Five years into a life of daily Sukiya meals, how is his health holding up?

In 2019 a Japanese man who goes by the handle Manarisu online walked into a branch of Sukiya and ate a meal. That didn’t put him in a particularly small demographic, since Sukiya is one of Japan’s big three gyudon (beef bowl) chains, along with Yoshinoya and Matsuya.

▼ Sukiya’s standard beef bowl

Manarisu went back to eat at Sukiya again the next day, which still isn’t very unusual. Sukiya has branches across Japan, often in very convenient locations close to train stations, shopping centers, offices, and universities. They’re open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and serve tasty food at affordable prices, so for people who have a branch near their home or somewhere along their commute, eating there two days in a row is something they might do from time to time.

But it’s a pretty safe bet that no one else has done what Manarisu has now done, which is eat at Sukiya for more than 1,800 days in a row.

▼ That’s Manarisu on the right, and yes, this photo was taken inside a Sukiya.

tweet https://www.instagram.com/manarisu9475/p/CsLxlkKh-JW/

Manarisu’s roughly five-years-and-counting Sukiya streak didn’t start because he was craving beef bowls, though, but rather because he wanted a Nintendo Switch. When he got started, Japanese e-commerce site Mercari was running an especially generous promotion where if you were a registered user of the site and introduced someone else who also made an account, you could get 1,300 yen in credit, which could also be used for dining at Sukiya. At the time, Manarisu had a modest Twitter following of about 8,000 people which he had built up from his previous e-sports activities, and he said that if they made Mercari accounts, he’d eat at Sukiya every day, planning to use the money to buy a Switch.

▼ Day 1,865: Extra-large beef bowl

Manarisu, who’s now 31 years old, wound up earning enough credit to pay for a Switch in just two days, but he’s kept up his daily Sukiya diet, and is now an official brand ambassador for Mercari. Instead of posting photos of his meals every single day, he tends to share them in batches, forming very long Twitter threads.

The first question that springs to mind is, of course, doesn’t he get sick of eating at the same restaurant every day? However, though Sukiya is first and foremost a gyudon chain, they’ve got quite a bit of variety to their menu.

▼ Day 1,873: Gyudon with takana (leaf mustard greens) and mentaiko (spicy cod roe) mayonnaise

Aside from all sorts of different gyudon toppings and seasonings, Sukiya also has curry and seasonal dishes, like unagi (freshwater eel) and individual-size sukiyaki hot pot meals. So more so than Sukiya’s beef, it’s their rice that Manarisu sometimes feels tired of, but he can switch up its flavor with sauces and spices.

▼ Day 1,868: Sukiyaki

His personal favorite Sukiya meal? That’d be the maguro tataki (minced raw tuna) bowl. Though its disc shape makes some diners leery about trying it, Manarisu says it’s actually quite fresh and delicious, with no unpleasant fishiness to the taste.

▼ Day 1,872: Maguro tataki bowl

The other big question is whether eating at a fast food restaurant every day has wrecked his health. Manarisu says, though, that in his first three years of daily Sukiya meals, he actually lost weight. That’s due in part to getting back into playing table tennis (he was on his high school’s team), but it shows that with regular exercise, burning off more calories than you get from a Sukiya meal a day is feasible. Manarisu says he hasn’t had any noticeable reductions in the results of his annual heath check-ups either, and while he did gain 10 kilograms (22 pounds) four years into his daily Sukiya lifestyle, that weight gain coincided with him drinking alcohol every day at that time, so the Sukiya meals don’t seem to be to blame.

The apparent lack of ill health effects brings to mind a study from a few years back in which participants are a Yoshinoya beef bowl every day for three months. That study also found no significant changes in participants’ weight, body fat percentage, blood pressure, blood-sugar, cholesterol, or triglyceride levels. A large factor is likely the fact that gyudon itself contains no deep-fried elements, and so gyudon restaurants tend no to have many, if any, fried foods on their menus. Gyudon beef is stewed along with onions, so you’ll get at least some vegetables, and the typical beef bowl doesn’t contain as much meat as a similarly positioned hamburger, so it’s a pretty balanced meal compared to other fats food options.

Manarisu has no current plans to put an end to his Sukiya streak, and he should be hitting the 2,000-day mark sometime in the first half of next year. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for just a bit more variety in your dining destinations, we’ve got a list of the top 10 food travel regions in Japan right here.

Source: Nikkan Spa via Livedoor News via Jin
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