Kenji Miyazawa's work "Ame ni Mo Makezu" that begins with "Ame ni Mo Makezu". To be exact, it was a memo of the last work, but it is widely recognized as a masterpiece. In the sentence, the phrase "Eat brown rice four go, miso and a few vegetables a day" appears.



From a modern sense, it raises the question that 4 go of rice (about 8 bowls for women) is too much for a day. However, in the dietary situation from the Meiji era to the early Showa era when Kenji Miyazawa lived, the opposite is true, and "4 go" is an expression that is a modest amount.

Sunny Health, which develops the "micro diet", has released "The simple" food "circumstances of Japan in the Meiji era as seen in literature." It conveys the Japanese dietary situation at that time.

According to it, the era of "Ame Nimomakezu" was an environment where manual labor was a daily routine unlike the present age. Kenji Miyazawa's side dishes are only soup or pickles for all three meals. It seems that the energy required for the body could only be obtained from carbohydrates such as rice and millet.

The calorie of brown rice is almost the same as that of white rice, which is 525 kcal per go. According to this calculation, Kenji Miyazawa's 4 go is 2,100 kcal. The calorie intake required for an adult male with a high amount of activity is 3,400 to 3,500 kcal. Considering that the energy source is almost exclusively rice, not only 4 go but also the army that ate 6 go barley rice a day is not enough. After all, Kenji Miyazawa seems to have lived a simple life.



By the way, brown rice contains a lot of manganese / niacin / magnesium / copper / vitamins B1 and B2 / phosphorus in addition to carbohydrates. In particular, dietary fiber contains about nine times as much as white rice. The target intake of dietary fiber for Japanese is 20 to 25 g per day. It is said that the actual intake is about 5 to 10 g short on average. It can be said that Kenji Miyazawa at that time was consuming only dietary fiber.