty food at home. 🤔
I’m sure there is truth to that, but I was just in a grocery store yesterday and the amount of deep fried chicken, deep fried pork, and even tempura for sale was mind boggling!
They’re changing, just as we are I guess. I bet today’s elderly didn’t go out to eat or eat prepared foods when they were young nearly as much as we do today.
I think as nations prosper, special "holiday" food becomes the norm available in restaurants/food stalls, and that just isn't healthy! I think that is leading to obesity and widespread diabetes and heart disease throughout the world. Sure, Asian food was "healthy and the people stay thin"-- when they mainly ate a few tiny bowls of rice with dried fish and vegetables, and maybe tofu and some clear broth! That certainly isn't the case nowadays. Bubble Tea, croissants, french fries, KFC (and Korean Fried Chicken), Tempura, coconut curries, butter chicken, spicy sweet mayo sauce on sushi-- they are delicious, rich, and often sweetened. Thai food uses even more sugar than before, Chinese food becomes lard-ier, because they CAN. It certainly doesn't mean you have to eat it either. It's certainly a balance.
We live in Bangkok, and getting older means we need to eat less, and better-- that means brown rice and whole grains and plenty of vegetables, tofu, chicken breast, fruits, and salad...maybe 85% of the time. Our "Longevity Check Up" we had at a local hospital reminded us that yep, we need to eat more veggies and skip anything buttery, oily, and fried, and sweet. UGH.
As for the rest, I also don't like durian, stinky tofu, century eggs, and I am Chinese-American!
Some things you just have to grow up with-- chicken and fish chopped up with bones are a pain (and sometimes dangerous), but just the way we ate-- with chopsticks, and spitting out the bones. The gelatine-like textures of tendon, or chewy tripe (quite good, btw), or smooth cooked pork blood (doesn't taste like anything besides broth, at least in Thai soups) are something you learn to actually crave after awhile, ha-ha.
Just like there is a huge variety of the types of "American" food, good and bad, there's the same in China and Asia. It's just a matter of preference. I hate cilantro, mustard greens, liver, raw fish-- my husband hates brussels sprouts and cream cheese-- in his sushi, ha-ha!
All wise words.
Lots of great info, Donna. Thanks for reading and sharing!
Very comprehensive and interesting! On one note, I think that some of the chicken breast being "better" and "healthier" than chicken thigh thing has evolved in the past couple decades or so here in the States. Julia Child herself thought thighs to be a better cut of chicken than the breast, and more and more chefs are using thighs as the preferred cut because, as you say, they tend to stay moister longer. I don't feel that nutritionists have super-strong feelings of preferring one over the other anymore, particularly since "low-fat" is not always considered the pinnacle of dietary success.
Interesting to hear. Thanks for letting me know that!
I needed to read this. I’m heading to Malaysia next month and am a little obsessed over eating healthy. Sounds like I may be hungry when I get home.
You'll just have to be a little picky. Depending on if you're in a large city or small town, you might have an easier time of it. Good luck!
Malaysia has a TON of non-Malaysian options.
Great to know! Thank you.
Just curious....if you didn't have access to Asian food, what would you both eat? "American" food? Italian? French? Just wondering if you both prefer lower salt and fat food in general. I love Asian food while I'm in Asia - for a while. After about 2 weeks, I need a fix of American or European food. And similarly, when I'm stateside I need my Asian or Mexican or French fix.
Indian tends to be our "go to" cuisine in a lot of countries. But I think our ideal diet is a mix of lots of things, from Indian to Italian to Mexican to Middle Eastern.
We eat a lot of vegetarian meals that I make at home: tofu, beans, pasta. I used to make a killer pizza but I no longer have access to my yeast and pizza pans. And yeah, it's pretty low fat.
Reminds me of when I was in Atlanta for E3 back in the Nineties when that's where they held it—EVERYTHING was deep-fried, and I got so sick of it that by the end of the trip I saw a regular non-deep fried burger with lettuce as "Health Food"! 😂
A DEEP FRIED BURGER?!?!?! BLECHHH! LOL
Yeah, I was I was kidding about that.
I really came to hate the food on offer in Atlanta.
It's okay to be picky and have standards! At least that's what I tell myself 😂
So glad you shared this, as history shows it didn't used to be this way. While taking nutrition courses at Cornell, we had to read The China Study. As much as I didn't want to, I'm forever grateful that I did.
I can imagine food was very different years ago. Certainly less sugar! I wonder how much pork they used to eat in China and Thailand?
Totally. Much less, with The China Study spelling out what happened to those who could afford more. It is so fascinating!
Your mention of tempura reminds me of the best shrimp tempura I ever had--it was made by a Korean restaurant in North Philadelphia, one of the "crossover" dishes they had. Extremely light, crispy, non-greasy, it was a dream. We were so sad when they took it off the menu. Most tempura I've had any other place is too heavy; I'm not a big fan of batter-dipped anything (with the exception of Korean fried chicken!)
Also I think another commenter pointed out that there are places in the US where you run into similar problems eating out: entire swaths of non-urban areas where you can hardly find a green vegetable, or an entree that isn't fried or smothered in gravy. Last summer we were in a remote area of the Northwest where the only restaurants within 30 miles of us only served pizza, hot dogs, and burgers. I fell upon the black-bean burger and zucchini fries at the burger place as bearable, but told my husband I didn't care how far we had to drive the next night, we were going to find real food!
I always find myself craving healthy food too. I'm a freak! 😂
Oh, and ironically--when traveling in small-town USA, often the restaurant we'll go to when we are really pining for vegetables is the local Chinese or Thai place, because in America they're the ones that reliably have veggies like broccoli and snow peas!
Thinking about this, Michael, this doesn't surprise me that much—a lot Asian food is the way it is because of the huge populations compared to the amount of arable land, so the meals need to really pack in the calories. It's similar to what happened in the United States (and Canada?) following WWII, where we went from an economically-unequal culture to one that was more equal—because of all those things Republicans and the Billionaire Broligarchs' Club hate like unions, high wages, taxes that pay for a robust social safety net, etc.!
The upside is we consume more calories and live longer as a result—the downside is we're still eating like food is scarce, which in many cases cancels out the health benefits of those calories. When I grew up my parents made a huge issue of "clean off your plate" even though most of the food we were eating was canned vegetables (which I hated then and hate even more now!), tomato sauce or ketchup and american cheese (blech!), and American "Chinese" food like store-brand chop suey, chow mein, eggrolls, and sweet&sour everything. (I've said before I didn't know I even LIKED Chinese food until I had Chinese food that didn't come out of a can!) I still think of red meat as "better" than chicken or fish even though I intellectually know I'm far better off eating salmon and chicken than beef, pork or lamb—oh, and when it comes to chicken or turkey? I always prefer dark meat to white meat!
That's happening in Asia as well, especially among the "Economic Tiger" countries like Japan, South Korea, (the wealthier parts of) China like Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, and Singapore. I suspect you and Brett are of the generation right after mine where Eating Healthy became more important than Not Starving, so your notions (and mine, honestly—I once mistakenly told the vegetarian daughter of a friend of ours not to worry about visiting China because of all the vegetable-based dishes! 🤦♂️) of Asian food are based on Americans' belief that Asian food is "healthier" than what passed for mid-20th Century American food.
All very interesting! And true!
Best thing that ever happened to my family was my dad had a (minor) heart attack at age thirty, and my mom transformed the family diet into a much healthier one. Ironic!
Much food for thought here Michael. I’m curious, how often do you guys cook at home? I think that might be the secret to avoiding the heavy salt loads!
I was in Singapore the last 10 days and am now in Thailand. In Singapore I loved how affordable the food was there. I did notice though how meat-heavy the dishes are. I enjoyed it once a day but my appetite for meat can’t go past once a day I found. I read that SE Asian diets are becoming more westernized and I think I do see that with less plant-based options, though one could argue they are just as available but you have to specifically seek it out. I ate vegetarian dosas when I could and that was a great option!
I'm with you on meat no more than once a day, if that.
It depends on how often we have a decent kitchen to cook with, though, to be fair, we are pretty basic cooks -- lots of veggie stirfrys, spaghetti, etc. But sometimes we barely have a kitchen at all. In Hong Kong, it was a single propane burner that was ridiculous. So we ate out a lot! And you are absolutely right about the SEA diets becoming more Western -- and it's not a good thing.
I loved reading this. I haven’t traveled as much as you but every time ( Turkey, Morocco, France, Amsterdam, Croatia, Spain, Prague) I’ve remarked that we have more variety of food here in the US. Each area has their specialty ( French pastries, Spanish tapa) but overall if you aren’t a high meat and gravy eater it disappoints. I’m always looking for international restaurants to get some variety ( Thai in Spain, Italian everywhere). I thought Morocco would have Northern African spices but I found everything bland. The best for me was Viet Nam. I didn’t care about the fatty chicken. It was amazing. Thanks for being honest about the food.
Hi Tony, You are 100% right that it can be hard to find anywhere near the variety of food in the U.S. I guess the whole melting pot thing! I will say, in big cities like Osaka, it's easier to find a variety of foods than in, say, Levanto, Italy, where it was pizza, pasta, pasta, pizza, pizza, pizza. Both of which I love, but enough is enough!
I'm in Osaka now also, and I found myself wondering if the reason Japanese live so long is because of all the walking and stairs, not the food.
But I find myself eating very well in Japan. Seems like quality ingredients and less processed. And you can live very well just eating western food in Japan.
In China, when I wanted to eat something healthy, I'd go to McDonald's. That's how salty their regular food was. Wake up in the middle of the night parched. But it tasted soooo good.
And all the bike riding. We've had some good Italian here, but our go to healthier cuisine is a local Nepalese restaurant.
Great piece! This reminded me of how shocked I was when I first started living in Singapore about the dichotomy between what i thought was Asian food and what actually was! At the time, I also found there were not nearly enough vegetables provided when eating out and the portions were also relatively small at the Singaporean hawker centers, resulting in me having to go for seconds nearly every meal. Having said that, I'm still grateful to this day for how that experienced greatly increased my tolerance for spicy food.
Yeah, the lack of vegetables can be a bit frustrating here in Japan. Which is why we make a point at least once a week to do a stir fry of just veggies. But I'm still working on my spice tolerance!
Could not agree more with this! We also love Asian food and cook it ourselves every week. Also we love Australian Asian restaurants - particularly Vietnamese, but when we were in Vietnam it was very different. The amount of msg in all dishes was incredible and we had bad reactions to so much of it. Probably the best Asian food we experienced was in Thailand, but after 3 months we were more than happy to have some change. The joys of travel!
Hard agree about Thailand having the best Asian food -- well, at least for us! But also, after three months, was happy to go somewhere else to eat something else.
I lived in both Seattle and Oakland/San Francisco for decades, and loved the variety of delicious, authentic Asian food.
We move to Portugal over 4 years ago where it’s not so easy to find great Asian food despite Macau and Goa being former colonies. It has improved in the past couple of years. We’re now traveling in SE Asia - Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore and Indonesia, and I have to say I’m
getting a little weary of Asian for every meal! But, it’s a first world complaint. I should be grateful!
Interesting because what we thought was authentic Asian did in Seattle has turned out to be not so authentic!
Sure, there’s a lot of what you would call “typical” Americanized Asian food , but in some areas like the peninsula south of San Francisco and even in the city and in San Jose where only Asian people go. My best friend.is an Asian American chef whose mother is from Shanghai. Believe me, she knows authentic Asian cuisine. It’s out there if you know where to look.
I can say something similar for Indian food, one month of Indian food in India is tough!
I have specifically wondered what we’ll think when we go there!
We love Indian food, an when we arrived we were enthusiastic about it, but on the long term we got bored, and it was heavy on our digestion.
This sounds very familiar …
... yes, yes, yes to all... There's no accounting for taste, and, yet, Asians are slim, healthier and live longer than Americans.
Sadly, that's not nearly as true as it used to be. In Malaysia, Thailand, the Phillippines and other countries, rates of obesity and diabetes are rising very quickly.
I wonder if this is, in part, because people in Asia eat out less so, when they do, they want something really celebratory and fun and rich? Maybe they don’t eat as much rich, fatty, meaty food at home. 🤔
I’m sure there is truth to that, but I was just in a grocery store yesterday and the amount of deep fried chicken, deep fried pork, and even tempura for sale was mind boggling!
They’re changing, just as we are I guess. I bet today’s elderly didn’t go out to eat or eat prepared foods when they were young nearly as much as we do today.
Yup, it’s changing!