In Japan, calorie-busting ‘sinful gourmet foods' taking taste buds by storm

Korea Herald

11-07-2025

TOKYO (Japan News/ANN) -– Heavily seasoned "sinful gourmet foods" that are high in calories and fat content and can never be called healthy have recently become popular, and these delectable guilty pleasures have often been found not only on restaurant menus, but also in corporate product promotions, manga and personal social media posts.
On a recent day, Naoki Nomura, 44, the general manager of Meat & Cheese Forne, an Italian restaurant in Tokyo's Nakameguro district, asked me if I would like some cheese on top of a plate of steaming hot pasta.
Nomura then placed a round piece of burrata cheese on the pasta and slit it open with kitchen scissors, and melted cheese flowed out like lava. The cheese went perfectly with the spicy tomato-flavored pasta and salty prosciutto, making the dish rich, smooth, distinctive and exquisite.
A limited time variation of the Volcano Pasta, one of the restaurant's signature dishes, was offered until the end of June. The restaurant introduced the pasta on social media as the "taste of sin."
The dish had more than 2,000 calories, but was popular especially among women who wanted to eat without worrying about their health once in a while or on a "cheat day," a scheduled break in a diet.
"The pasta may stimulate an emotional conflict as you want to eat something delicious while, at the same time, you are also worried about what happens later," Nomura said.
According to Emi Yamamoto, who analyzes food trends at Gurunavi, a Tokyo-based company that lists restaurant and other related information online, "sinful gourmet foods" refers to dishes that evoke feelings of sin or guilt while providing a sense of gustatory satisfaction. Since they often feature plenty of high-calorie ingredients like meat and cheese, they also are called "high-calorie gourmet" or "guilty gourmet."
Menus with names that include the word haitoku, which literally means "immorality" in Japanese, began to appear more frequently one Gurunavi's restaurant information website around the autumn of 2021, with the number of restaurants offering such dishes increasing each year.
A survey of 1,000 people in their 20s to 60s found that about 60 percent of them had tried guilty gourmet fare, with 45 percent of them saying they ate such dishes as they wanted to enjoy eating meals. Thirty-five percent said they ate the food to help relieve mental stress.
"It may be an indication that people became weary of self-restraint during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. It could have been a backlash to health consciousness, too," Yamamoto said. "Also, the foods' extravagant appearance that looks good in photos appeals to young people who use social media a lot. Sinful foods are no longer a passing fad. They have become established as a genre of cuisine."
Spreading beyond restaurants
Marudai Food jumped on board the trend in promoting its sausages. The company garnered an unexpected response when it posted a recipe on X for a late-night meal made with instant ramen, cheese, milk and its Kunseiya-brand sausages in autumn last year. The sinful Kunseiya carbonara ramen has about 1,050 calories.
"Dokagui Daisuki! Mochizuki-san" ("I Love Dokagui! Mochizuki-san") is a manga series created by Kamome Maruyono and published by Hakusensha. In the manga, Mochizuki-san, the protagonist, relentlessly eats a lot of rich, sinful foods. The ways Mochizuki-san experiences euphoria from the rapid rise in blood sugar as the result of eating are depicted with black humor. Dokagui means "binge eating."
The manga quickly gained popularity as soon as the serialization started in May last year, leading to Hakusensha's collaborations with other companies, including Seven-Eleven Japan Co., which released bento box meals themed around the manga.
"The protagonist's pursuit of her own happiness through relentless eating in a stressful society may have resonated with readers," said Yuta Yoshinaga, an editor in charge of the manga.
Photos and videos of individuals cooking sinful gourmet dishes or eating them at restaurants are popular on social media, too.
Cooking expert Ryuji, author of "Bazu Reshipi: Mayonaka-no Haitoku Meshi" (Buzz-recipe: Midnight sinful meals), published by Fusosha Publishing, also shares many recipes for sinful gourmet dishes on his YouTube channel, which has more than 5.25 million subscribers.
"In today's society, where people pursue safety and comfort, there are few opportunities in which they face danger, fear or something unfamiliar in their daily lives. They may be creating 'pseudo danger' by eating excessively high-calorie and unhealthy foods and enjoying the thrill of tasting them," said Hideki Kiyoshima, a professor emeritus at Kindai University.
"Eating the dishes brings them not only satisfaction but also a sense of accomplishment," the expert on modern culture said.
OK once in a while
According to Terue Kawabata, vice president of Kagawa Nutrition University and an expert in lipid nutrition, the recommended calorie intake per meal for women is about 600 calories, meaning having a meal of more than 1,500 calories obliges them to reduce their recommended intake by 900 calories in other meals.
There is no need to completely abstain from rice to do so, for instance. You can offset the excess calorie intake without difficulty by having less sweets, soft drinks or alcohol compared to usual for about one to two weeks.
Since high-fat dishes can take three to four hours to digest, it is best to avoid them before bedtime. Consuming fiber-rich vegetables with the dishes can help prevent overeating and slow down fat absorption. You can eat vegetables in another meal on the same day when it is difficult to eat them with high-fat dishes.