Is a Japanese breakfast healthier than other countries?
Let's find out in this video
Many people tell me that
a Japanese breakfast is super healthy,
so in this video I wanted to compare
a typical Japanese breakfast
and compare it to other breakfasts from around the world
US, China, Germany, and India
Before I start though,
probably worth mentioning that these examples
are what people think of as typical for that country,
but obviously there are exceptions
with so many different diets these days
and ever changing eating habits
It doesn't apply to everyone,
but for all intents and purposes,
and in order to make this video,
I had to narrow down the typical breakfast for each country
Also, if your country wasn't included
let me know what your typical breakfast is
and how it stacks up to Japan
and the other countries
And one final note,
I had to take some liberties on a few of the ingredients
because they just weren't available at the local supermarket
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That all said, let's get our breakfast on
The typical Japanese breakfast
When you first think of a traditional Japanese breakfast
then you start off with rice and miso soup
This is a fairly decent size bowl
This is actually it looks kind of small
Fits in my hand,
but this is kind of like a man size portion
The basics in the miso soup is
they usually have seaweed and tofu
This one has a little bit of extra has fried tofu as well
And then there's some onions in here
This is natto,
which is a fermented soybean
It has kind of like an interesting smell,
but it is supposedly supposed to be
really healthy for you
And with a grilled fish you can get different types
This one that I'm showing you right now is salmon,
but you can also get different dried fish
They're all very common
Another side you can get some pickled vegetables
In this case i have some pickled radish and pickled cucumbers
This is kind of your minimum set breakfast
You'll notice that everything comes in these little bowls
and you can kind of mix and match
Sometimes you can get like little tofu
you can get tamagoyaki
you can kind of like mix it up
and get like different combinations
but this is kind of like the minimum
that you would have in a traditional Japanese breakfast
The overall concept with I think a Japanese menu
is you have to have kind of like a balanced diet
You have your greens, you have your proteins,
you have your starch,
you also want to have something
that's kind of easy on the stomach so it doesn't
weigh you down in the morning or throughout the day
That's why you have like fermented beans
That's why you have miso soup
And surprisingly,
or maybe not that surprisingly,
is you don't see a lot of fried food
So that's your traditional Japanese breakfast
which is going to serve as our baseline
when we compare to other countries
The American breakfast
Here we go with your,
I wouldn't say traditional American breakfast,
but I think what you would consider
maybe as a typical American breakfast
You have your eggs,
you have your sausage and your bacon,
you have your hash browns, you have two pieces of toast,
and then with some butter on the side
This literally is all brown
If you haven't noticed,
the first thing I see is just a lot of brown
and kind of pan-fried foods
In fact, I don't see any green here
Without even looking at the calories,
feels like a very heavy meal
that would kind of like sit in your stomach for a while
And there's just a lot of fried food
You have like the hash browns that's fried on the pan
You have the bacon that's fried
and the bacon itself is really fatty
You have the sausages that are quite fatty usually
You have your eggs which are also pan fried
I mean this is a breakfast that I would love and enjoy
I think for a Japanese person this would be quite heavy
Generally don't like to have all this fried food
But you will notice
these days Japanese people will eat eggs,
they will eat bread, eat sausages,
but they'll probably have smaller portions in general
Let's move on to the next breakfast
The Chinese breakfast
Okay, so first thing that strikes me
is that this is a soup based breakfast
The base itself is soy and then it has a couple
of different ingredients, like onions
And then they throw in some spicy chili oil
There's some other vegetables in here,
like this one has pakuchi in particular
What's really cool is that it also comes with donut bread
It's a fried bread
The whole idea of it
is you take the bread itself and you dip it into the soup
Then you eat it just like this
Comparing it to a Japanese breakfast
you know it's kind of has its balance
You do have kind of like a healthy soup with a soy base,
but then you have kind of like this fried doughnut bread
which is, you know, not so healthy
I feel like it's a little bit heavier than a Japanese breakfast,
but a lot lighter than an American breakfast
Another thing to probably point out
is even though this soup doesn't have any meat inside of it or fish
the soy base is a protein
so it kind of covers your bases
You do have your starches, you have your vegetables,
you have your protein
So you know it's pretty balanced meal
Overall you want to say hi to everyone
your hair is all over the place man
smile to everyone
Not that interested in that breakfast, huh?
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said bring on the next breakfast the
german breakfast
look at this platter the first thing
that strikes me here is that again you
don't have any
greens at all i'm sure there are you
know people that eat
greens like they have lettuce i think so
what you'll find that's pretty standard
is you'll find
bread rolls you'll find cheeses you'll
find like different assortment
of kind of meat sausages and you'll even
have like a boiled egg
in the mix what's also kind of
surprising is that for a german
breakfast it's typically
served cold i think this is kind of for
that run and gun
get your food make it real quick and
then go so you don't like want to spend
a whole
lot of time you know just want to like
grab it eat it and go
compared to japan obviously you'll see
that there's a lot of
kind of red meat here which you don't
typically
find in a japanese breakfast you do
spined eggs but usually you don't find a
boiled egg but the biggest thing is that
japanese don't have a lot of cheese and
dairy in their breakfast
so that's one thing that kind of just
super stands out
you want to have some breakfast what do
you want
[Music]
you want there you go oh no
back to this let's let me just kind of
straighten this meat out a little bit
i think this is pretty much kind of like
the standard
portion size it looks pretty standard
but i'm sure there's people that will
eat less and
i'm sure there's people that'll eat more
let's move on to the next one
the indian breakfast
so it looks like this is what indian
people eat for breakfast
um well not all indian people apparently
it depends on
where you live in india this specific
breakfast is something that you would
find
generally in the north um they use a lot
of like flatbreads um this one is
chapati and like the first thing that i
personally notice is that you don't have
any greens at least
in this particular breakfast that i have
and your main carb
is a flat bread you have curry which is
usually like quite buttery and oily
lots of spice i mean it's nice because
there's a lot of flavor this one in
particular is really spicy just take a
little bite
i didn't want to eat it so comparing
this breakfast
back to a japanese breakfast they
generally don't like something with a
lot of oil a lot of butter
a lot of spice they want something light
for their breakfast so i think
that's why you don't find curry on a
typical japanese
breakfast this bread is quite healthy
it's like a fairly
basic bread there's not a lot of sugar a
lot of butter or anything that is
you know what would be considered
unhealthy i mean compared to rice i
don't think it's
that much different yeah i think just
rice is just more common in japan and
i'm sure there's like
all different sorts of curry but the
fact that it's curry and
like a flat bread and then sometimes
with rice so what do you think was the
healthiest breakfast
were there any surprises let me know in
the comments and here's the calories
side by side given the portions so based
on the calories alone
india comes in first with the lowest
calories followed by china and then
japan
coming in third and surprise surprise us
killing that calorie count but calories
alone probably don't tell the whole
story
looking at a world chart ranking obesity
among adults based on the country's
population shows the united states
ranked the 12th highest with 36.2
percent
of its adults considered obese germany
ranking 79th of the world china at 169th
place at 6.2 percent
japan ranking at 186 and finally india
ranking at 189th place
pretty interesting given our results
from breakfast personally i love the
hardiness of the american breakfast
the fried goodness of a chinese
breakfast the easiness of a german
breakfast
and all the flavors in indian breakfast
but it seemed like the japanese
breakfast was the most balanced
for example you have the miso soup and
the minerals from the seaweed
the probiotics and the fermented
soybeans light greens
fish from some additional protein and
finally a small bowl of rice
it's not hard to see why japanese say
it's easy on the stomach
so overall the variety of dishes and the
small portions keeping the calories at a
moderate level
seem to make a japanese breakfast a
healthy choice
but what do you think anyway i hope that
sheds a little bit more light on how
healthy a japanese breakfast is
and how it compares to other countries
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