I love Japan but it irks me sometimes.  Allow me to vent, starting with this story:

Near the end of last year I was diagnosed with borderline high cholesterol.  This was a shock for me–yes, it runs in my family, but I eat decently and walk a bunch.  Time to walk and exercise some more, the doctor said, and avoid saturated fats.  I managed to get my total cholesterol down to 196 right before I left San Francisco, mostly by cutting out a bunch of red meat and reading food labels like mad.  I love the USDA for spelling everything out for me so clearly.

Look at that thing of beauty.  All of the things I care about–saturated fat, trans fat (usually), cholesterol–all broken down.  I even see the good stuff for me.  80% of my vitamin A for the day, awesome!

Now let’s look at a Japanese food label.  Ken had some instant soup in the pantry.

Some kind of potato something or other.  In “Happy Size”!  I’m sure it has a lot of salt but what else is in there?

I see fat… but what kind?  And how about cholesterol?  No?  Is there anything in here that’s good for me?  It’s a mystery.

At least the serving size is easy–one packet.  Usually it requires major math.  Example:  a bag of eighteen rice crackers weighs in at 135 grams.  The serving size is listed as “per 100 grams”.  You practically need calculus to figure that per cracker!

Back to the soup.  The actual nutrition label ended up a wash, so let’s see what the ingredient list has to tell us.

There’s a lot here so let’s stick to the basics.  The character I circled in red means “milk”.  Milk has cholesterol.  Two of the red characters are preceded by blue circled ones which mean “non-fat”, but still.  There’s an awful lot of them.  Then add the cheese.  And the beef extract.  Not looking so great.

It feels like everything becomes a guessing game.  In the US I did okay by categorically avoiding certain things–mayo, eggs, whole fat dairy, shrimp, red meat.  (By the way, did you know that pork is actually red meat?)  That’s much harder to do here.  Rice ball fillings often have mayo or shrimp.  Sandwiches are “enhanced” with mayo or egg.  Pork is much more common than chicken.  I have only found one kind of low/non-fat yogurt and it was all watery and gross.

Ken has helped by pointing out and buying better alternatives for the house–mayo that says it’s lower in cholesterol, a special healthy cooking oil.  I’m sure it’s a little better, but how much?  The label doesn’t tell me.

What worries me is a lemon drink I saw stateside, in Japantown.  It had “Vitamin C!” emblazoned across the front.  A Japanese label doesn’t list vitamins but an American import label does–Vitamin C – 0%.  Ouch.

Time to rework my diet.