Asiaweek.com | Eaten Up Inside

NOVEMBER 17, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 45 | SEARCH ASIAWEEK

Chris Stowers for Asiaweek.
Asian consumers often harbor unconscious guilt over eating fast food instead of more traditional dishes.

Eaten Up Inside
Busy careers, contradictory health tips and the sheer variety of foods available are injecting stress into Asian mealtimes
By MARIA CHENG

For Alice Wong, food is just another source of stress. The Hong Kong accountant puts in almost 10 hours at the office everyday. Add the hours needed to help her eight-year-old son with his copious homework, and there's little time left to whip up a meal, let alone pick up vegetables from the neighborhood market. The result: steamed fish and pork for dinner "almost every night," says Wong. Variety simply isn't an option in her packed schedule. Wong's son complains about mealtime monotony, but there's just nothing she can do. "I have no time," she sighs. Between seeing to her child's lessons and preparing a tasty, satisfying meal, Wong opts for education.

Asians ought to feel good about what they eat. After all, people across the region can afford to eat much better than they used to. Protein and calorie intakes have improved notably since the 1970s. There's a lot more variety, too. Twenty years ago, for instance, Beijing residents faced an unrelieved diet of Tianjin cabbage over the winter. Now, supermarkets and shops in the Chinese capital stock produce from around the world. From fried rice to foie gras, the globalized Asia is being offered a bewildering array of foods that would satisfy even the pickiest of palates. But according to a new study by Ogilvy & Mather in Hong Kong, called "Eating Disorders," "greater choice has not led to greater happiness." Instead, consumers think food tastes worse than before. They feel less healthy too. What's more, some 56% of Asians feel women today can't cook as well as their mothers.

Why all the sour feelings about food? This angst reflects the supersonic speed at which Asia has been racing into the modern world. Busy, professional careers have eaten into cooking time. Western foods — from McDonalds to packaged breakfast cereal — often seem convenient and trendy. But beneath the scramble to be modern, a longing for the cozy traditions of Mama's home cooking haunts many erstwhile "modern" Asians. "As people realize that they're eating worse than their predecessors, they are feeling more guilty," says Lily Pu, regional planning director at Ogilvy, who led the team that produced the survey on food attitudes in 14 Asian markets. "As a result, food is actually becoming a source of stress and confusion for people who want to eat well, but for one reason or another, don't."

The rapid pace of modern life means juggling the demand for taste, nutrition and convenience. As consumers become busier, they are depending more and more on convenience solutions — especially in developed countries like Japan. But that usually comes at a price: taste and nutrition. No surprise then, that 90% of the people polled believe that the packaged stuff does not taste "authentic." "People don't want to be satisfied with less," says Pu, "but they don't have the time or the means to eat what they truly want." Many mothers mistrust processed food, even if they have come to rely on it. It's a legitimate concern, says Grant Evans, an anthropologist at the University of Hong Kong. "In the past, people knew where their food was coming from — whether they grew it themselves, or bought it from the local vendor," he explains. "Now, when they buy some industrially produced package from the supermarket, they have no idea what's in it." This distancing of food, he says, diminishes its cultural meaning. Grandma definitely would not approve.

Plenty of people believe they are eating less healthily than they were five years ago: 51% according to the Ogilvy poll. But definitions of health, can vary with the territory. In the Philippines, the survey notes, a healthy guy would call up the image "a fat man in a Hawaiian shirt," while Singaporeans would think of a person who works out regularly in a gym. All the same, food and health are inextricably linked.

Almost inevitably, time is a key factor. Just ask Kuala Lumpur engineer Paridah Anun Tahir. As a mother of eight children, she resorts to all available means to get the most out of her day. That includes packaged or premixed foods or, even better, takeaways. Feel like chicken curry for dinner? Forget about stopping off at the poultry and spice vendors. Easier to buy from the neighborhood stalls. "I don't have a maid, so I need whatever help I can get," she says. "The time I save on cooking can be used in so many other ways." Quality time with the kids, for instance. Ditto for Julie Chin, another Malaysian working mom. "It's more important to spend what little time I have with my children," she says. If that means a home-cooked meal is one that comes out of a packet that she throws into the microwave, so be it. "[Packaged food] probably contain preservatives," she says, "but I guess it's safe enough to eat."

Asiaweek Pictures.
Consumers rely increasingly on processed ingredients, but that doesn't mean they are happy about it.

Women are often the most stressed out about food — because their roles have changed so dramatically. Who has the time to think about good cooking? "[My cooking] is definitely not as good as what mom used to make," Chin says with a twinge of regret. Plenty of working women feel the same way. That doesn't surprise Evans. Asian society has largely decided that women would do better to forgo the cooking tradition in favor of higher education. Goodbye hand-made dumplings, hello university diploma. These days, we're just not set up to pass down recipes from one generation to the next. Well, not unless the family sells a fabulous beef noodle or a dish that attracts patrons from miles away. "Asians are losing a detailed understanding of food culture as women spend more time at work than they do in the kitchen," says Evan. "But that's not necessarily a bad thing."

The greater regret is how home dining tends to suffer in the process. Families that eat together, stay together, so the saying goes. Which is why grown-up children with their own flats often feel obliged to return home for a meal at weekends. Exchanging news and gossip over the dining table is all part of the glue of ritual. But fewer and fewer people are managing to do that (see chart page 44). And when families do eat together, it's in a variety of settings — at a local restaurant or at franchise outlets like Pizza Hut instead of the home.

Globalization is bringing new foods — and fostering complicated feelings in its wake. No wonder Indian nationalists rail against the march of the Golden Arches and Pepsi machines. "People tend to absorb outside foods as national borders start to mean less," says anthropologist Evans. Of course, it's not all burgers and fizzy drinks. Asian city folk are now not only more affluent but also more cosmopolitan. A walk in the trendy hangouts of Bangsar in Kuala Lumpur and Lan Kwai Fong in Hong Kong shows the changes. Where there were once Shanghai-style tailors and noodle shops, Cuban eateries and wine bars now squeeze in between the more common Italian restaurants. Inevitably, food culture is transformed. These changes, however, have more to do with modernity than a conscious disregard for tradition. "People are eating differently because they can," says Evans. "A couple of hundred years ago, they didn't have the option of eating something from another country. That limitation is gone."

Yet it is only now that Asians are starting to differentiate themselves based on cuisine. "In the past, people didn't think twice about what they ate," Evans says. "If they were from Sichuan, there was no question that they ate Sichuanese and not Cantonese food. It was as simple as that." Issues of cuisine and identity arise only when there is choice. These days, Asia loves to check out new flavors. Particularly if it's something that the family can enjoy together. Older folks may be more reluctant to experiment, but the decision often comes down to what food means culturally. "People are usually willing to try new things if they think that it's the social norm," says Ogilvy's Pu.

Even the trendiest young Asians often feel guilty about what they eat. Food has certainly become fashion in recent years. Consider 23-year-old Nuttanun Jitsuwanwattana. The Bangkok university student is every fast-food chain's dream. A regular at Starbucks and McDonalds, she believes trendiness far outranks nutrition. Whatever dietary misgivings Nuttanun feels at McDonalds are quickly displaced by the hip quotient. "I know fast food doesn't have enough vitamins," she says. "But it is easy when you are out, to go into cool surroundings to eat junk food. It's a lifestyle thing."

In the meantime, Asian societies are also struggling to absorb foreign tastes into their own cuisines. It's happened before. Take Hong Kong's famed egg tart. Long regarded as a traditional Chinese pastry, it actually has its origins overseas. "Hong Kong bakers borrowed the method and product from the British version of custard tarts," says Josephine Smart, a Canadian academic who specializes in Asian food. Now the import has morphed into a local cultural symbol. Just as in Japan, where curry is considered a local dish. It may be tasty, but no Indian digging into the hybrid stew would think that he was eating curry.

Purist gourmets may sniff, but adaptation works. Hence kimchi pizza in Seoul and teriyaki burgers in Tokyo. "Foreign foods are best received in Asia when they are subtly altered to accommodate local taste," Pu observes. "There is a sense that the food is regional rather than being completely foreign." So a little culinary sleight-of hand can make a big difference. Daniel Chai, for one, couldn't agree more. The Kuala Lumpur corporate lawyer believes that fusion foods combine the best of all worlds. A favorite: Peking duck pizza. Chai's dish of choice is far from traditional, but he insists that purists are missing out. "It beats pepperoni any day," he says.

For all the attention on East-West kitchen interactions, anthropologist Evans suggests that the more radical shift is happening within Asia. The enormous popularity of sushi is a prime example: outlets are springing up even in the most far-flung Hong Kong suburbs. Sushi contradicts nearly all Chinese principles of cooking since it is eaten raw, he observes. Yet the people have enthusiastically embraced it. "In many ways, that is much more significant than eating Western food, which is usually cooked."

Yet this appetite for the new and modern exists alongside a hankering for traditional, home-cooked meals — comfort food, if you will. Double-boiled melon or a hearty lontong soup, anyone? "You can trust your mom's cooking," says Malaysian student Chan Chu-san. That's why, much as he enjoys eating out, the 20-year-old likes to dine with his family. "It's all about less meat, less fat and more fresh food and vegetables." But when the ideal diet isn't achieved, the result is often subliminal guilt. "There are a lot of unconscious attitudes [among Asian consumers] about the traditional foods they know they should be eating," says Pu.

The explosion of health information makes food decisions even more confusing. Chinese concepts of "hot" and "cool" foods, for instance, don't always mesh with received Western wisdom. Even the health advice from scientists can be contradictory. No wonder Japanese consumers, among the most nutritionally aware in the region, are deeply suspicious of claims on food packets. A housewife polled in the Ogilvy survey makes the heartfelt complaint: "This you cannot eat, that you cannot eat." When every other item on the menu comes with a health warning, the pleasure goes out of the meal. That is, if anyone has the time to cook it.

Such is the contradiction as Asia revs up in the cyber age: Hong Kong Internet executive Wendy Wong says it is "simply impossible" to maintain a balanced diet on her schedule. The odd bag of crisps adds to her sense of guilt. "I really feel unhealthy sometimes," she says. To relieve her anxieties, Wong, 26, turns to a collagen fortified drink and forces herself to eat more fruits. Donna Ngan has been fairly good at avoiding processed foods. But the Hong Kong executive assistant still feels she needs a boost. On her daily diet: an aloe formula to settle her digestion, shark-bone extract for her skin, crab-shell pills to slow fat absorption, iron drink for her hair, slimming pills and blueberry drops for better eyesight. Bon appetit.

With reports by Irene Liow/Kuala Lumpur, Julian Gearing/Bangkok and Yulanda Chung/Hong Kong

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