If you’ve gained some unintended weight over the holidays, believe it or not, Japanese convenience stores are a great place to start your diet.

There’s a philosophy that says you can eat pretty much whatever you want between Christmas and New Year’s just so long as you’re careful about what you eat between New Year’s and Christmas. Having made no attempts to suppress our calorific cravings over the holiday/vacation season, we’re now buckling down for the second part of that plan, but it’s a tough task in Japan, where seemingly every corner has a convenience store stocked with tempting treats of both the sweet and savory varieties, not to mention cases filled with fried foods.

But it turns out that Japanese convenience stores really do have everything, including options to help you stick to a low-calorie diet as you settle into your New Year’s-to-Christmas eating habits. Following a survey of 37,951 people in Japan in which 65 percent said they’d gained weight over their New Year’s break from work or school, convenience store Family Mart has put together three meals made up of its store-brand Famimaru food items, all of which come in at less than 500 calories total, so let’s take a look at the trio.

1. The Quick Meal Set (286 calories/416 yen [US$2.65])

● Toripaitan Ramen-Flavored Vermicelli Noodles (129 calories/203 yen)
● Salt Musubi rice ball (188 calories/108 yen)
● Famimaru Kitchen Salter Soft-Boiled Egg (69 calories/105 yen)

You might not have expected to see instant noodles as part of a low calorie meal, but these vermicelli-style noodles in chicken stock broth fit the bill. Called “harusame noodles” in Japanese, they’re also known as glass noodles and are made from potato starch. Family Mart’s chicken paitan version uses a lot of garlic and onion in the broth, so even if the calorie count is low, you’re not getting shortchanged on flavor, which helps contribute to a feeling of satisfied fullness.

2. The Solid, Satisfying Meal Set (485 calories/478 yen)

● Vermicelli Soup Wonton (95 calories/180 yen)
● Famimaru Kitchen Toribosobo Bento (390 calories/298 yen)

Harusame/vermicelli is here again, this time as part of a wonton soup that weighs in with less than a hundred calories. That gives us space to add a torisoboro bento with rice, ground chicken seasoned with a teriyaki-like sauce, egg, and nozawana turnip greens. The bento itself might be on the compact side, but the amount of variety gives you the fulfillment of a full meal, especially with the warming wonton soup accompanying it on a chilly winter’s day.

3. The Get Your Meat and Veggies Set (311 calories/641 yen)

● Taiwan Ramen-Flavored Vermicelli Noodles (120 calories/203 yen)
● Famimaru Kitchen Dashi Grated Pork (191 calories/438 yen)

In our last set, we’ve once again got our diet-friendly ally, harusame noodles, this time swimming in a spicy Taiwanese ramen-style broth. Also on the menu here is Family Mart’s microwavable pork shabu shabu pack, with strips of pork and sliced vegetables simmered in bonito and kombu broth, giving this meal a full third of your recommended daily amount of vegetables.

…honestly, that last one sounds so good that we’d want to give it a try even if we weren’t watching our weight these days. Since we are, though, it’s good to know that, as long as we’ve got the willpower, it actually is possible to come back from a convenience store run with tasty stuff to eat while we’re in New Year’s-to-Christmas mode.

Source, images: Press release
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