Fu Rui, Yamanaka Yasuhiro
Graduate School of Environmental Science, Hokkaido University, Hokkaido 060-0810, Japan.
Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Hokkaido 060-0810, Japan.
Nutrients. 2025 Aug 21;17(16):2712. doi: 10.3390/nu17162712.
Balancing nutrition security with environmental sustainability is a key priority in global food policy, with Sustainable Healthy Diets (SHDs) serving as a critical framework aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Traditional Japanese cuisine reflects SHD principles through its emphasis on plant-based, seasonal, and minimally processed dishes. However, modern, globalized dietary patterns increasingly feature ultra-processed foods, raising concerns about health risks such as high sodium intake.
This study adopts a novel dish-level content analysis of 120 contemporary recipes from NHK Today's Cooking between 2023 and 2025, a TV program by Japan's national public broadcaster that is widely regarded as reflecting the practices of Japanese home cooking, to examine how SHDs pillars-nutritional diversity (e.g., varied protein sources), environmental sustainability (e.g., low-carbon ingredients), and cultural continuity (e.g., traditional techniques)-are embedded in Japanese home cooking. Unlike macro-level consumption or nutrition data, this dish-level approach reveals how individual dishes embody sustainability through ingredient selection, preparation methods, and cultural logic.
Quantitatively, pork (33.3%) and seafood (19.2%) together dominated main protein sources, with minimal beef (2.5%) and a notable presence of soy-based foods (12.5%), supporting lower reliance on environmentally intensive red meat; mean salt content per person in main dishes was 2.16 ± 1.09 g (28.9% for men, 33.3% for women of Japan's daily salt targets), while recipe patterns emphasizing fermentation and seasonal alignment highlight possible pathways through which Japanese dietary practices can be considered ecologically efficient. Simultaneously, the analysis identifies emerging challenges, encompassing environmental issues such as overfishing and public health concerns like excessive sodium consumption.
By centering dishes as culturally meaningful units, and using media recipes as reproducible, representative datasets for monitoring dietary change, this approach offers a reproducible framework for assessing dietary sustainability in evolving global food systems.
在全球粮食政策中，平衡营养安全与环境可持续性是一项关键优先事项，可持续健康饮食（SHD）是与联合国可持续发展目标（SDG）相一致的重要框架。传统日本料理通过强调以植物为基础、季节性和最少加工的菜肴体现了可持续健康饮食原则。然而，现代全球化的饮食模式越来越多地以超加工食品为特征，引发了人们对高钠摄入等健康风险的担忧。
本研究采用一种新颖的菜肴层面内容分析法，对日本国家公共广播公司NHK的《今日烹饪》在2023年至2025年期间的120份当代食谱进行分析。该电视节目被广泛认为反映了日本家庭烹饪的做法，以研究可持续健康饮食的支柱——营养多样性（如多种蛋白质来源）、环境可持续性（如低碳食材）和文化连续性（如传统技艺）——是如何融入日本家庭烹饪的。与宏观层面的消费或营养数据不同，这种菜肴层面的方法揭示了单个菜肴如何通过食材选择、制备方法和文化逻辑体现可持续性。
在数量上，猪肉（33.3%）和海鲜（19.2%）共同主导主要蛋白质来源，牛肉含量极少（2.5%），大豆类食品占显著比例（12.5%），这表明对环境影响大的红肉依赖较低；主菜人均盐含量为2.16±1.09克（分别占日本男性和女性每日盐摄入量目标的28.9%和33.3%），而强调发酵和季节性搭配的食谱模式凸显了日本饮食习惯可被视为具有生态效率的可能途径。同时，分析确定了新出现的挑战，包括过度捕捞等环境问题以及钠摄入过量等公共卫生问题。
通过将菜肴作为具有文化意义的单位，并将媒体食谱用作监测饮食变化的可复制、有代表性的数据集，这种方法为评估不断演变的全球粮食系统中的饮食可持续性提供了一个可复制的框架。
