Hey! You are FAT!!!!

[Elizabeth]

This has always cracked me up. Even the "bad" food is better for you here.

Just skip making all dishes that require deep-frying. That means no tempura, no tonkatsu...just teriyaki. Make your gyoza using all vegetarian ingredients.

Home-cooked cultural foods everywhere are pretty healthy, so it's usually just the restaurant food that will kill you. And the biggest problem with with even American food is portion size and sodium, preservative content etc rather than the actual ingredients per se. Europeans eat heavier food (way more butter, cheese & meat), Mexican and Chinese famously involves fat/oil/grease -- but they cook from scratch and don't crave as much of of it as Americans. Even McDonald's in other countries have much smaller portion sizes.