A Better Approach to Nutrition: Enjoying Food Without Guilt

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Yakiniku, pizza, ramen — foods that bring us happiness. But after eating, worries about calories, salt, and fat often follow. If that sense of happiness turns into regret, it takes away from the joy of eating. Now, a new initiative in Japan, Tsujitsuma-Shiawase, is encouraging people to "balance it out," offering a way to enjoy what they love while still thinking about nutrition.

With a name that playfully combines tsujitsuma-awase (balancing things out) and shiawase (happiness), the project promotes a guilt-free way to achieve both satisfaction and nutritional balance.

The initiative focuses on four key nutrients and ingredients, encouraging people to balance their meals over the course of a week. By taking this approach, people can enjoy their favorite foods and still meet nutritional goals. This effort has been made possible through collaboration among leading Japanese food companies.

Promoting Health Before Problems Arise

"Life is fun because we can sometimes say, 'Oh well.'"

In November 2023, a website called Tsujitsuma-Shiawase was launched to help ease the pressure of constantly worrying about healthy eating.

The project began with six companies, including major food manufacturers such as Ajinomoto, Ezaki Glico, Kikkoman, Maruha Nichiro, and Meiji, along with a recipe company, Every. After a major site update in July 2024, participation has grown to 15 companies.

Takuya Yamaguchi is the manager of the Strategic Project Group in the Marketing Design Center Food Products Division at Ajinomoto and a founding member. He explains:

"In an era when people are living to 100, staying healthy is essential — but keeping track of every meal is exhausting. We launched this project to help people maintain nutritional balance easily and extend their healthy years."

The project focuses on people who are currently healthy but haven't yet taken steps to prevent future lifestyle-related diseases. By encouraging better habits now — before any issues arise — the initiative aims to help extend healthy life expectancy.

Yamaguchi adds, "Until now, there hasn't been much focus on this group — people without obvious health issues."

Backed by Nutrient Profiling

"There's nothing better than eating what you want — and with tsujitsuma awase, you can always balance out the nutrition later."

The mechanism for putting this idea into practice is the Japan Nutrient Profiling System (JANPSⓇ). Designed to reflect Japan's food culture, it scientifically evaluates four key nutrients and ingredients: vegetables, protein, saturated fat, and salt.

The system calculates nutrient targets for a single meal and scores meals based on these targets. Each meal is evaluated by adding up the points for each nutrient and converting the total into a score out of 100. Higher amounts of vegetables and protein lead to higher scores, while lower amounts of salt and saturated fat are rated more favorably.

To make it easy to understand at a glance, five colorful badges — like stamps — have been designed: "Good! for Vegetables" The next badge is "Good! for Protein." Then, "Good! for Salt" and "Good! for Saturated Fat." Finally, the "Golden Balance."

Meals that score 75 points or higher receive the "Golden Balance" badge. The "Good! for Vegetables" and "Good! for Protein" badges indicate that a meal contains sufficient vegetables and protein, while the "Good! for Salt" and "Good! for Saturated Fat" badges show that these nutrients are kept within recommended limits for a single meal.

More than 3,000 meal options are available. Although detailed information is provided, these visual markers offer a quick and easy way to grasp each meal's key nutritional features.

​​Had an Indulgent Meal?

The system is easy to use. Simply open the website and check off anything that concerns you about your recent eating habits — like "not enough vegetables" or "too many greasy meals." Based on your answers, the site suggests a variety of meal options to help balance your diet (tsujitsuma-awase).

In Japan, people cook at home more often than in many other countries. So, even if one meal is unbalanced, you can adjust for it by preparing healthier meals at home over the course of a week.

"One week is just a guideline," explains Yamaguchi. "It's set as a period during which, even if you don't get certain nutrients like vitamins, you're unlikely to develop deficiencies."

In the case of a hamburger;

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Had a hamburger?

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New Nutrient Profiling System Tailored for Japan's Diet

Western nutrient profiling models typically evaluate foods based on the amount of specific nutrients they contain. Their main focus is on improving the nutritional balance of packaged products made by food companies. However, these models weren't designed to assess meals as they are commonly served in Japan — with a main dish, side dishes, and other components.

They also assess items like soy sauce, miso, and curry roux as standalone foods, even though these are not intended to be eaten on their own. As a result, Japanese foods often receive low nutritional scores under such models.

To address these issues, JANPS was developed in 2021 to reflect Japan's unique food culture and dietary issues. In October 2023, the National Institutes of Biomedical Innovation, Health and Nutrition also introduced a Japanese nutrient profiling model for processed foods and prepared dishes. These initiatives are expected to advance efforts to make the nutritional value of foods more visible and understandable.

"Tsujitsuma-Shiawase is essentially the real-world application of JANPS," says Yamaguchi. "In the future, by involving convenience stores and the broader retail industry, we hope to raise awareness and encourage more people to think about nutritional balance easily and enjoyably."

This report is published in cooperation with Ajinomoto, a logo partner of the JAPAN Forward website Japan 2 Earth focused on initiatives to achieve the SDGs.

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Author: Mika Sugiura

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