Today, we have access to cuisines from all around the planet, but which ones are truly the healthiest for us? (Since you have your pick, might as well go for the best.) It has proved to be an extremely complex question, as even defining what makes up a type of cuisine can be incredibly complicated. It’s easy to think of “Italian food” or “Chinese food” as monolithic categories, but anyone who has traveled through those lands can report an incredible amount of delicious variations.
Scientists are applying data science to finding which cuisine is the heathiest. (Getty Images)
Turns out science is being used to answer this question. MIT Technology Review writes that Sina Sajadmanesh from Iran’s Sharif University of Technology has led an effort that has:
“… gathered a huge database of recipes from the Web, categorized them by cuisine, and then analyzed their relationship to each other and to other factors such as health measures in different parts of the world… The work shows for the first time just how different cuisines are linked by similar ingredients, how specific ingredients help define certain cuisines, and how foods influence our health.”
The result is a treasure trove of data, such as which regions have the most complex dishes vs. the simplest as defined by the number of ingredients. (Approximately half the dishes in Laos have more than 15 ingredients, while half the dishes Russia have fewer than seven.) Crucial health data was found by linking the amount of protein a cuisine featured versus its share of sugar and carbohydrates: as expected, the latter category leads to obesity and other health problems.
So what are the healthiest cuisines? In general, cuisines like Greek (with its grilled fish, olive oil, and yogurt) and Japanese (with its sushi and fresh vegetables) tend to be ideal, but keep in mind there’s always a way to make a healthy cuisine unhealthy: Japanese food doesn’t do much good for you if you embrace an all-tempura diet.
To read the article, click here. To access the full report, click here.
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