> the rice bowl in the photo was 3.5 inches tall with a diameter of over 6 inches, holding nearly a liter of rice to be eaten with soup that came in an even larger bowl, with an assortment of side dishes. For one person. In one meal.

1 liter of Korean-style cooked white rice weighs about 500 grams. It contains about 1.5 Calories per gram, judging from the label on my Hetbahn. So that's about 750 Calories tops. The photo doesn't look like white rice, so the caloric content is probably lower.

I would give at most 100 Calories for the soup and all the side dishes combined. The soup is mostly water, with very little solid content. (That chunk you see in the photo is rice. Dude is dunking his rice in the soup to make it softer, because who wants to munch on 1 liter of rough brown rice?) Meanwhile, his side dishes are leafy vegetables like kimchi and namul. Side dishes made of animal products like ham and eggs were considered a luxury until only 60 years ago. Fat was also a luxury, so everything had to be lean. This is in stark contrast to a Western meal, where fatty side dishes contribute a lot of Calories.

So that's about 850 Calories for the whole table, or about one Big Mac with medium fries and a sugar-free drink. Not a particularly heavy meal for an adult male who spends most of his time working in the field.

The reason Koreans ate a lot of rice, fruit, and vegetables is because those foods have low caloric density by modern standards. It's mostly just water and carbohydrates. If not for their high energy expenditure, Koreans would all have died of diabetes.

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NoLinkToMe 5 hours ago | parent [-]

What is your take on the comparisons with Japan and the comments left by European visitors, both of whom who likely ate similar ingredients in Asia both of whom were noted to eat a lot less?

To me the article doesn’t really make sense. Either the Korean diet was being overstated (likely, but why if it was consistently noted?), or there was some unexplained extra energetic expenditure by Koreans versus Japanese (unlikely), or Koreans were significantly more fat than Japanese (unlikely).

	▲	kijin 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There are records from every country around Korea, throughout recorded history, that Koreans eat a lot. There are also statements that Irish farmers ate 14 pounds of potatoes, English peasants ate 4 pounds of bread, and that Japanese samurai ate 4 pounds of rice a day. All of these statements were made from the point of view of aristocrats who had rich foods, as they looked down upon commoners who had nothing but plain starch to fill their caloric budgets with. So I think that a large part of this stereotype has to do with the fact that Korea used to be one of the poorest countries in the world until very recently. In China, even commoners had access to delicious 9-Calories-per-gram cooking oil since the Song dynasty. In Japan, sushi as we know it appeared in the Edo period and became the fast food of choice for urban laborers. Meanwhile, Korean society remained almost exclusively agricultural until Western visitors arrived to take photos of their massive rice bowls. Same caloric content, just more voluminous. There are also issues of measurement that were lost in translation. The report that Korean soldiers ate 3 times as much rice as the Japanese? True, Koreans ate 7 cups of rice, while the Japanese ate 2 cups. But the Japanese measuring cup was 3 times as large as the old Korean cup (hob). The much more reasonable 7:6 ratio can probably be explained by the fact that Koreans had the home advantage at the time of the war, or that Koreans are taller than the Japanese on average. And yes, the obesity rate is also higher in Korea, despite the fact that Japan has enjoyed a modern lifestyle for much longer.