Courtesy Random House

Web-Exclusive Book Review Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat By Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle (Random House, 2005) Reviewed by Jennifer Howard, January 2006 , January 2009

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Contrary to what you've heard, French women do get fat. Those full-cream cheeses and buttery brioches add up: 11 percent of French women are now obese, meaning they have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or higher.

Forget for a minute that three times as many American women—34 percent of us—qualify as obese. It's still some comfort to know that in the weight sweepstakes the French are starting to catch up with us. That daily glass of artery-scouring Cabernet may be easy on the palate, and those patés and soufflés may still be the envy of cooks everywhere, but the French are starting to pay for all that good living. (Unless, of course, the incursion of supersizing and other American food ways into European culture is to blame.)

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The real paragons of eating well and not gaining a pound—or not too many of them, anyway—turn out to be the Japanese, according to Naomi Moriyama. In her new book, Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen, cowritten with her husband, William Doyle, Moriyama says that it's not just lucky genetics that keep the Japanese so enviably trim. (She gained 25 pounds when she came to the U.S. as a college student.) What keeps them svelte is their attachment to superfresh food, served in portions that are as small as they are delectable and elegant. Those morsels of sushi really don't add up.

If you're Japanese or just eating like one, the news gets even better, according to Moriyama. The Japanese have the longest life expectancy in the world: 85 years for women and 78 for men. In the U.S., those figures are 80 and 75, respectively. "Something incredible is happening in this food-crazed land," Moriyama writes. "The women and men are living longer than everyone else on Earth, and you will hardly ever see any obese people in Japan. At the same time, very few people in Japan go hungry." Not only are those satisfied diners not fat; they're fit. Japanese seniors walk, climb, and bike more than most Americans half their age, and the oldest man ever to climb Mt. Everest (so far, anyway) was a 70-year-old Japanese man.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Now for the bad news: you have to eat seaweed and miso soup for breakfast. "A typical breakfast in Japan consists of green tea, a bowl of steamed rice, miso soup with tofu and scallions, small sheets of nori seaweed, and perhaps a small omelette or piece of grilled salmon."

That's advice that sausage-and-waffle-loving Americans may find hard to stomach, even though Moriyama promises that "instead of giving you a rush and then putting you to sleep as a glazed donut or bowl of Cap'n Crunch will, this breakfast gives you a huge dose of sustained energy and nutrition."

Those who aren't quite convinced that tofu is an acceptable substitute for toast first thing in the morning may be won over by Moriyama's recipes. They're definitely not what you'll find in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but they're a tasty mix of easy and adventurous. If the Japanese Country Power Breakfast with thick-fried tofu and mixed cooked vegetables sounds too exotic for the IHOP devotee, there's Iri Iri Pan Pan, a.k.a. Mom's Super-Scrambled Eggs and Ground Beef.

Moriyama works hard to demystify key ingredients in Japanese cooking, such as soba (buckwheat noodles), daikon (the grated-up white radish you've probably encountered as a garnish next to your California roll), and dashi. A broth made from dried flakes of bonito, a kind of mackerel, dashi is a stock as well as a seasoning, adding "a savory succulence to simmered dishes while liberating the essential flavors of each ingredient." All these goodies, she promises, can be yours at a local Asian foods market or, increasingly, at grocery chains.

Just about all the recipes come by way of Moriyama's mother, Chizuko, whom Moriyama describes as a master of "Japan's greatest food secret of all: home cooking." Chizuko's motto is "I use ingredients from the mountains, the oceans, and the earth." If that isn't the Zen of cooking, what is?

So pass the bonito flakes. I'll skip the Camembert, thanks.

Jennifer Howard is a staff writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education and a contributor to the forthcoming story collection D.C. Noir (Akashic Books).