[pzo]

I think just statistics about how many people are overweight and obese in both countries can already paint a picture that probably japanese food is more healthy. And optimizing for how many calories you can get for $1 is probably also not the best metric to aim for.

[quacker]

Sort of for sake of argument: National obesity statistics don’t necessarily imply anything about the healthiness of the food, nor specifically about the healthiness of $4 lunches that the article discusses. If the Japanese eat smaller portions and are less sedentary, they could still be less obese regardless of differences in the nutritional content of these $4 lunches. (And I think they ARE less sedentary and DO eat smaller portions.)

I’m not advocating for anything (certainly not optimizing for calories per dollar).

My point is just that the article has no data. It says a Japanese lunch is cheap and a US lunch is expensive and doesn’t consider what you actually get for the money. It assumes the US lunch is a worse deal, but I suspect it’s really not if you adjust the price for the amount of food.