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Why are people surprised?
Jan. 27th, 2007 11:17 pmSigh. Apparently one of our local television shows ran some sort of special about a natto diet.
For those who aren't familiar with it, natto is steamed or boiled soybeans that have a fungus growing on them. Something like blue cheese or other strong cheeses, I suppose. Anyway, these fermented soybeans are relished by a fairly large chunk of the Japanese public (not everyone - it's a Tokyo affectation more than a Kansai one). Whip them with chopsticks, maybe a little mustard, and eat them as is, or with hot rice. A fair number of people start their day with it, others enjoy it at lunch.
Incidentallly, most foreigners find it inedible. The smell, the strings - the slime on the beans stretches into string when you eat it, the taste, it just doesn't seem to make foreigners very happy.
So, anyway, the TV special revealed that eating two packages of natto every day caused a subject group to lose weight. Also had various stars and such talking about how they like the stuff. Normal fluff, right.
Natto vanished from store shelves across Japan, as people stocked up and started chewing. And then . . .
Well, someone questioned the research. Yep, they pointed out that there wasn't a comparison group, the test subjects weren't controlled very carefully, there weren't enough people in the test group, and so forth.
And this has turned into a scandal in a teapot, as far as I can tell. The TV people have been on, apologizing for doing bad research (huh? On daily TV, does anyone expect good research?). Various TV shows have viewed with alarm the apparent falseness of this report. And so on, and so forth.
As far as I can tell, this was a day time TV show, which have the same high level of factuality that American day time TV shows have. In other words, as long as someone is listening, they're doing okay.
I've been wondering about doing a little study to find out whether people here in Japan actually expect the day time TV shows to do good research. It seems as though that's the assumption, but it also seems unlikely to me.
Odd that they picked on the natto show to complain. Maybe the anti-natto front has a secret research bias?
For those who aren't familiar with it, natto is steamed or boiled soybeans that have a fungus growing on them. Something like blue cheese or other strong cheeses, I suppose. Anyway, these fermented soybeans are relished by a fairly large chunk of the Japanese public (not everyone - it's a Tokyo affectation more than a Kansai one). Whip them with chopsticks, maybe a little mustard, and eat them as is, or with hot rice. A fair number of people start their day with it, others enjoy it at lunch.
Incidentallly, most foreigners find it inedible. The smell, the strings - the slime on the beans stretches into string when you eat it, the taste, it just doesn't seem to make foreigners very happy.
So, anyway, the TV special revealed that eating two packages of natto every day caused a subject group to lose weight. Also had various stars and such talking about how they like the stuff. Normal fluff, right.
Natto vanished from store shelves across Japan, as people stocked up and started chewing. And then . . .
Well, someone questioned the research. Yep, they pointed out that there wasn't a comparison group, the test subjects weren't controlled very carefully, there weren't enough people in the test group, and so forth.
And this has turned into a scandal in a teapot, as far as I can tell. The TV people have been on, apologizing for doing bad research (huh? On daily TV, does anyone expect good research?). Various TV shows have viewed with alarm the apparent falseness of this report. And so on, and so forth.
As far as I can tell, this was a day time TV show, which have the same high level of factuality that American day time TV shows have. In other words, as long as someone is listening, they're doing okay.
I've been wondering about doing a little study to find out whether people here in Japan actually expect the day time TV shows to do good research. It seems as though that's the assumption, but it also seems unlikely to me.
Odd that they picked on the natto show to complain. Maybe the anti-natto front has a secret research bias?
