Nourished Magazine :: Wisdom to thrive by

John and Jan Belleme share 18 essential foods from Japan. Still prepared using time-honoured recipes, these traditional foods have endowed their life giving, healing and strengthening properties to the Japanese people since ancient times.

Each chapter in this book offers scientific, cultural and historical contexts before sharing recipes which include each food. The Authors reverence for traditional Japanese culture, their infectious passion and deep gratitude for those who maintain these ancient food ways, makes ‘Japanese Foods that Heal’ a warming book. Their obvious affection for the culture they honour with this book, however, is tainted by their myopic view of the Japanese diet.

The reader learns about well known Japanese ingredients like, Miso, Tofu, Tempeh, Tamari and sea vegetables. However, the lesser known foods like Seitan (seasoned wheat gluten), Maitake (the King of mushrooms), Amazake (sweet fermented rice) and Mochi (sweet rice cakes) are enticing. The inclusion of more obscure Japanese delicacies like Natto, an ammonia smelling fermented soybean product and the various insects in traditional Japanese diets would make this list more comprehensive. However, it is understandable their exclusion, since the book is marketed to US readers who’d likely not respond too well to these foods.

Even so I would like to have seen insect specialties like:

• hachi-no-ko - boiled wasp larvae
• zaza-mushi - aquatic insect larvae
• inago - fried rice-field grasshoppers
• semi - fried cicada
• sangi - fried silk worm pupae..1

It’s also disappointing the lack of animal protein in the recipes. Of 125 recipes only 6 include fish. While Japanese culture, due to the influence of Buddhism, has largely forbidden eating land animals, seafood forms a large portion of their diet..2 This book does not project this impression at all.

Unfortunately, John and Jan have come to Japanese food through the Macrobiotic movement. It has long been complained that the macrobiotic diet picks and chooses from the vast array of dishes and foods the traditional Japanese diet offers and uses only some portions of what was, in fact an adequately Nourishing food tradition. I say adequately Nourishing because, when taking into consideration Howell’s work with enzymes in nutrition..3, the discovery that the Asian pancreas is 50% larger than the Caucasian makes you wonder at the validity of using the Asian diet for the Westerner.

This book includes many vegetarian and even vegan recipes with ingredients which are not Japanese, not even food, like margarine. It’s disappointing to find recipes in a book which you’d expect to be based in traditional fundamentals which are neither traditional, nor Nourishing. Many of the recipes are based on those familiar to Americans like chili, pasta, stroganoff, pie and cookies, albeit made with Japanese ingredients. blegh! There’s not even any recipes for Sushi.

While researching for this book I came across this wonderful tidbit about sushi:

“Nigiri-sushi, prepared by putting a slice of raw fish onto a bite-size portion of hand-rolled, vinegar-flavored rice, has recently become internationally popular. But sushi originated as a means of preserving fish by fermenting it in boiled rice. Fish that are salted and placed in rice are preserved by lactic acid fermentation, which prevents proliferation of the bacteria that bring about putrefaction. A souring of flavor occurs during the process, and the fish is eaten only after the sticky decomposed rice has been cleaned off.”..2

Now that’s inspiring, informative and exciting. How healing would you expect deeply fermented fish to be? Ask the Inuit who lived long, productive lives in the harshest of environments the globe has to offer if fermented fish was inspiring. Ask them if it’s healing.

While I applaud the authors of “Japanese Foods That Heal” for trying to make Japanese foods more accessible to Western tastes, nutritional congruence with the title falls short of the mark and ‘dumbing down’ of the recipes makes this book boorish and glib.

Resources

1. http://www.uky.edu/Ag/Entomology/ythfacts/bugfood/yf813.htm
2. The Cambridge World History of Food by Kenneth F Kiple and Kriemhild Conee Ornelas: http://www.cambridge.org/us/books/kiple/japan.htm
3. Edward Howell, Enzyme Nutrition: Avery (January 1, 1995)

About the Author...

A Super Hero and one of many who have realised their true calling as saviors of humanity, healers of our connection with Nature and creators of Heaven on Earth. The Nourisher's gift is the re-spiritualisation of the 'process of recreation' we call eating. Mother of three Super Heroes in training and wife to her God incarnate, The Nourisher hails from the place of feminine healing, Byron Bay, Australia. She gathers together Life Creators from all over the globe at NourishedMagazine.com.au