Japanese food and carbohydrates go together like sushi and soy sauce. However, those wanting to explore different eating habits might stumble across the ketogenic (or keto for short) diet in Japan. The keto diet is high in fat and incredibly low in carbs, but it’s more than just cutting pasta and bread from your meals. The aim of keto is to keep your carbs under 20-50 grams (for reference, one medium-sized apple contains around 20 grams of carbs).
What Are The Benefits Of A Keto Diet?
While the most common reason to follow the keto diet is for weight loss, it can have multiple health benefits. Research suggests it can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s and heart disease and help people manage diabetes by improving their insulin sensitivity and lowering cholesterol.
It’s hard to believe that these benefits could derive from such a high-fat diet. By replacing your carbohydrate intake with fat, your body is put into a metabolic state known as ketosis, in which your body produces ketones (by-products of fat breakdown) to use for fuel.
While the keto diet is much less commercialized in Japan than in the West, many traditional Japanese dishes are more keto-friendly than you might think.
Please be advised I am not a nutritionist; this content is based on my own experiences and research.
Keto-Friendly Japanese Dishes
Many Japanese dishes have an abundance of fresh vegetables with every serving, all of which change with the season. Below are a few classic Japanese dishes that are suitable or can be tweaked to match the keto lifestyle.
Yakitori
Fans of the beloved Japanese chicken dish will be delighted to hear that yakitori (skewered grilled chicken) remains very much on the menu. Yakitori is an ideal high-protein and low-carb dish. For flavor, choose the salt option as it contains less sugar than tare (soy basting) sauce.
Yakiniku
Yakiniku (Japanese barbecue) boasts endless chicken, pork and beef for you to add to your personal barbecue grill alongside veggies. It’s a perfect way to stick to a keto diet while dining out. Just skip the usual dipping sauces provided and stick to soy sauce to keep carbs low.
Shabu-shabu
Click here to read more.
- External Link
- https://savvytokyo.com/
17 Comments
Login to comment
virusrex
Which of course explains why actual nutritionists, endocrinologists, etc. Do not support keto diets as healthy, instead they recommend more balanced diets that will give the same benefits (if not more) without the risks that keto have for the health of the people that follow it.
Raw Beer
Indeed, it's very hard to believe because we're constantly told that dietary fat (especially saturated fat) is the enemy. However, the opposite is true; our major source of energy should come from fat, not carbs.
There is no requirement for any dietary carbs. Carbs are a major source of health problems...
virusrex
Based on extremely solid evidence, Keto is considered an unhealthy diet because of its reliance on unbalance towards fat.
Which again is a unsubstantiated claim not supported by any respected institution of medical science.
Of course the excuse of a global conspiracy is not an argument to explain this, the same as it does not work for flat earther or creationist.
For a healthy diet yes, there is, a balanced diet do not carry the risks that keto does.
Excess of carbohydrates, not the levels recommended by the experts. Without excess there is no health problems related.
Raw Beer
What "solid evidence"? Or is it just the usual "respected institution of medical science."
How much carb is required? For what purpose?
And what are those risks of going keto?
"Balance" is one of those words like "inclusivity" or "diversity" that are used when you can't really defend your argument...
virusrex
The simple fact that you fail every time to find even one example of an institution that supports your views (and have to use the global conspiracy excuse) clearly proves the evidence clearly contradict you. It is not believable that the experts in the field recommend things against the evidence of the dangers of a diet rich in fat as you recommend.
As much as the individual can use healthy, are you trying to argue that people should have an uniform intake because everybody is the same and have the same characteristics, the purpose is to have a healthy metabolism that inhibits the development of health problems.
So you think there is no value in having balance as a recommendation for a healthy lifestyle, and yet you think you know about health more than the global medical community?
Raw Beer
As I thought, you have no evidence, even less "solid evidence". Also, you're unable to provide any adverse effect of keto.
Meaningless. Like saying that arsenic is part of a balanced diet; only excessive arsenic is bad.
Speed
I've been on the keto diet and it works, not just for weight loss, which naturally occurs when your body adjusts to burning calories healthily.
Being in ketosis often, helped make my metabolism quite flexible and most of my hunger pangs disappeared. I could easily go a whole day or two without eating and still have a lot of energy and feel great. It's all about controlling your insulin level.
Incidentally, I lost about 15 kilos but that wasn't my main goal. It was to help me get back into good health after I was starting to encounter problems from my high-carb diet.
I've gone on to slightly tweak my keto diet to let more carbs back in, but not nearly as much as before and it's easy to for me to control my energy levels and hunger.
virusrex
Again, it is not me you are trying to argue against, is the whole scientific community of the world, with exactly zero institutions supporting the supposedly healthy keto diet and instead explicitly calling it unhealthy. You are still pretending that the scientific consensus is just arbitrarily doing this without any evidence, which of course is beyond what is remotely believable.
Can you present any institution that says arsenic is part of a balanced diet? of course not, because it is not, nobody says that.
Meanwhile is terribly easy to find references where authorities in the field of nutrition clearly says carbohydrates in healthy levels are part of a balanced diet, a much more than unbalanced risky diets like keto. This is why you now systematically reject the concept of balance as if it had no meaning, just because it clearly contradicts your personal belief.
Balanced diets also work, just without the extra risks, this is why they are recommended by the experts while keto is not. Anecdata of course exist for everything you can think of (even more obviously unhealthy options like smoking) people will explicitly say they are healthier and better by following it. But when actual scientific evidence comes into play it becomes easy to understand that unbalanced diets like keto are not recommendable and people that get good results with it can also get at least the same amount of success (and more) with things that can be proved to be healthier.
Wick's pencil
You say that there is solid evidence, yet can't provide any.
You say keto is risky, yet can't say what those risks are or provide evidence.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Fasting for long periods also works for weight loss, but who has the discipline for that? If keto were super risky there would be no Eskimos.
falseflagsteve
Don’t diet, eat well and exercise daily including vigorous exercise a few times a week at least. Eat eggs, beans, fresh fruit and veg and oats. Avoid ultra processed foods at all costs. Learn how to cook if you don’t know already. Fresh foods can be found cheaply in Japan if you learn where to look, like everything in life, make an effort and you’ll get results.
Make healthy eating a lifestyle not a fad, you know it makes sense.
virusrex
Again, is your argument that the whole scientific and medical community of the world explicitly call keto unhealthy without evidence? is that what you believe? Because this is what you are saying, it is not like I am the one making up the consensus. When you can't even write this and instead pretend I am the one saying that keto is unhealthy you are also making it obvious you understand it is extremely well supported.
Fasting for long periods is not even one of the balanced diets that work and are recommended.
Also Eskimos have such a terrible health that Americanizing their diet made them healthier.
Wick's pencil
That's certainly not true. Do you have any evidence?Americanizing their diet destroyed their health, it led to rising obesity, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.
Wick's pencil
No, our argument is that you've made a number of unsupported claims.
wallace
The term Eskimo is no longer acceptable. It is widely considered offensive and outdated by many Indigenous peoples of the Arctic, and it is recommended to use "Inuit" instead, of the specific language group name (e.g., Inupiat, Yupik).
I use Inuit like in Greenland.
Jimizo
Alternative media podcast watchers are the go to people for any matters related to health and science in general.
They are convinced that the elites will soon force an insect diet on us.
Would that be healthy? Not a fan of insects as food but just trying to find a positive in the inevitable.
virusrex
And that was still better than their "natural" keto.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021915002003647
The decrease in mortality from IHD in Greenland since 1965 is surprising in view of the rapid westernization of the country during the same period. A similar trend was present among Alaska Natives
Once again, ignoring something is a terribly bad argument to say it is not true, at the end it only proves that the personal bias is what makes you have mistaken concepts.
Which of the claims are contrary to the current consensus? none? that means the claims are coherent with it, so you are still saying the scientific and medical communities of the whole world have no evidence just because they conclude something that you don't want to believe. It is just that said like this so clearly makes it an obviously impossible to believe position so you still want to pretend is it something only said by one single person, not the consensus.