The title above is a copy for a kind of foods which we can buy at every American grocery store here. I found it in a coupon I've got in a shop. What do you imagine the food is? The answer is "grapefruit juice." Many of Japanese people might have been surprised. The combination is hard to think of. But American people might feel it natural, I mean, various kind of foods are labeled with "Calcium!" here. I don't know the truth, but I just imagine that once some specialists might have said that calcium is important for children's growth or for everyday life and calcium might have been a fashion , just in the same way as Japan. But I could hardly imagine that I can have enough calcium required for a day drinking grapefruit juice.
This is not only the calcium matter. When I first went to grocery store here, I was wondering "Which is NORMAL milk?" There are no milk just labeled as "milk". Instead, many "variations" of milk -- low fat, reduced fat, fat free skim milk, buttermilk (which may not be a kind of "milk") , and with-vitamin D. Finally I found that vitamin D milk is most likely to the ordinal milk we had in Japan and I have been buying them. "Fat Free" and "Low Fat" are very common among American foods. Almost every food seems to have fat-free versions -- low fat frozen pasta, 99% fat free yogurt, 1/3 fat free potato chips and fat free cheese???
Yet another surprise of mine was tofu. I was very glad when I found tofu sold in grocery stores here. I can eat Japanese tofu easily! Then I was surprised again to find that tofu lasts quite longer -- it is almost one month until "best before" dates. In Japan usually tofu go bad within several days. So I was wondering "What is in American tofu...?" It is not limited only for tofu. For example, bread of one brand easily go bad, while another last for weeks, although they are "same" kind of bread. I understand that in America, many families go shopping in weekends by car and buy amount of foods for a week or two at once. So foods that "last long" should be preferred.
What is that? Where do all those things come from? I suppose American people think it quite natural that foods are processed, added, and changed far from their original materials, with a few exception such as fresh vegetables or meats. It is making a good contrast with Japan. Of course there are many processed foods in Japan, too. But in the other hand, they seem to have paid great efforts to deliver foods without loosing the taste, freshness, and quality of original food materials. Farmers and grocery stores are paying great efforts to deliver fresh milk keeping the "taste" of just-milked from cows. They minimize the pasteurization process, build up fast logistics systems, and even paying attention to feed for cows. Tofu are still made every morning, like western bakery bakes bread, and sold at the manufacturer or delivered to shops within a day so that customers can have them in the evening. The selection of soybean and water is said to have a significant influence on competence of the products.
I understand that the difference came from many underlying factors. Fast logistics systems might be possible because of the small country. There may be also some cultural difference in foods and meals. And this difference in attitudes toward the processed food above is, I believe, becoming a new background for different attitudes towards the genetically modified (bio-engineered) foods in America and Japan today.
Note: the grapefruit juice in the picture below is not one "With Calcium."
