Why I think miso soup can be the best way to provide nutrition to people in the streets

I'm trying to share a recipe to make miso soup to the ladies in the streets of Bali, and today I want to introduce why I will choose miso soup.


Easy to make, very nutritious

Miso was a very important superfood for samurai when going to war. Records tell us that samurai will carry a rice ball with miso paste before the battle for energy.

I've talked about the benefits of miso here.
More and more Japanese grocery stores are opening even outside of Japan. I see Japanese food sections in local supermarkets now, too.

If you have miso paste and water, you can make miso soup, which makes it a great candidate for a nutritious meal.

Any ingredient can be part of miso soup

I've given thought to whether I will be able to find a balanced pool of nutrients from the Indonesian diet, and the answer was yes. There is a concept "magowayasashii" in Japanese cuisine that can help you take the nutrients you need for your daily life.
So the list of ingredients that can be put in the miso soup from Indonesia is:
  • tofu...ma or bean
  • peanut...go or nut
  • seaweed...wa or seaweed
  • any vegetable...ya or vegetable
  • ikan asin (salted dry fish)...sa or fish
  • any mushroom...shi or mushroom
  • cassava...i or potato
I've asked a local whether they have something similar to miso, and yes, "kokita taocho" is an Indonesian miso. Indonesian natto will be tempeh.

It will be better to grind the peanut and put it as a topping instead of putting the whole peanut. Japan will grind the sesame, too both for taste and nutrition, as the body will not be able to digest and take in the nutrients from sesame that is not ground.

Using Ikan asin, it will make the miso soup tasty enough from salt, and removing the intestine and slow cooking it will give off great dashi.



Having all of this in a miso soup will boost the nutrients that can be taken that day!

Alternative to MSG 

Ajinomoto which produces MSG has made it easier to cook tasty food easily. Diet is about balance, so according to Ajinomoto, MSG's umami reduced households' for using too much salt in people's cooking, and the amino acid is an easy way to intake amino acids.

While that might be true, now the world is taking too many MSGs now, which may be harmful to health. , Food Insights say research has been unable to verify that MSG is directly correlated with being unhealthy. 

But in my experience, I get skin problems and diarrhea when eating from convenience stores or ready-to-eat products. So I would say miso gives more health benefits, and it is also a lot easier to buy miso than ever before.

So by replacing MSGs with miso, it can become a healthier alternative.

Planning my miso soup education

I'm still planning on how the miso soup education may help people to access nutritious food easily. Hopefully, an ecosystem can be designed so that the ladies in the streets are able to sustain their living! 

Follow Ryu Aomi for more to come :) 

In this blog, I post my food trips worldwide, as insights into Japanese food in comparison to all the different cuisines I encounter through my journey. 

I also try to share information from Japan that fills our hearts or might help us think about how to better the world!

Here are the SNS channels I have, but I mainly focus on Twitter at the moment. I share my past car trip around mainly Hokkaido, and how it was living there!



 

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