claims

TikToker Claims to Have Lost 25 Pounds Eating ‘Junk’ Food in Japan

A TikToker who compared American and Japanese food in a wildly viral video touched off an online debate about eating habits in the two nations.

The TikTok, courtesy of Samantha “Sunnie” Cherie, who operates the @trashbuns account, has attracted more than 1.6 million videos since being posted to the platform on Friday.

The video was captioned, “Literally are [sic] JUNK for at least 2 meals a day In japan and lost POUNDS,” and the on-screen text played during the short video says even more.

In the short video, the TikToker nods while wearing sunglasses to Bfb Da Packman’s “Ocean Prime,” a song built around the line, “She want Ocean Prime, but she gettin’ Chick-Fil-A.” The on-screen caption reads, “I knew America was literally killing me with its food when I went to Japan and ate konbini every day for a month and lost 25 pounds.”

According to ByFood, konbini are Japanese convenience stores, open 24 hours a day, that serve a variety of foods. As the article explains, konbini “are one-stop shops that grace every corner of every Japanese street, shining like a beacon of hope in the dead of night and wee hours of the morning when everything else is closed.”

The most common konbini grab-and-go options including onigiri (seaweed-wrapped rice triangles that have a meat, fish, vegetable, or combo filling inside), bento (a snack box that typically includes “rice, grilled fish, pickled veggies, tamagoyaki, and sometimes chicken karaage or a meatball”), and sandwiches.

Commenters had plenty of

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Pamela Stuppy: Defining food packaging claims

Many consumers have health concerns that benefit from understanding claims made on food packaging. These are often part of the marketing of a food product so do not appear on the “Nutrition Facts” section of the label. The terms you may see are definitions of the relative amounts of a particular component of the food based on what is noted as the serving size. Examples would include calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, sugar, and fiber.

With regard to calories, the terms you might see would be “calorie free”, “low calorie”, or “reduced calorie”. The FDA approved definition of “calorie free” is having less than 5 calories per serving. For “low calorie”, the serving must contain <40 calories. A “reduced calorie” item would have >25% fewer calories than the regular product.

For describing the fat content of a product based on serving size, you might see “fat free,” “low fat,” “reduced fat,” or “less fat” or “low in saturated fat.” Fat-free foods must contain less than 0.5gm of fat and no ingredient that is fat. “Low fat” means <3gm fat and not more than 30% of calories from fat for meals/main dishes. “Reduced fat” is defined as >25% less fat than the regular product.

The terms you may see on food packaging are definitions of the relative amounts of a particular component of the food based on what is noted as the serving size, such as calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, sugar, and fiber.

A product “low in saturated fat” has <1gm saturated fat per serving. It must also not have more than 15% of calories from saturated fat for a singular food or have less than 10% of calories for meals/main dishes.

Cholesterol guidelines have changed over the past

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