Comment by NoLinkToMe
Comment by NoLinkToMe 7 hours ago
What is your take on the comparisons with Japan and the comments left by European visitors, both of whom who likely ate similar ingredients in Asia both of whom were noted to eat a lot less?
To me the article doesn’t really make sense. Either the Korean diet was being overstated (likely, but why if it was consistently noted?), or there was some unexplained extra energetic expenditure by Koreans versus Japanese (unlikely), or Koreans were significantly more fat than Japanese (unlikely).
There are records from every country around Korea, throughout recorded history, that Koreans eat a lot.
There are also statements that Irish farmers ate 14 pounds of potatoes, English peasants ate 4 pounds of bread, and that Japanese samurai ate 4 pounds of rice a day.
All of these statements were made from the point of view of aristocrats who had rich foods, as they looked down upon commoners who had nothing but plain starch to fill their caloric budgets with.
So I think that a large part of this stereotype has to do with the fact that Korea used to be one of the poorest countries in the world until very recently. In China, even commoners had access to delicious 9-Calories-per-gram cooking oil since the Song dynasty. In Japan, sushi as we know it appeared in the Edo period and became the fast food of choice for urban laborers. Meanwhile, Korean society remained almost exclusively agricultural until Western visitors arrived to take photos of their massive rice bowls. Same caloric content, just more voluminous.
There are also issues of measurement that were lost in translation. The report that Korean soldiers ate 3 times as much rice as the Japanese? True, Koreans ate 7 cups of rice, while the Japanese ate 2 cups. But the Japanese measuring cup was 3 times as large as the old Korean cup (hob). The much more reasonable 7:6 ratio can probably be explained by the fact that Koreans had the home advantage at the time of the war, or that Koreans are taller than the Japanese on average. And yes, the obesity rate is also higher in Korea, despite the fact that Japan has enjoyed a modern lifestyle for much longer.