Do the Hara Hachi Bu…
January 25, 2008 by Liz Lewis
Filed under Diets and Dieting, Easy Health Tips, Food and Drink, Happy Living Tip, Health, Misc., Nutrition, Obesity
Concerned about your growing weight? Then maybe it’s time to do the hara hachi bu. Practiced by the Okinawan people for generations, it simply means ‘to eat until you are 80% full’.
Now, Okinawa has one of the healthiest and longest living populations in the world, so there must be something to this.
Let’s face it, eating less is not a practice done in most Western societies. We are given plates piled high with food and then expected to empty them. I don’t know about you, but as a child I wasn’t allowed to leave the dinner table until the plate was wiped clean. And how many of you got the old ‘don’t waste the food on your plate when there are people out there starving’ speech.
Our parents meant well, but it turns out that eating less is better, especially if the less you are eating is healthier foods. The Okinawan’s not only do the hara hachi bu but also eat a antioxident rich plant-based diet. So they are winning on all accounts.
Michael Pollan, author of a new book In Defense of Food, is all in favor of this way of eating. He argues that what we are eating these days is not really food (he calls it edible foodlike substances) and how we are eating it – alone in the car or in front of the television – is not really eating.
Instead, he suggests that we should follow three simple rules – Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants. Sounds a lot like the Okinawan way of life.
Want to know more?
Check out my guest post over at Eating Fabulously to learn how Michael Pollan suggests we do this…
This sounds pretty doable most days, but on the weekends, it’s all about me and my tacos. And pizza. And macaroni and cheese.
Sigh. Maybe I’ll just team up some veggies along with that stuff. Think that will count? Eh, close enough.
I grew up in Japan where my mother had told me this all through my childhood. Not only it is told in Okinawa, but it is a widely known saying in all of Japan. If I had kept up with this saying I’d be a bit lighter than I am right now
. Keep up the great work on this blog!
Hi Liberty,
I agree. It’s definitely doable…it’s just that most of us don’t do it.
Hi Keiichi,
Yes, I guess we all should really have listened to our mothers a little more…still, never to late to take up some of their wisdom…
Glad you’re enjoying Healthbolt.
Eat antioxident rich food to stay fit and keep cancer at bay.Consuming food items like cabbage and fruits like grapes which have more oxygen .
thanks for the tip…antioxidents are most important to a good diet.
please give us a translation word-by-word for hara (=stomach) hachi (= ?) bu (=?).