Green Tea Time

Green tea. Sitting there, all smug.

I don't really like green tea. There, I said it. But it's one of the most popular beverages and flavors in Japan, so if offered some tea or a matcha (抹茶) flavored pastry, I suck it up and act like I'm delighted. There are exceptions - soft cream, Kit-Kats, I'm looking at you - you rock!

Recently, though, I've been trying to drink it at work. A lot of it. Why? Because it's healthy, and it's free. Let's start with the healthy part. It's no secret that drinking green tea has been linked with a variety of health benefits. It can reduce stress, lower the risk of certain cancers, increase mental awareness, and speed up your metabolism, among other things. Part of this is due to the fact that tea in general is pretty damn healthy. Another part is that the antioxidants found in green tea are particularly potent. The last part is, well, uncertain. In reference to taking green tea containing supplements, WebMD says:

"I don't think it can hurt to drink it. I'd focus on dietary sources rather than supplements because there are several compounds in green tea that might need to be consumed together. We just don't know yet,"[...]

So really there's a mystery element to green tea. It's good because...it's good. Now as the WebMD article notes, green tea isn't going to cure anything, but certainly doesn't hurt to drink. At the moment I'm trying to drink a lot of the stuff so that I can acquire a taste for it, as I have with so many other consumables.

Luckily for me, right now I'm in a situation where I can drink all the green tea I want at no cost! At work, anyhow. Why is that? Well, at each of my schools, we have the Japanese equivalent of a water cooler. It looks like this:

Serves tea and also hosts the school's computer network.

I know what you're thinking "Oh, so instead of water coolers in Japan, they just havee green tea coolers. Figures." Phff, no. Racist. They have water, too. Err...well, the one at my part time school has cold water. This one only has hot water and hot green tea. Decisions, decisions.

Caveats


While green tea is largely considered to be a very healthy drink, there are a few things you should keep in mind. I wasn't aware of these things, but I want you to be. It's my thanks to you for reading. Really, thank you!

• Green tea and caffeine - I've heard that green tea doesn't have caffeine. This isn't quite a statistic, but it might qualify as a damn lie. The truth is, it's variable. There are many factors that play into it. Younger tea leaves contain more caffeine. First infusions contain more caffeine. Cold tea generally has more caffeine than hot tea. Tea from teabags often has more. Man, I'm glad I learned that. That could be why I've been feeling particularly antsy the past few days. For more information, see this Wikihow page on how to minimize green tea caffeine. Update: As Ashely points out in the comment section, tea still contains a lot less caffeine than coffee, so it's a great alternative if you're trying to cut back.

• Tea stones! - You should be fine so long as you drink in moderation, but certain components of green tea can lead to kidney stones.

• Hot tea and cancer - At least one study has linked the consumption of hot tea with esophageal cancer. So you might be better off drinking it warm, lukewarm, or cold.

• Green tea with milk and lemon - You can, of course, drink green tea plain, but studies have shown that adding milk actually decreases its beneficial effects. Conversely, adding citrus such as lemon helps the body absorb more antioxidants. Maybe I should start bringing lemons with me to work.

There you have it. While this is by no means a comprehensive guide to green tea, I hope you learned something you didn't know before. I know I did!

The vitamin C is a lie

Emptor caveat. Or "buyer beware."

Many Japanese (and foreign) people I've met consider Japan to be a pretty healthy society. Physically, anyway. People here exercise and eat well. But for such a supposedly health-conscious people, it's a little startling to realize that nutritional information doesn't seem to be very important to most people here. Whether this is the cause or result of the fact that it's often a bit confusing or unavailable, I'm unsure. But then, nutritional information doesn't seem to be as heavily regulated as it is in some countries, particularly the U.S. This was surprising for me, given the bureaucratic nature of so many elements of Japanese society.

But what exactly am I going on about? Japanese food has nutritional information labels! Well yes, it generally does. But most people don't know how to interpret it, and the labels don't do you any favors. I've already written about how to understand Japanese nutrition labels, along with a warning about serving sizes and hidden sugar. You should also be careful about overly vague labeling.

Let me compare two products so you can get an idea what I mean. On one hand, we have Japanese Vitamin Water, which clearly advertises on the label: "1000 mg of Vitamin C." I'm not too crazy about the amount of sugar in the drink, which is disguised by reduced serving size information (I don't have one available, but off the top of my head I believe it's about 4.5 grams of sugar per 100 ml, with a total of about 500 ml pr bottle).

Then we have Fiber 7500 Plus Vitamin C, which says that it has 7500 mg of fiber per bottle. When I saw this drink, I was a little hopeful. Fiber and vitamin C, huh? Well, it's  カロリーゼロ (0 calorie), so no sugar. If I don't get cancer from this thing, I could be onto something here. But if it sounds too good to be true...

...it usually is. Looks like Fiber 7500 Plus Vitamin C packs between 16 and 84 mg of Vitamin C per 100 ml. Again, this is a 500 ml bottle, so we must multiply that by 5. That means there's between 80 mg and 420 mg per bottle. I'd say that's a pretty big variance. Ok, to be fair, all we really need is about 60 mg a day, though more Vitamin C never hurts (our bodies constantly use the stuff, but since it's one of the only water-soluable vitamins it can't be stored). So in that respect, this drink is adequate. But if you're looking to pump Vitamin C, like if you have a cold or something, you'd be much better off with either supplements or something like Vitamin Water, which contains about 2.3 - 12.5 times as much.

For those of you who aren't as interested in looking for and crunching the numbers for stuff like Vitamin C content, just be aware that vague labels are a reason for caution. You may not be getting exactly what you think.

Nutrition Update

One of my most popular posts of last year was the Getting by in Japan guide on nutrition. Well, an addendum has been added with some additional caveats about labeling and serving size information.

Check it out.

Bread

The other day in class, the J teacher and I were doing a lesson on expressing amounts for countable and noncountable items. For example we say "many apples" but not "many waters." "How many oranges" as opposed to "how much meat?"

At one point I added that we can say something like "many breads" but instead of many pieces or loaves of bread, it means many different kinds of bread. In my head I was thinking of white bread, rye bread, various types of bagels, baguettes, raisin bread, sourdough, etc. When the teacher explained it to the students, though, he used the examples of "curry pan, anpan, and melon pan." Bread with curry inside, bread with red bean paste inside, and melon-flavored bread. All sugary or fatty and all very pastry-like.

One thing I miss about living in America is that in Japan, there just aren't as many types of bread available, and (as I believe Orchid pointed out in a comment to an earlier post) most here are packed with calories and sugar. I guess because rice is the prevalent "grain" in these parts, bread has been rather sorely neglected.

Getting by in Japan: Nutrition

As should be fairly self-evident, living in a foreign country almost invariably presents a number of challenges. The exact nature of these obstacles and how difficult they are to adjust to depends on a number of factors, such as which countries one is moving from and to, personal adaptability, profession, language ability, etc.

From now on I'd like to periodically write about some of the challenges that I and friends of mine have faced in Japan, and hopefully provide some resources and/or advice in each case. It's my hope that this will be of help to someone living in or planning to live in Japan.

Since coming here and adjusting to living alone, I've found myself becoming more and more conscious of healthy living. When there's no campus dining hall or mom to cook for you, you basically have three choices: (1) Eating out all the time, (2) Buying pre-made stuff like sushi or sandwiches every day, or (3) Manning up and learning how to cook. Options (1) and (2) can both get expensive and unhealthy, and they don't add anything to you as a person. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

I'll save cooking tips for a future post. First, I want to talk a little bit about how my diet has changed since coming to Japan. It's a frequent observation that Japanese people are generally much thinner than we in the West. I credit several factors for this trend, but diet is no doubt an important part of it. Aside from eating different foods, Japanese people eat less. Sometimes this means smaller portions, but what I have in mind is snacks. In my experience, Japanese people don't chow down between meals as often as we do in the States, anyway. I've attempted to drop this habit recently. We eat for a lot of reasons aside from hunger - boredom, depression, social interaction. Reading about the science behind some of it makes you think.

Cutting out snacks can be tough. Sometimes you just want to eat. I know - about an hour ago I was going to town on a big bag of pretzels I got at Costco. I think the trick, however, is always trying to keep nutrition in mind. Tangerines make good, healthy snacks. Bananas, too - those are filling. But if you really need something less healthy and yet don't want to go overboard, read on.

Before I link this more fully to living here, another, related challenge I have encountered has been trying to adjust my diet in conjunction with my exercising routines. There have been times during the past year when I have wanted to put on muscle. Protein and calcium are important for getting strong.

But how the hell do you know what your body needs when all the nutrition facts are in Japanese?

And what about trying to make sure you're getting enough vitamins and minerals? One thing I frequently miss about life back home, as insignificant as it sounds, is the availability of nutrition labels that provide Percent Daily Value information. Ok, these yogurt raisins have 12.9 g of fat, but what percentage of your daily allowance is that? If you don't know how much fat is okay to eat per day, knowing that you just ate 12.9 g means absolutely nothing to you!

Worry not - I'm here to help. If you care about your daily allowances, you will have to do some arithmetic. Luckily, it's not that difficult. From the Mayo Clinic's website on food and nutrition, here is the first part of what you need to know, condensed into a nifty table (based on a 2,000 calorie diet):

Reference values for nutrition labeling: How much should you get each day?
Nutrient	Amount for adults
Biotin	0.3 milligrams (mg)
Calcium	1,000 mg
Copper	2 mg
Folic acid	0.4 mg
Iron	18 mg
Magnesium	400 mg
Niacin	20 mg
Pantothenic acid	10 mg
Phosphorus	1,000 mg
Protein	50 grams (g)
Riboflavin	1.7 mg
Thiamin	1.5 mg
Vitamin A	5,000 international units (IU)
Vitamin B-12	6 micrograms
Vitamin B-6	2 mg
Vitamin C	60 mg
Vitamin D	400 IU
Vitamin E	30 IU
Zinc	15 mg

Reference values for nutrition labeling: How much should you get each day?
Nutrient	Amount for adults
Total fat	Less than 65 grams (g)
Saturated fat	Less than 20 g
Trans fat	Less than 2 g
Cholesterol	Less than 300 milligrams (mg)
Total carbohydrate	300 g
Fiber	At least 25 g
Sodium	Less than 2,400 mg
Potassium	3,500 mg

Unfortunately International Units (IU), which are used in a couple places, are pretty ambiguous. But then I doubt you're going to be monitoring your Vitamin A intake that closely, so let's move on.

Ok, now that you know you should probably be eating less than 2,400 mg of sodium per day, how do you figure out how much sodium that Men's Pocky has? Well, if you're good at Japanese then you're dismissed. I promise you there's nothing amusing from here on in - just stuff you already know. If you can't read Japanese, or don't know the words for stuff like calories and sodium, here's some nifty information for you!

Calories - エネルギー (enerugi)

Protein - たんぱく質 (tanpaku shitsu)

Fat -脂質 (shi shitsu)

Carbohydrates - 炭水化物 (tansuikabutsu)

Sodium -ナトリウム (natoriumu)

Fiber -繊維質 (seni shitsu)

Sugar - 糖 (tou)

Iron - 鉄 (tetsu)

Vitamin - ﾋﾞﾀﾐﾝ (bitamin)

Those are probably the most important ones to know. If you can read katakana, you should be able to figure out any other nutrients. If you can't read katakana, get studying! I'll leave you with a couple compounds you'll want to know if you're into eating healthy:

全粒粉 - if you find this one on a pack of bread, it indicates whole wheat. Snag that!

脱脂乳 - skim milk. Unless you enjoy drinking cream-like cow juice, I recommend looking for this.

Update: Tim adds - "Don't forget high fructose corn syrup. That crap is in everything 果糖ぶどう糖液糖. But it is usually just the last 2 kanji, 液糖."


Update (1/13/11): I had been thinking about adding this addendum for a while, forgot, and then Orchid at 1000 Things About Japan wrote an entry on labeling information and reminded me.

It's important to pay attention to labeling and serving sizes. As Orchid notes, different products measure serving sizes in different amounts. The amount is noted with the nutrition information, but figuring out the total property values isn't always straightforward.

Above is a blurry photo of a box of Kilimanjaro Blend coffee. The label notes that the values correspond to one juice box (1本), which is 250 ml. Sometimes, though, the information will refer to 100 ml, or 200, or some other arbitrary amount. And the total contents may not be printed clearly on the front of the label. In this case, you must look on the back for 内容量, which means "amount contained." It will usually say something like "内容量: 500 ml."

Also, sugar is not always sugar. In America, I believe labels usually specify how many calories are compose of sugar. In Japan, though, many times you won't see the kanji for sugar (糖 or 砂糖 or 糖類). You may only see 炭水化物, carbohydrates. But if you're eating or drinking something sweet, chances are many or most of those carbs are actually sugar.

Update: 3/9/11 - new post related to nutrition. Beware of vague labeling!