I am in Japan at the moment, for a couple of weeks, and been here 6 days now. Of course it is a change of diet for a diabetic when traveling, and especially to such a different food culture.
Luckily because of my wife's family here we buy some similar things to back home, such as avocado which I have in the morning at home, but come to think of it there is not much more in common. They kindly bought bran flakes for me but I noticed on the packet a huge sugar content, so I have a few and a large serve of yogurt and milk, and often a banana. That's not a traditional Japanese breakfast for sure, but it is increasingly common among Japanese now to have this style of Western breakfast.
The rest of the day's meals are really everyday Japanese which not really like much we see in Japanese restaurants except when sushi is on the menu (rarely) or say tempura (also rarely).
For a diabetic its about watching out for the ever-present bowl of rice, and also the noodles of all sorts which can rush the blood with carbs. The soba noodles (buckwheat) are more dense than the udon and ramen, and I guess that another part of the secret for diabetics is to eat slowly, which I am not good at doing.
Luckily Japanese table setting for meals usually have a wide range of small dishes with seaweeds and pickled bits and pieces which provides for complex and dense accompaniments to go with the simpler carbs in the rice and noodles. And there is always tea, not the "green tea" as portrayed in the West but many other teas which are drunk before and during meals and sometimes green tea afterwards. Many of these are in fact real green teas in terms of their tea classification, although not "green tea" and contain the anti-oxidant compounds of "green tea". This adds to the choice of benefits to counter the carbs commonly on offer.
In the Japanese everyday food plan it is the unspoken knowledge of combinations of food which make it so successful taste-wise and nutritionally. The combinations of sweet and sour, of soft and textured, of preparation method and functional foods e.g. the use of shredded cabbage to accompany fried foods like pork in breadcrumbs which slows the digestion and absorbs fats from the oil, and also offers that crisp fresh texture balanced against oil texture on the surface of the pork. These sorts of combinations are ingrained after 100s or 1000s of years and are too numerous to be able to recount here.
I'm also lucky because I have been able to go to the local City Gym each day, so keeping up my exercise routine. But not actually keeping up but changing the "routine" because of the different equipment and layout in the gym, so I'm actually exercising new muscles and also old muscles in a different way. It's good to break the habits of the exercise routine from back home.
What has my attention as a diabetic are the various Japanese herbs and supplements that might be helpful. Although some of these don't deserve to be called supplements as they are everyday cooking supplies, such as konbu powder - kelp powder - used for making soup stock (Konbu こんぶ is a kind of kelp. Makonbu and Rishirikonbu are famous). That's good for the blood and circulation, and as always here there is a wide range of choice from the everyday quality to the super special konbu from particular places and also from specific parts of the plant such as the tips of the shoots and the growth ends of the roots. All are said to have different properties.
See this "konbu shop" site.
There's also gobo (burdock root) which is an everyday root vegetable and the powder also has a place in purifying the blood (it is a an hepatic - a liver tonic and cholagogue - stimulates the release of bile - a lymphatic, and said to be an anti-cancer agent - the primary ingrediant in Essiac, for example). Here are some Western cooking ideas for gobo.There is also Japanese Knotweed, a pest in other countries, but whose extract has medicinal benefits for diabetics, as does some mountain berries which are grape-like and rare.
In the current world circumstances the yen has appreciated and the AU dollar dropped badly so it is not the time to be buying up big. But I will take home a few items to try in my diet.
Right now what has my "diabetic attention" is the fact that my morning blood sugar readings are a step higher than in the past, and I'm seeing high before-bed readings which I have not seen before. So I am monitoring all that to see what is going on and getting that back in control is the number one priority.
At the same time all is enjoyable in Japan, especially in this period between summer and winter.
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