One of the most talked about stories today on Yahoo! Japan and Twitter was the news that delicious, delicious gyudon, a bowl of rice topped with beef that is a type of Japanese-style fast food, is not only delicious. It’s practically a health food.
Restaurant chain Yoshinoya recently ran an experiment in which 24 people got to eat gyudon every single day for three months. Results indicated that doing so did not increase risk of metabolic issues, weight gain, body fat, blood sugar, and so on.
You would think that the Internet would resound with joy at this news. But no. Netizens are extremely skeptical at this crafty piece of pop-science promotion. As one shrewd commenter pointed out, the problem is not eating gyudon for three months. The problem is what happens when you eat gyudon for thirty years.
What do you think? Is gyudon Japan’s next unlikely health craze?
Fromwithnews.jp:
What Happens To Your Body If You Eat Yoshinoya Gyudon Every Day For Three Months? Here Are The Results Of The Research!
What happens to your body if you eat gyudon [rice topped with beef] every day for three months? This was actually tested by major gyudon chain Yoshinoya Holdings (HD) in an experiment that started this spring. And now the results are finally out. So what are the long-awaited results…
Drop-Out Rate Zero!
“We want to do away with the image that rice bowls are bad for health”. That was why Yoshinoya HD started the experiment. A group of 24 men and women aged 20 -65 were given Yoshinoya’s “Frozen Gyudon Pack” [NB: contains no rice] to eat every single day. Furthermore, participants in the experiment had to keep a diary of what they ate every day, how many times they ate, how much alcohol they drank, and how many hours they slept. Before and after the experiment, the participants had tests to see how their weight, blood pressure, BMI and body fat ratio had changed.
By the way, in this experiment, which might even seen a little too cruel, it seems that not a single person dropped out.
Now For The Results
Well then, what were the much-awaited results? This is what Yoshinoya HD stated:
“Significant changes in weight, body fat ratio, blood pressure, triglycerides, cholesterols, and blood sugar, which are linked to metabolic syndrome, one of the causes of lifestyle disease, did not occur.
That’s to say that even if you eat gyudon every day for three months, the fact is that there would be no changes in weight and body fat, and the effect it will have on your blood data according to the results of this study.
“Doing Away With The Bad Image”
What’s more, the company emphasized the following in red letters in their data.
“From nutritional analysis, we had already estimated that there would be no increase in risk or initiation of lifestyle disease due to the ingredients of the Yoshinoya gyudon. We would like to inform everyone that in the healthy men and women who ate the Yoshinoya “Frozen Gyudon Pack” for 12 weeks, and even in those people who had higher blood sugar levels, we saw no signs of increased risk to health of any kind before and after consumption of the gyudon“.
A spokesperson for Yoshinoya HD told us that “With these results, it would be good if we could now do away with the image that gyudon is bad for your health”. The results have been published on Yoshinoya’s official website.
Comments from Yahoo! Japan:
nag*****:
Wouldn’t change the fact that you wouldn’t get enough vegetables.
mar*****:
Better than McDonald’s I guess.
shu*****:
Doesn’t mean it’s actually good for you, does it?
kz3*****:
It doesn’t say “every meal” just “every day”, so if the contents of the other meals are not clear, then these results are pretty meaningless.
n_i*****:
Ummm I reckon that it must actually be looking pretty bad for the people who came out of this experiment after 3 months….
dai*****:
Why the hell would anyone just keep eating gyudon continually anyway.
kda*****:
This kind of thing doesn’t have much of an effect after 3 months. It’s after 30 years that you really see the difference.
nag*****:
These aren’t the results of an independent survey so I don’t buy this story.
ore*****:
Frozen packs…man…
We don’t even know what else they were eating…there is no reason to even consider this.
ite*****:
What’s really got me wondering is how much they were paid to do this…
Comments from Twitter:
子供の未来:
Believe it or don’t believe it. It’s up to you.
I do not believe it.
jo shigeyuki:
Just reflecting on the fact that gyudon which has been boiled and had the fat removed is probably not all that unhealthy, after my massive meal at Tokyo Chikara Meshi.
Regulus_Brack:
The point is that just by eating the same thing for 3 months, you’d probably get the same result. Bad lifestyle habits accumulate year on year. This has no medical value, it’s just the kind of crap that would come up on TV shows like Tameshite Gatten and Aru Aru Daijiten.
トマトやさん:
I reckon I’d be able to keep this up for about a week, but are there really people out there who can do it for 3 months??
いくえふめい:
Back in the day, there was a time when my body was comprised of 80% gyudon.
大木信哉:
Not surprising. We’re not talking about hamburgers.
NEW全温度チアー:
Umm, isn’t this kind of experiment completely meaningless unless it’s carried out by an independent organization?
宇都宮マロニエ:
The point at which a gyudon chain put this experiment into action it had zero credibility. Trival.
kusa@テスト終わったー:
So looks like it’ll be fine if I just keep eating those gyudon
H.Ishibe:
w
