Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen

Additional Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen Information

Japanese-born Naomi Moriyama reveals the secret to her own high-energy, successful lifestyle-and the key to the enduring health and beauty of Japanese women-in this exciting new book. The Japanese have the pleasure of eating one of the most delicious, nutritious, and naturally satisfying cuisines in the world without denial, without guilt...and, yes, without getting fat or looking old.

As a young girl living in Tokyo, Naomi Moriyama grew up in the food utopia of the world, where fresh, simple, wholesome fare is prized as one of the greatest joys of life. She also spent much time basking in that other great center of Japanese food culture: her mother Chizuko's Tokyo kitchen. Now she brings the traditional secrets of her mother's kitchen to you in a book that embodies the perfect marriage of nature and culinary wisdom-Japanese home-style cooking.

If you think you've eaten Japanese food, you haven't tasted anything yet. Japanese home-style cooking isn't just about sushi and raw fish but good, old-fashioned everyday-Japanese-mom's cooking that's stood the test of time-and waistlines-for decades. Reflected in this unique way of cooking are the age-old traditional values of family and the abiding Japanese love of simplicity, nature, and good health. It's the kind of food that millions of Japanese women like Naomi eat every day to stay healthy, slim, and youthful while pursuing an energetic, successful, on-the-go lifestyle. Even better, it's fast, it's easy, and you can start with something as simple as introducing brown rice to your diet. You'll begin feeling the benefits that keep Japanese women among the youngest-looking in the world after your very next meal!

If you're tired of counting calories, counting carbs, and counting on being disappointed with diets that don't work and don't satisfy, it's time to discover one of the best-kept and most delicious secrets for a healthier, slimmer, and long-living lifestyle. It's time to discover the Japanese fountain of youth....

What Customers Say About Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen:

At first I thought it was going to be exactly like the other, but this one turned out to be better. It's a way to encourage you to eat healthier and if you happen to loose a couple of pounds along the way then great. and found that I was able to find a healthy weight, lots more energy, and I was able to control my hypoglycemia much better. I'd gotten to the part where you're supposed to fast for a weekend drinking nothing but some leek broth and my body said no way. On the same day I bought French Women Don't Get Fat as well.

I tried doing the French book and it didn't go over well at all. This book is a nice read and encouraging in that it doesn't browbeat you about being fat and make you feel guilty. A go back to basics if you will. For one thing there was no fasting involved.

If anything its been several months since I've had a "low" and I couldn't be more pleased. A diet can also be a way to increase energy or prevent you from getting sick.That being said I can now put my soapbox away on dieting and wrap this up. I gave up on that book and picked up this one instead. At first this kind of puzzled me since most diets require you to fast at the beginning. If you're looking for a fad diet where you'll loose 50 lbs in two weeks then forget it.

I bought this book as a way to re-teach myself how to eat properly. Another thing is that people think that this is a loose weight diet book. It's not. Diet doesn't always mean loosing weight. Unfortunately I haven't been able to try any of the recipies as I now live on a tight budget and in a small town where mexican food is considered foreign so I have to drive quite a way to find the ingredients I need. (None of my comments are in any way to be taken as medical advice. I'm not a fat person at all, I'm a dancer and I also suffer from hypoglycemia.

I'm not a doctor. Then it dawned on me that eating more veggies would do the job for you, just a little slower and gentler. Using a little common sense and ingenuity however I applied these principles to Western food (I am a fully blown European decended American) along with what my own mother taught me (stay away from processed foods as much as possible, eat your veggies, etc). If you're looking for a way to re-learn how to eat properly and healty then this is definately the book for you. I've just found something that works for me).

The main difference in the Japanese diet (as well as the Chinese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese) compared to the American is the absence of the huge amounts of sugar that Americans consume. I used to think that the popularity of Comtrex, a type of milky looking mineral water from France, was due to health concerns. I found out that young Japanese women take it because it has laxative qualities. Oolong is a popular diet aid in Japan. I was told by some school children there that the brown rice I preferred to eat was "for cattle".A major cause of house fires in Japan is the well-used deep fat fryer, a standard article in most kitchens. Other popular diet aids have been "nata de coco", a colorless, calorie-free jelly made from coconuts, and water pills.

This book, however, is riding on the coat tails of the French Women Don't Get Fat diet, which is nothing but another low sugar, low cal option based on more myth. Mine is an unscientific observation.The diet in this book is a stereotypical "Japanese diet", one that most naive Americans and others think the Japanese eat.I lived with a number of Japanese female roommates. It was gone by the time I got back from the bathroom. So a slightly westernized diet has not been an entirely bad thing. The small village in central Japan that had a great deal of active elderly was noted to be a place where people consumed vegetables (grown fresh in their gardens) and did not consume much or any rice. The way they eat in public (picky and delicate) is nothing like the way they eat at home (they could get in a contest with a vacuum cleaner and win). I lived in Japan for close to 10 years. There was a Japanese comic strip called "Obatarian" (rough translation: Aunt-Zillah) which lampooned this type of Japanese middle aged woman.

Beer should be listed as a major food group in the standard Japanese diet, considering the level of consumption. This was in part due to agricultural reforms imposed by the US. As for green tea as a diet aid - funny thing, the Japanese don't drink THAT much green tea (except at the office) and not one of them ever told me it was a diet aid. The increase in protein in the diet over the years has not only lengthened the lifespan of the Japanese, but has made more than a few of the younger people much taller than their elders. Green tea went for a long time unmentioned.

The water pill thing got so out of control that at some point there was an epidemic of gout among young Japanese females, and pharmacies quit selling these pills to them. I saw three of them down a large bag of cookies in 3 minutes flat. Consequently, the life span was apparently not any better than the rest of the world - I once read an old Japanese fairy tale with a picture of two "elderly" people with long flowing white hair, and they were supposed to be in their 40's, according to the story.Since the Japanese contact with the west, the amount of protein in the diet has gradually increased. Most Asian sweets, no matter if they are traditional or commercially made candy or cookies, have a low sugar content compared to their American counterparts. This really is the secret. I was told very often by the Japanese, however, that oolong tea was the secret to weight loss.

This is used to deep fry shrimp, "croquettes", oysters, tonkatsu and tempura, among other items. This may simply be due to increasing insulin resistance because of age. In Tokyo. Often, they cannot stand the super sweet foods that Americans consume, and therein lies the main difference.Many in Japan, once they reach middle age, suffer from "middle age spread", the women in particular can start looking square or "chunky". Asians in general do not have a sweet tooth. Beer drinking and an over consumption of carbohydrates doesn't help much here.

If you are a major consumer of fast food and have a sugar jones, any diet that emphasizes low sugar, lean protein and fresh vegetables will probably be a major improvement and you will no doubt see an improvement in your health from the change. Around the late 1800's to early 1900's, the average Japanese lived on little but rice and some pickled vegetables, and perhaps some fish if it could be gotten. Japanese women are very cognizant of the way they are seen in public, and will also go to extremes to lose weight and stay underweight. Bitter melon keeps blood sugar levels steady, which adds to the longevity factor. Popular dishes are "curry rice" - a football sized pile of rice with curry sauce and little bits of meat; ramen - which is usually high fat and loaded with msg; "pizza toast" - a very thick slice of white bread with pizza sauce and some veggies; "Tonkatsu" or "chicken katsu" - deep fried and breaded (with panko) pork or chicken cutlet; "hamburger steak"; spaghetti; and certainly the ubiquitous white rice three times a day. The Japanese diet changed with modernization and exposure to western culture, but not always in a bad way.

The concentration of super-elderly people in Japan tends to center in Okinawa, which has a somewhat different diet - bitter melon being a part of it.

This book has fine dieting advice (small portions, lots of veggies and complex carbs), and is a fun read. That being said, the recipes are not as advertised. Use the recipes and advice in this book for inspiration, and then find recipes to USE elsewhere.

I put this book out for a garage sale recently, because after reading it once, I found no reason to keep it. I have other Japanese cookbooks that have the same recipes. I have other books that give more information about Japanese culture and culinary history. The book is mostly self-promotion with very few recipes.

I finished the book and went shopping -- at an Asian Market, an organic foods market and the local grocery store -- and was able to find everything I needed. But when my husband and I finally sat down to eat, I was pleasantly surprised to find that each dish was extremely good and the overall experience was wonderful, like dining at a high-end gourmet restaurant. So I decided to dive on in. But as the week went on, I kept thinking about all the flavors she described in such luscious detail and I couldn't get them out of my head. I have no ties with Japan whatsoever; I am a fully Western, European American. And since it's just the two of us I probably don't need to do that many dishes each time and I can halve the recipes. And as I saw each dish take shape, I really didn't know what to expect as far as taste was concerned; I was very skeptical (not least because I have never been a big fan of seafood or tofu). I usually only work that hard for a meal on Thanksgiving day.

We were both hooked. Wow, what a project. I started to read this a couple of weeks ago, only getting halfway through and then deciding that even though it sounded great, it was too intensive for me to focus on right now: shopping for the unfamiliar ingredients and trying to cook foods that are totally new to me was a daunting prospect. And we had that lingering 'cleansed' feeling afterward that only comes from eating really good, hearty, simple, healthful food. I am a pretty experienced cook so decided to go ahead and try the full-out dinner meal of soup, rice and three other dishes. As I was making it, the kitchen looked like a tornado had hit it, and it took me 2 hours to make the meal. (See the picture I took of the meal in the customer images section of this product page).Next time, he's going to help me make the meal so hopefully it won't take so long. I don't think I will go so far as to switch to Japanese cooking as my main type, but it has definitely widened my pool of food options and also has motivated me to stick with much more healthy recipes of any origin.Besides the fact that the food is as good as the author claims, I really liked that the book also described Japanese history and culture; it was a very interesting read just for those reasons too.