Apr 05 (Japan Today) - Despite the changes in food culture in Japan over the past few decades, Japan has far less of an obesity problem than most other developed nations.
The rates are even lower for schoolchildren, and yet according to a new survey, Japanese high school girls are far more likely to consider themselves fat, and be less happy with their bodies, than their counterparts in China, Korea and the U.S.A.
Japanese girls’ particular lack of confidence was highlighted in the results of a survey for the National Institution for Youth Education, which questioned 8,480 high school girls (aged around 16 to 18) in Japan, China, South Korea and the U.S. about their mental and physical health. Even though the obesity rate for high school girls in Japan is a mere 2.7 percent, (the next lowest of the four countries being 6.1 and the highest a massive 20 percent) more than half, at 51.9 percent, considered themselves to be “fat†or “a bit fat“, and the survey was conducted between September and November last year, so it’s not even as they caught the poor girls after a particularly gluttonous Valentine’s Day.
When asked how they felt about their body shape, only 23 percent answered that they were either “satisfied†or “fairly satisfiedâ€. This was the lowest rate of the four countries surveyed, with 31.6 percent of South Korean girls, 40.5 percent of Chinese girls and 60.5 percent of American girls feeling “fairly satisfied†or “satisfied†about their body shape.
Attempting to explain the disconnect between Japanese high school girls’ actual weight and their negative self-image, Yoichi Akashi from the organization that conducted the survey, suggested that Japanese people had a tendency to care less about numbers and figures relating to themselves, worrying more about how other people thought about them.
