Name: Japan vs USA | How different are fast food menus?
Uploaded: 2018-12-25T21:01:20.000Z
Duration: 5 min 47 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Japan is one of the thinnest countries in the world.

The average Japanese man has the same BMI as the average man from Sudan.

In fact, the only countries with lower male BMIs than Japan are those with widespread poverty or famine.

But the case for Japanese women is even more shocking. The average BMI for Japanese women has been decreasing for the past 20 years.

And there are now only seven countries in the world where the average female BMI is lower than Japan.

Of course, BMI is not a perfect index, but there's no denying that Japanese people are thin.

On the other hand, America is infamous for its obesity epidemic, making these two countries near extremes in terms of worldwide body weight.

Part of the weight differences between the US and Japan are reflected in the ideal body image promoted by their respective media.

If you've ever looked through a Japanese fashion magazine, you may have seen one of these extremely disturbing weight loss ads.

And while these obviously photoshopped girls aren't every Japanese person's ideal, these actual ads wouldn't exist if no one wanted to be that skinny.

And the thing is, if you switch those ideal body weights between countries, you might find them rejected by the other country's media as too fat, or too thin.

There are many reasons for this stark difference in weight, and of course one of them is portion size. So just how different are the meals in the US and Japan?

We decided to test this by comparing the portion sizes of fast food restaurants found in both countries.

-I don't know how to hold all those. -Thank you.

Really freaking hope my idea works! Otherwise, this is gonna be a lot of wasted money.

-I was just gonna compare some cups. -This is Rachel and Jun. We're gonna take it all the way.

Maybe like 13 inches is how wide I want this. There are two more graph boards. I'm gonna build like a little... with walls and stuff 'cause I need the background, measurements as well. Hopefully, this works.

Filmed several popular fast food products on one side, and now we just have to line the camera up to—um, line the cam—line the ca—this is as good as it's gonna get. Let's start with the burgers.

Unexpectedly, most of the burgers were about the same size in both America and Japan, and in the case of Burger King, the Japanese side even had more calories.

The biggest difference in sizes comes with drinks, though. This large cup is about half the water I drink in a day. It's a little horrifying to think about that being filled with soda.

Japanese drink sizes on the other hand are....

Is this a cup for babies? I can fit this entire cup in my hand.

I saw this experiment once where someone poured soda from the American large to the Japanese large and it overflowed, but that's obvious, though. Let's see how much we can fill.

This single large American drink can fill both the large and medium Japanese cups easily.

If you're surprised by this, how would you feel to know that these Japanese fast food cups are gigantic compared to normal cups in Japanese restaurants!

Japanese cup sizes are just... plain... small. When I eat out with my wife, we have to ask for a pitcher of water for her because she just... keeps... refilling.

Do you know what size cup my parents use with dinner? Go ahead and take a guess.

It's none of these. They don't drink anything. Literally nothing.

Moving on! McDonald's fries are for the most part bigger in Japan? Although when you factor in the price, you're still getting more bang for your buck in America.

Burger King's fries are all-around larger in America although the containers don't do a good job of showing that. Wait a minute, why do the large Japanese fries have more calories than the American fries even though the total amount is less?

Could it be? Are we Japanese secretly fatties?

Or is it that the American market cares more about the calorie count to determine how healthy a product is? Or is it just that Japan uses different ingredients?

Or could it be, America is quietly making their burgers smaller because it lowers production costs....

Whatever the reason, the fact is Japanese people just don't eat out as often as Americans in the first place.

Almost half of Americans eat out at least once a week compared to only 16% of Japanese people. On the other hand, an entire third of Japan only eats out a couple times a year, or not at all, compared to 1/5 of Americans.

If that's not clear enough, here's the average caloric intake in each country. The US is... no surprise, number one, at 3,800 calories.

Japan, on the other hand, is 81st, at 2,800 calories per day. That's 1,000 fewer calories. That's the equivalent of the average American eating an extra Big Mac, medium fries, and small fountain soda every single day.

Anyway, the best diet is just not to eat any of this. Instead, if you want good food, come over to my cooking channel, Jun's kitchen, and I will teach you a lot of delicious recipes! See you there!

We released a jewelry collection! This is our Sakura collection with Motif. Each piece is sterling silver, and the flower petals are matte rose gold.

It's a limited collection and we actually released it a few months ago on our vlog channel, so there aren't many pieces left. If you're interested, the links and more information are in the description box.