The first culture shock that Japanese encounter after moving to Britain is the food customs of the country. The amount of fat used in cooking, the fact that people have little interest in the freshness of ingredients or nutritious balance - there are too many factors to list in detail. I often get the impression that, to put it plainly, people simply equate eating with becoming full.
Backed by the bubble economy of the past ten years, gourmet trends have accelerated in Britain and the state of "unpalatable British food" has changed significantly. An organic food boom has taken off with the middle to upper class and I almost thought that the country was finally going to clean up its long-tarnished image. Conditions are gradually falling back to the way they used to be as a result of the financial crisis, however. Still, the fact that sales at hamburger and fried chicken chains have soared since the beginning of the economic downturn is difficult for Japanese to understand. As food prices have skyrocketed under severe inflation, people still prefer hamburgers, which are cheap but make you suspicious about what they actually contain, rather than having toast and baked beans from a can. It may be because that so many people are not good at cooking in this country.
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who became famous during the gourmet cooking program boom, is trying to transform food culture in the country. As one of his first activities, he turned up at a school kitchen, claiming that as a chef and a father he could not overlook such abysmal school lunches. He reported on the state of things on TV, which caught people's attention. Even the government was moved by his direct appeal and allocated a large budget to improving the school lunch system. Many parents are resentful against this scheme and take a "so what" attitude, however, asking what is wrong with frozen pizza and coke being served for lunch. The road ahead seems bumpy.
Naturally under such circumstances, Britain has the highest incidence of obesity in the EU, proving the phrase, "You are what you eat." One out of every four people in Britain is "overweight," while the ratio is about one in ten in France or Italy. The concept of staying healthy by watching what you eat every day, which is nothing but common sense in Japan, has become a much talked about topic of late. Still, I wonder if the day will ever come that this idea really sinks in with people in Britain.
