About

Aiko Tanabe

I grew up in Yokohama, where my grandmother cooked every meal the way she had learned it from her own mother: a bowl of rice, a small portion of fish or tofu, and three or four small vegetable dishes, served in the middle of the table and shared. When I moved to Manchester in my twenties, that pattern fell apart — long commutes, takeaway on the way home, and my weight and energy followed — so I spent years learning to cook the food I grew up with from British supermarkets, keeping a food journal, and reading the nutrition research behind hara hachi bu, the Okinawa diet and intermittent fasting so I could tell which parts have real evidence behind them and which are mostly tradition. I am a home cook, not a dietitian, and I do not treat anyone, so everything published here is what I have tried in my own kitchen and read in the studies, with notes on when a topic is worth raising with your doctor. I started Fuji Diet because the English-language writing on Japanese-style eating was either a diet book promising quick results or a food blog with no reasoning attached, and I wanted to write the version I would have wanted to read myself: calm, specific and honest about what the evidence does and does not show.