Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Jizzo T. Clown]

I changed my eating habits last year by severely limiting fat intake, calories, and sugar. It worked because I've lost a lot of weight and continue to lose...

I'm afraid that once I get to Korea I won't be able to keep this up since I know nothing about Korean food!

Do any of you have any tips for keeping up a healthy lifestyle, food-wise?

please forgive if this has been covered before, I couldn't come across anything using the search.

[kaizer]

stay away from beef areas then you are fine

[jlb]

I find eating out moderately more healthy in Korea than back home because the portion sizes are a lot smaller. Plus, there's always veggie side dishes of some sort.

To eat healthy, I usually cook at home. It's the surest way to know what you're putting into your body!

[jeffkim1972]

Yeah, don't eat.

No nutrition label required on anything you buy.

There is no sense of health here in Korea. My mom used to own a GNC so i know some things about nutrition and the knowledge here is completely nonexistant. Completely overblown vitamin prices for the tiny selection they have. Only able to find the basic vitamins at 5-10 times the price.

The main meat here is fatty beef and pork. This place will give you liver damage and hypertension, as well as heart diseaase.

If you're curious how unhealthy Korean food is. Take some home in a doggy bag from a restaurant and by the next day you can see the fat that it's caked in.

This red pepper sauce just masks the taste of everything you eat. The only recollection you will have is of this red pepper paste, but have no idea what in the world you ate. And then you'll just crave the pepper paste.

Only way to maintain any health is to cook yourself.

The only application for Coenzyme Q10 in this country is for facial cream to make your skin more beautiful than the other korean girl. they have no idea its for hypertension as well.

One time in some vitamin store, the saleswoman was trying to peddle some Glucosamine to me. She's telling me it's good glucosamine. I'm thinking, "but.. i don't have arthritis", what is this woman thinking?

Be prepared to lose total control of your diet and health needs here.

[youmepicnic]

Eating healthy is all about choices... you know this.

Fried foods are not as healthy as raw or sauted foods... make good choices. As noted earlier, portions are not western sized, and therefore people tend to eat a little less at meals, and eat more small sized meals a day.

In the states, for example, 75% of the supermarket is boxed, canned or processed foods, while the remaining 25% is fresh fruits, veggies, and meats, etc. Here, in Korea, it is the opposite. Nearly 80% of the store is FRESH, whole foods. Food quality in Korea is superior to that of the US, Canada and many Eurpoean countries. Meats are mostly organic and grain fed.

So, what dos this mean? It means you need to cook. Use the amazing products in the markets and make youself your meals. Eating out at a kimbap place is ok, ONCE in a while. Rice in these resturants is white, while at home you can cook a grain mix or black rice. Take fresh fruit to work. Aviod sarbucks... where a mocha can have upto 600 calories.

My boyfriend of three years is a doctor and lives with me here in Bundang. He has a practice here in Korea and can help you, if you need dietary counsel.

there are many small markets that sell the beans, lentils and grains you might be use to.

good luck. IM/PM me for more information.
ciao and happy eats!

[Vancouver]

stay away from the pojangmachas (food stalls). I'm surprised I didn't gain weight while I was in Korea. When I got back, I'm having pojamacha everyday while in Seoul and Jeonju

[billybrobby]

[kimchi story]

I've just recently discovered that I can put 2 cups of rice, four chicken breasts, a sliced onion, a couple of sliced carrots, some sesame oil and some soya sauce in the rice cooker and have three dinners ready in about 10 minutes. Add a salad and shazam!

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but i think the red pepper paste is full of sugar...

[swetepete]

I have no problem eating well here, but that certainly wasn't the case when I first arrived. After putting on about 30 pounds in 6 months, I had to stop eating cookies and ice cream and drinking beer--but going to a rice and kimchee and curry diet, and switching to whiskey, as well as working out a little bit, got me back down to my standard weight within a few months.
Cooking for yourself is best, but if you have to do restaurants you can still eat well, as long as you're not overly worried about a high-salt diet.
댄장치캐 (doenjang chigae) is a good staple. It's basically like miso(the japanese fermented soybean paste) stew--costs about 4 bucks, and it always comes with kimchee. Kimchee is very good for you as well and has no fat at all.
As long as you don't go overboard on the comfort foods--pizza, fried chicken, and stuff like that--you should be alright with the seafood and vegetarian stuff here. If you eat like a king, you'll get fat as one pretty quick, but if you have some sense about you it shouldn't be too tough to eat fairly well. If you buy raw broccoli and carrots at the grocery store and munch on them when you're at home, you basically don't need to take any vitamin supplements. The other poster who said that vitamins are expensive here is quite right.
One thing to consider is that most teachers here drink rather a lot, and seem to forget that booze has loads of calories in it, so if you eat your regular amount of food and then go out on the piss for a night you're basically taking in much more energy than you're expending. Compounding that is the unfortunate fact that most of us live a pretty sedentary life; hence why so many of us become bloated slabs of gristle. The lonesome homesick "poor me, I miss my mom, I want another pie" sort of comfort-eating is a big hazard as well.

[DannyOKC]

Here's my experience over the last 18 days or so....

-I can't find whole wheat bread
-I can't find all-natural peanut butter
-I can't find all-natural jelly (I think. I bought some organic stuff that may be all-natural, but I haven't tried to decipher the korean ingredients list yet.
-The only veggie burgers I have found were in a can. I didn't try them. I don't remember ever seeing hamburger buns.
-I haven't found tempeh
-I haven't found seitan

Otherwise, I've found everything else I've looked for except for plain tortilla chips (I found nacho), tortillas and refried beans (I hear Costco has them), and good beer.

I'm vegan, so my situation is different from most people.

Other things to note: Food here is more expensive, unless you're eating at a restaurant. For some reason, restaurants = cheap. Cooking at home = expensive, at least by U.S. standards.

Rice is much more expensive here.

I will end up doing what I planned in the first place, which is to cook a bunch of soups, stews, and so forth. It seems that most apartments have no oven and only one or two burners.

It's really not that different from what I expected, except that food is more expensive than I thought it would be.

-Danny

[kimchi story]

[jeffkim1972]

[DCJames]

[fizban]

I don't think it's too hard to eat healthy at restuarants in Korea as long as you moderate your intake of rice and fatty meats. The bulk of Korean diet is rice and vegetables. The difficulty arises if you are carbohydrate sensative.

All that white rice, which is devoid of most nutritional value while being high in calories in the form of a simple carb, is going to make you chubby.

I've found that chicken prices are not that bad though. And while fruits and vegetables are expensive, if you try to integrate local vegetable choices like beansprouts, cabbage, etc it'll help mitigate cost as compared to trying to eat the same vegetables as back in the US.

Beef is hidiously expensive, but as someone mentioned, Korean cuts of beef tend to be high in fat. I've yet to see a really lean cut of sirloin or super lean beef. Not that there's anything wrong with beef occasionally.

Without doubt processed carbohydrates (baked goods, cookies, white breads, etc) and alcohol account for almost all the weight gain while in Korea. In fact the overweight Korean folk I've seen and watched, are normally always heavy drinkers and/or consumers of excessive carbohydrates.

On a slightly off topic, I find it bizarre that supplements are so expensive in Korea.

[Ecumenist]

Doesn't anyone use the Internet anymore?

Almost all of the questions being asked here would be answered in a 10 minute search of the web. It would only take 2 minutes to prove that jeffie's assessment is a bit extreme.