A Japanese Food Education Is the Key to Eating Well
This is shoku-iku
Shoku-iku refers to food and nutrition education in Japan, but it is quite different from the food education you might receive in the United States or other Western nations. While Western eating guidelines tend to focus on diet science — technical calculations on when to eat, how to eat, and what not to eat — Japanese shoku-iku takes a more nature-based philosophy on how to adopt a sustainable, well-balanced lifestyle.
4 Main Principles of Shoku-iku
1. Forget calorie counting: Focus on your stomach.
While many weight loss or heart-healthy diets encourage calorie counting as a way to control your eating, this strategy has proven ineffective for many people. While calorie counting from a purely scientific sense works, it doesn’t take into account human psychology that dictates our behavior and habits.
The first thing to recognize when thinking about a healthy eating lifestyle is that the base of our unhealthy habits tends not to be about ignorance or lack of information, but is primarily due to greater psychological forces that encourage us to overeat or eat unhealthy foods.
