Monday, October 25, 2010

That's a lot of pudding...

America has a reputation for being the country with all the unhealthy food. Forget France with its famously tantalizing desserts or its fatty croissants and cheeses - American food is either too greasy, too fatty, or too sugary. While it's true that there's plenty of unhealthy foods to be found in America, such consumables are bound to crop up wherever the demand develops. And though demand for such things may not be so great in Japan, it's on the rise. Don't try to deny it. If it weren't, you wouldn't see stuff like this for sale at Japanese convenience stores:


That's a 480-gram cup of pudding. That's about 17 ounces. For those without a basic grasp of amount, that's approximately a friggin lot of pudding. One cup of Jello pudding is about 1.15 ounces, the internet tells me. And look - it's not like this Japanese one is resealable. Who's being a pig now?

9 comments:

  1. The scary thing to me isn't these monsters (though it is amusing seeing huge offerings in konbini), but the calorie counts on the carb bomb pastries. If you take a look at some of the relatively modest-looking cakes (especially steam cakes), some of them have a phenomenal amount of calories. One of the nicest steamed cakes is a Matsuya Ginza one but it comes close to 500 calories.

    There is so much fat in Japanese cakes, even when they're not especially sweet. The melon pan are also deceptive in that they seem pretty much like bread, but many of them are hovering around 450 calories. Things don't even have to be big here to be fattening. They make a Twinkie look like a diet cake offering.

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  2. Japanese kids keep getting fatter and fatter.

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  3. Orchid, that's very true. One of the reasons I don't really like breads and pastries here - they're all loaded!

    Sixmats - yup. One day they'll catch up. One day.

    Mr. Pineapple - yeah, there was an anindofu one that tempted me. But man, I'd be sick if I ate all that.

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  4. You share it, of course. It's only scary if you're used to being a greedy pig yourself.

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  5. I guess. But I mean it's right there with all the other individual serving size items. And like I said, it's not resealable. But yeah, I guess it would be pretty reasonable if you, say, took it home as dessert for your family of four.

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  6. > One cup of Jell-O
    > pudding is about
    > 1.15 ounces

    Those are the overpriced mini pudding cups that busy moms (or people without Tupperware) put in a second-grader's lunch. They're made for kids. And even at that, they also come in somewhat larger sizes (up to at least ten fl.oz I think).

    The smallest size box of Jell-O instant pudding calls for 2 cups of milk, so that'll be at _least_ 16 fl.oz just from the milk, even if the pudding mix doesn't add any volume at all. The larger box calls for 3 cups of milk, which would be 24 fl.oz.

    Sure, the nutrition information on the box tells you that it makes multiple servings, but you easily can't mix up just part of a box, now can you?

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  7. you always gotta rag on france huh paul?

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  8. Yeah, well. When I think of fatty foods, I mainly think America and France. =P

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