Jumbo meals cater to cravings of hungry men

Colossal portions of heavy, hearty food have traditionally been a staple for sumo wrestlers trying to build up their giant frames for battle.

In recent years, however, jumbo meals have also become a hit with ordinary working men looking for a way to recharge after a strenuous day on the job.

One such prodigious eater is a 23-year-old in Chiba Prefecture who sets out fortnightly for a fast food beef bowl restaurant--and into the depths of a Mega Beef Bowl.

The giant serving, introduced by the Sukiya beef bowl chain in 2007, contains three times as much meat as a regular-sized beef bowl and a larger helping of rice.

The young man, who is 173 centimeters tall and weighs 100 kilograms, says he usually tries not to eat too much, but sometimes feels like taking on a challenge; and a mega-sized beef bowl or super-sized helping of ramen noodles is just the thing for it.

"When I'm tired from work, eating as much as I can relieves my stress. I feel like working hard again after a binge like that," he said.

He is not alone--as the increasing popularity of giant-sized meals, such as 1-kilogram Curry Rice and jumbo cup noodles, attests.

The boom is believed to have started in 2007, when McDonald's Japan introduced the Mega Mac burger, stuffed with four beef patties.

Zensho Co., the Tokyo-based firm that runs the Sukiya chain, said that before it added the Mega Beef Bowl to the menu, "There were many customers who ordered a set of a beef bowl and a mini-sized curry rice.

"We introduced the Mega to satisfy such people with just one dish," said Naoki Fujita, general manager at Zensho's public relations department.

Customers who order the Mega Beef Bowl are usually men in their teens through 30s, Fujita said.

In August, Sukiya added the Beef Bowl King and Curry King to its menu.

The Beef Bowl King contains 2.5 times as much rice and six times as much beef as a regular-size beef bowl, while the Curry King has three times as much rice and four times as much curry sauce as Sukiya's regular curry rice.

"You keep eating meat, but still you can't see rice (underneath)," Fujita enthused.

And yet, quite a few diners manage to finish these vast servings, he said.

Most people who order them make a point of taking a photo of their order with their cellphones, Fujita said.

"We've met potential demand from people who want to eat a lot," Fujita said.

While a regular-sized 330-yen beef bowl contains 634 calories, the Mega Beef Bowl costs 660 yen and has 1,124 calories and the Beef Bowl King costs 990 yen and contains 2,248 calories--almost the daily calorie requirement for a young adult male.

Convenience stores have also begun offering giant meals.

During summer, the Daily Yamazaki chain sold a 1-kilogram Curry Rice containing 580 grams of rice, 300 grams of curry, 50 grams of chicken cutlet, 60 grams of croquette and 10 grams of fukujinzuke pickels.

The chain reintroduced the 795-yen, 1,543-calorie product for a limited time after it was successful the previous year.

"This is the biggest (food product) in the history of our company," said Masakatsu Suda, a manager at the general affairs headquarters of Daily Yamazaki Co. "Thirty kinds of spices were used, so people wouldn't get tired of eating it," he added.

As part of a promotion for an American three-dimensional animated movie, "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," the convenience chain recently ran a campaign featuring 14 jumbo food products.

In selling bento takeout meals such as curry rice, convenience stores face intense competition from bento shops. Also, amid the recession, more people now make their own bento to save money.

"Even so, bento with a weighty volume sells well. People buy bento that is reasonably priced in relation to its quantity," Suda said.

Instant cup noodles come in big sizes, too. In 1988, Acecock Co. launched the Super Cup noodles series, with 90 grams of noodles per cup, compared with a regular portion of 60 grams.

And in 2005, the firm introduced the Super Cup 2.0 series, featuring 120 grams of noodles. The latest offering, released in September, contains 616 calories, and is sold at a recommended retail price of 220 yen.

Super Cup products now account for 30 percent of Acecock's instant cup noodle shipments by value.

"There was a discrepancy between what consumers considered an appropriate size (for cup noodles) and what manufacturers thought appropriate," said Yukinori Matsuzaki, an official at Acecock's marketing department.

The instant noodle maker, based in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, started the original Super Cup series after discovering through market research that many young men felt a regular cup size did not satisfy their appetite.

Likewise, the firm decided to put Super Cup 2.0 products on the market after noting that some men were eating two regular-sized cup noodles in one sitting.

The success of super-sized meals has prompted some to wonder if the appetite of Japanese people, especially men, has suddenly increased.

Annual surveys by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare have found the average daily energy intake for men in their 20s has remained unchanged in recent years, hovering around 2,200 calories.

Kohsuke Takagi, a professor of food marketing who leads a research group at Kagawa Nutrition University, said, "People tend to have a large appetite until they are in their early 30s. At a time when the market for restaurants and related businesses is saturated, the strategy of practically offering as much food as customers want at a reasonable price met their needs."

Many men are not satisfied with just one bento for lunch and buy cup noodles to sate their appetite. "Because such people have begun turning to mega-sized food products, those products seem to stand out," Takagi said.

Restaurants and food manufacturers have also begun offering "mini" and "petit" food portions.

Sukiya's beef bowls come in eight sizes, including the Petit Beef Bowl, which is about 40 percent of the size of a standard beef bowl.

According to Takagi, jumbo meals are part of an effort by the industry to deal with increasing diversity in appetite sizes.

Convenience store chains had been unaware of the demand for large portions among their main customers, men in their 20s and 30s, and were focusing instead on healthy food when developing products, he said.

"But neither 'health-conscious beef bowls' nor 'healthy ramen noodles' would sell well, because many customers in their early 30s or younger consider themselves to be in good health already," Takagi said.

Due to eating contests on TV, voracious eating has become something of a source of entertainment. People no longer think having a big appetite is unusual. That, according to Takagi, is another reason why huge meals have become widely accepted.

"It would seriously affect your health if you ate mega-sized food three times a day, every day, but that's unrealistic," he said.

Nonetheless, Takagi said, people should be sensible in their approach to heavy eating by watching their calorie intake and adjusting the size of the other meals they eat on days when they indulge a craving for super-sized food.(IHT/Asahi: November 19,2009)