Japanese food culture - an intangible cultural heritage of humankind

Each nation has its own national cooking tradition that transmitted from generation to generation. The Japanese cuisine while inexorably adopting food products and dishes of different nations has not lost its identity. Rapid changes that occurred in the second part of the XX century are associated with the westernization of Japanese eating habits. The emphasis shifted from rice and starchy foods, fish, sea products and vegetables to the combination of traditional and western foods such as bread, meat, dairy products, eggs, fruits. Nowadays Japan's food culture includes not only native Japanese cuisine but also many foreign dishes, some of them accommodating themselves to Japanese tastes and some remaining more or less intact. Even so, food consumption patterns of the Japanese nation are rather different from western ones. The Japanese diet retains striking differences from the European and American cuisine, while retaining its specificity - a significant proportion of starchy substances, the predominance of plant proteins over the animal ones, the consumption of animal proteins mostly through fish products and the generally low caloric content in comparison with other developed countries. The nutrition structure of Japanese diet is close to optimal from the viewpoint of healthy food standards. All this attracts attention outside Japan to Japanese food washoku. The main characteristic features of washoku are as follows: fresh ingredients; respect for their inherent flavors; the expression of natural beauty and of the changing seasons in the habits of serving dishes; an exceptionally well-balanced and healthy diet and the close relationship of national cuisine with annual cultural events. Social and cultural features of the Japanese cuisine have particularly vivid manifestations during the New Year ceremonies. At the same time, in recent decades some negative trends appeared, both in the diet structure (such as the overuse of fatty foods) and in the food habits. In recent decades young people tend to eat outside their home; they buy fast food; they skip breakfast and fail to meet with their family in the evening around the dining table. This is the reason why central government and local administration do their best to popularize the positive aspects of traditional food and appeal to the need to comply with the standards of national food culture in order to sustain healthy lifestyle. The registration of the Japanese gastronomy washoku by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in will undoubtedly help their efforts.

washoku, eating habits, diet, seasons, tradition, annual events

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