Adopting Japanese life style elements

[Joods]

[Joods]

I recently had a mild health scare, the other day I ate at local restaurant for breakfast. About 25 minutes  after eating I came down with food poisoning. now I've had food poisoning before and was not nearly has bad. So, I've came to conclusion that it's the American diet that is at fault for my illness. I read up on other countries diet and the way the Japaneses dine makes the most sense in most of their habits. I use to drink a lot of Caffeinated drinks when I was younger, and now I want to adopt their styles of tea's. Does anyone else here follow more the Japanese style of food and drinks? If any one else practices what I want to do, I would like to hear from you on how to start inter-grading more of their habits into my diet. Other traditions as well, I've been using house shoes and not wearing outside shoes in the house. If any one has any other tips I'd be grateful to read your responses.

Food poisoning takes hours to kick in. Sometimes weeks.
If it was food poisoning, it wasn't the food you ate at the restaurant.
Incidentally, if you'd eaten at a Japanese restaurant, where a lot of the food is served raw and involves seafood, your chances for getting food poisoning would not necessarily be less.
Most food poisoning occurs from the victim's own homes.
My biggest tips would be to use sanitiser on food surfaces, bleach cutting boards often and only use wooden ones for bread, store food items in the fridge covered and dated, never store cooked meat under raw meat, never use the same cutting board for cooked meat that was used for the same meat before it was cooked (or the same knife), never allow mould to grow in your fridge, make sure to throw away food items that are past their used by date, only ever reheat cooked food once, don't let hot food drop below around 65 degrees and store at under 5 degrees.
Cooked food between these temperatures will grow bacteria exponentially allowing greater chance for food poisoning.

16 years ago I went to cooking school. Food poisoning, if it's going to happen, will occur within 8-10 hours after digesting the offensive meal. By 18 hours, what you ate, is out of your system, though the effects may not be. Food does not stay in the gut for weeks. Your body breaks it down using acids and the good bacteria in your gut, takes what it needs, nutrionally, then the rest is moved through the intestines and turns into waste.
If what you ate a week ago is still in your belly, that's not a good sign.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Firstly, I think food poisoning is more to do with the hygiene of the place you're eating in rather than how healthy the actual food groups are or the cultural roots of the food.

I mean you can eat fresh chicken that's part of a fairly healthy food group, but if the chicken is kept unrefridgerated on the floor it's going to give you food poisoning.

Yeah, I should have made that clear in my post about diet.

[KevinM1]

If you're doing it purely for the dietary benefits, green tea is always a winner. It doesn't necessarily have to be from Japan. I get mine from a local tea business. Beyond added flavors, it's really no different from what you would find in Japan. And no, I'm not including crap like Arizona "tea" in that, either. That's just sugar water.

            Thank you, I've known Arizona Tea is not healthy at all. What's your advice of cutting back on Soda and Energy drinks?

When I got my diabetes diagnosis, I had to quit cold turkey.  Now, it's primarily water and cranberry juice for my kidneys (hooray stones!).  Other people have also told me that cold turkey was the only way they could kick soda because it's too easy to cheat and fall back into bad habits otherwise.  It sucks for a few days, but you'll feel better off.

Part of the problem with the American diet is that we fetishize crap.  Fast food, bad food, fried food.  Sometimes we rationalize it due to culture (all the fried shit/pies/sugary teas in the south), other times we excuse it as a 'treat' even though we consume far too much of it.  Processed food plays a huge role in it (it's fast, easy, and cheap, and we're lazy fuckers), too.  Combine it all, and we're left with an obesity epidemic.

Diabetes has been simultaneously the best and worst thing that ever happened to me.  I'll likely die from it.  I have, essentially, a late onset Type 1 with obvious genetic factors (just about every male on my mom's side gets it right around when they turn 30), so it isn't one I can conquer with diet and exercise.  I weigh ~140 lbs. and eat far healthier than most Americans, but I just had to have one of my medicines' dosage increased.  But, it has forced me to adopt a much healthier lifestyle because I will get sick if I eat poorly.

The approach that works best for me is to treat vegetables as the main component of any dish, with meat as the condiment/side.  Grains are limited.  I've slowly added fish to my diet (I've never liked seafood, and I still doubt I could stomach anything like clams, oysters, shrimp, lobster, etc.).  I've tried baked things with diabetic friendly flours (coconut flour, almond flour, etc.), but the texture is generally all wrong.  A weird mix of too squishy and cardboard.

[Little lunch]

Food poisoning takes hours to kick in. Sometimes weeks.
If it was food poisoning, it wasn't the food you ate at the restaurant.
Incidentally, if you'd eaten at a Japanese restaurant, where a lot of the food is served raw and involves seafood, your chances for getting food poisoning would not necessarily be less.
Most food poisoning occurs from the victim's own homes.
My biggest tips would be to use sanitiser on food surfaces, bleach cutting boards often and only use wooden ones for bread, store food items in the fridge covered and dated, never store cooked meat under raw meat, never use the same cutting board for cooked meat that was used for the same meat before it was cooked (or the same knife), never allow mould to grow in your fridge, make sure to throw away food items that are past their used by date, only ever reheat cooked food once, don't let hot food drop below around 65 degrees and store at under 5 degrees.
Cooked food between these temperatures will grow bacteria exponentially allowing greater chance for food poisoning.

16 years ago I went to cooking school. Food poisoning, if it's going to happen, will occur within 8-10 hours after digesting the offensive meal. By 18 hours, what you ate, is out of your system, though the effects may not be. Food does not stay in the gut for weeks. Your body breaks it down using acids and the good bacteria in your gut, takes what it needs, nutrionally, then the rest is moved through the intestines and turns into waste.
If what you ate a week ago is still in your belly, that's not a good sign.

Diseases like Listeria and Mad Cow Disease are caused by bacterial infections through food poisoning.
Incubation rates can be years.

[Sterben]

Whatever strain of food poisoning infected me has worked it's self out of my system. Thanks for all for your advice, I've been cutting back on the soda and energy drinks and have been drinking more tea in place of coffee. I'm starting feel a bit more healthier.

[The Valkyrie]

I'm going to adopt Japanese traditions.

Next year I'm bombing Pearl Harbour...

[Joods]

Glad you're feeling better.

[Sterben]

Thanks, I know it will be tough road to rid myself of the additive properties of products like soda, energy drinks, and coffee. I've also starting eating more noddles and rice.

[thesummerqueen]

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." - Michael Pollan

Pollan is up a woo-rope when it comes to a lot of his organic and anti-GMO bullshittery, but he had a point, which is why the Mediterranean diet actually works, as it focuses on moderation.

It's perfectly acceptable for someone with a healthy immune and digestive system to indulge in 'junk' food on occasion - the real problem is, and there have been studies on this, we are fucking TERRIBLE at portioning out our food. It's great to tell someone to eat steak - did you know the amount of meat we actually need throughout the day is MUCH smaller than what you're served, usually?

We eat too much and too fast. It's culturally acceptable to wolf down your food and get back to work instead of doing things the French way where you eat slowly and thus register being "not hungry" faster.

My mother went gluten-free on some idea, and doesn't claim to have an intolerance (although she doesn't handle gluten well now that she's been off it for so long) but the diet allowed to lose enough weight to go off her cholesterol meds. Fantastic. But just about any diet where you're being forced to limit ingredients and portion control is going to do that for you.

It's entirely possible to be unhealthy from eating too much of 'good things' as well.

If you like the Japanese lifestyle, that's cool. But American food doesn't have anything to do with your illness. Just the hygiene of the location. Same with sodas - I cut them out of my diet and I only have one on a rare occasion, the way you're supposed to do for a lot of stuff.