waterdrop rainflower (tokyo)

Posted by timothy sullivan (Tokyo, Japan) on 21 July 2009 in Plant & Nature.

Whilst was browsing through some supermarket shelves this past Sunday, I took a closer look at the food ingredient labels. As I am one of the growing number of people with a peanut allergy, I appreciated how the Japanese government has for the past two years or so been trying to use a pictographic system depicting the presence of certain common allergens in food (eggs, milk, wheat, soya, peanuts).

Unfortunately, this attempt fails to address the fact that food allergy sufferers who can't read Japanese may be misled by this label to think that a product contains no "peanuts" (as Japanese seem not to consider "chestnuts" or "almonds" to be a "peanut").

In addition, the Japanese tend not to be consistent in how they "spell" certain ingredients (I learned this fact 5 years ago, when I had consumed a raw peanut--written not in the usual katakana as ピーナツ but instead as its kanji compound, 落花生). Also, as certain foreign words are consisidered as being sexy, ingredient names are sometimes referred to using a foreign word (e.g. "marron", from the French).

I've decided to compile a list of Japanese words for nut products; words not seen here probably sound like their English form (e.g., "cashew" is "kashu"). Fortunately, most traditional Japanese foods don't contain nuts; however, some of the newer desserts (and even some varieties of ramen) contain almonds or other nut-family products, which are considered to be "healthy". If you have any questions, feel free to comment/mail me.

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almond oil (hentō-yu) (扁桃油) (へんとうゆ)

peanut; groundnut (rakkusei) (落花生) (らっかせい)
peanut (relatively uncommon) (nankinmame) (南京豆) (なんきんまめ)
peanut oil (pinatsu-yu; rakkusei-yu) (ピーナッツ油、ラッカセイ油)
peanut vinegar (pinatsu-zu) (ピーナッツ酢)
walnut (kurumi) (胡桃) (くるみ)

chestnut (maron) (マロン)
chestnut (kuri) (くり) (栗)

pine nut (matsu-no-mi) (common use) (松の実) (まつのみ)
pine nut (matsu-ha) (uncommon use) (松果) (まつは)

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Peanut-containing products:
Ji-ma-mi Tofu (じーまみ豆腐)

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Useful expression:

私は[ナッツ]のアレルギがあります。これを食べられますか？
"Watashi wa [peanuts] no arerugi desu. Kore o taberaremasu ka?"
I have a [peanut] allergy. Can I eat this?

(You can substitute a nut name --or the name of another ingredient-- in the brackets.)

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