The generation of the words like “Age of gluttony” or “Age of gourmet” shows that we are living in the age in which we can casually enjoy cuisine from around the world. However, going back to the history of Japan, a big incident (or almost revolution) happened in Japanese diet right after the World War II. That is, the appearance of oil.

Before the war, we, Japanese people didn’t eat much oil. We basically only boil, steam, grill, dress with vinegar or eat raw.

Around 1945, however, a group called “Diet Improvement Workers”, consisted of nutritionist in health care center and health nurses, started so-called “Frying pan act”, shouting the slogan “Use Pan and Eat Oil”. It was the time people didn’t even know how to make an omelet yet. The Diet Improvement Workers taught people how to cook with oil and that we could absorb more carotene and eat more green and yellow vegetables if we use oil.

Thanks to this act, the diet of Japanese people became rich. As frying and deep-frying were added to the traditional method of cooking, and mayonnaise and dressing were introduced as new seasoning, the variety of cooking rapidly expanded.

There is an expression in Japanese,?”to eat cold rice”. This comes from the sad history that lower-class people or wives were served only left-over cold food. They would re-steam it or pour hot tea on to eat the cold rice, since they didn’t have microwave. But, then, the pan and oil appeared, and they could fry and warm up the rice. As an extension of frying rice, the fried rice was produced, and the ketchup rice and ome-rice followed. Thus, the sad age of “eating cold rice” ended.

We can bring out the good taste of vegetables by frying with oil and keeping it colorful. Also, bread crust was deep-fried like donut so we could make full use of the leftover. This idea was also spread by the Diet Improvement Workers. Omelet became extremely popular from 1945 through 1955.

Moreover, as mayonnaise and dressing were introduced, we could eat vegetables with great taste as salad. The difference between salad and vinegared dish is the penetrability of the dressing. Since vinegar is penetrable, the taste of the vegetables in vinegared dish is replaced with the taste of vinegar. On the other hand, the dressing can coat the vegetables with oil, preventing the soy sauce and vinegar from penetrating them so that the real taste of the vegetables can be enjoyed.

The reason why the old steamed bread was dry while the Madeleine now is moist is because much butter and margarine are put into the Madeleine.

Thus, the big revolution in cooking has happened with oil.

Introducing oil really gave a wide variety to the Japanese diet. Today, both the people who take oil in their diet for granted and the people who know the “Frying pan act”, and the history of oil are living together. This proves how rapidly the oil was taken into our culture and used, which is a wonderful thing.

However, we seem to have forgotten this good history of oil, making our diet various, and now we are mistaking oil for something bad, or scary.

We must start thinking about oil from the standpoint that oil was what made our diet various. We must reconfirm our theme, “using oil healthfully”. There might be some heath nuts who are extremely afraid of oil, but it’s obviously a retrograde notion.

So, the most important thing is to have an accurate knowledge and enjoy cooking, or we must spend very pitiful dietary lives. We must not forget that we can enjoy rich and varied meals thanks to the oil.