Gurunavi Research Institute, a company with a popular website to help people find restaurants, annually chooses the “dish of the year” in Japan. This year, the company announced that ‘frozen food’ was the winner.
The yearly prize shows food trends in Japan. Past winners included ‘vegetarian foods’ and ‘Chinese cooking’. This year’s winner, frozen food, highlights how Covid-19 has impacted Japanese eating habits.
Due to the pandemic, more restaurants started to freeze their dishes to sell as takeout food. Some restaurants flash-freeze their food to preserve taste and freshness. Some restaurants tried selling frozen sushi.
In Japan, the amount of money that people spent on frozen foods went up 20% per family from 2019 to 2021.
Other businesses are also adapting to the changes. One of the largest grocery store chains in Japan, Aeon, opened a new type of shop near Tokyo called @Frozen which mainly sells frozen foods. And, the convenience store chain Lawson expanded their frozen food sections in the shops.
Yoshiko Miura, a consultant from the Japan Frozen Food Association, says that more Japanese are buying frozen foods because of the aging population and more women going to work. Preparing a meal needs time and effort, so it can be difficult for older people and busy families. Frozen food helps solve those problems.
VOCABULARY
- Research – the process of studying a subject to learn more about it and gain new understanding
- Institute – a research organization or other organization that focuses on a specific field/subject of study or area of work
- Annually – every year; yearly
- Announce – share information openly; to tell the public; to make a statement; to report
- Show – to prove something or make the truth or existence of something known; confirm; demonstrate; validate
- Trend – something that’s popular or becoming popular
- Include – to have something smaller as a part of it; to contain; incorporate; to be part of
- Vegetarian – no meat or fish; only plants and maybe some products from animals like milk
- Highlight – to make clear; to bring people’s attention to it; to emphasize
- Impact – influence; effect; consequence;
- Habit – a usual way of behaving; something that a person does often in a regular and repeated way; a thing that you do often and almost without thinking
- Due to – because of; owing to
- Pandemic – when a disease or sickness goes all over the country or world
- Takeout – food that is bought from a restaurant or other food shop to be eaten somewhere else
- Flash-freeze – a process of freezing food quickly to preserve its quality
- Preserve – to maintain; protect; save; to keep it going
- Adapt – to change or modify something to suit/fit a new situation or purpose
- Chain – a business that is part of a larger company and has many locations, often in different cities or countries (McDonald’s is a fast-food chain)
- Expand – to increase in size or number; to open out; spread
- Section – an area; part; zone
- Association – a group of people/organizations that come together; union; partnership;
- Age – to grow old; to make/cause someone to look older
- Population – all the people living in a particular country, area, or place
- Solve – to find an answer; to find an explanation; to create a way to fix a problem; answer; work out
Original story from CNN below:
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