So how is it that Asians eat tons of white rice but don't suffer from obesity, heart disease, diabetes and hypertension at anything close to Western rates?
Low carb skeptics often raise this point, but I'd like note that it can be misleading to consider a single diet variable in isolation. The Japanese smoke more than we do, and yet have less heart disease. Hence, smoking reduces the risk of heart disease....
Of course not. Asians eat more white rice, perhaps, but they also eat more fish, seaweed (in the case of the Japanese), more vegetables, walk more, eat more soy, etc... The effect of all of these variables, combined, may result in better overall health, and yet it could also be true that white rice in and of itself isn't that good for you.
This part is huge. I moved to a new city a year and half ago and started walking everywhere. Where I used to struggle keeping the weight off, nowadays without even going out of my way to exercise, it just stays off.
And now bear in mind my city is far less walkable than your average developed Asian city...
I'm convinced that if America finally got rid of its car obsession, health levels will improve dramatically, and all this talk of the obesity epidemic will fizzle.
Exactly. We don't need to exercise now, so few people do. Exercise has become something to do in our spare time. We stay in our homes and are required to use cars. When I visited China, I had to walk everywhere because I didn't have a car. Unfortunately we really can't get rid of the car obsession without a huge effort.
First, the suburbs take up so much space and distances living areas from the store areas. If we had a New Urbanist city, it would get people to walk. Now, you can't walk. Walking is impossible. You can't walk to a Walmart and grab fresh food every day. In China, my family would get food from the market every day. Now, we get food once a week and it's in big bags. That's because buying food is inconvenient.
Second, the suburbs take up space and creates the dreaded long commute. You can't walk to work. This makes public transportation unfeasible. Everyone buys a car.
It's all a big self-propelling problem. It creates its own problems, and to fix them, you have to contribute to the problem. Long distance? Get a car. A lot of cars? Build more roads. The vicious cycle continues...
EDIT: Biking is possible. But does anyone do it to commute, with so many cars and such long distances? Nope.
I personally witnessed this myself. I had to come home from school one day and today's roads aren't good for walkers. There's no sidewalk, so I had to walk on the grass or in the ditches. In many places (in the burbs, not in the city, the city is fine for walking), there were no walk signals. If there were, you had to walk along the road to the signal which often required adding more walking to the trip. For example, I had to cross the street from the library to a restaurant for lunch. I had to cross the middle of the road, and no one wants to do that.
Let me quote you out of context: "eat more ... eat more ... more ... eat more ..."
I don't think they stay skinny by eating more. (I know, you mean "eat more of this good thing relative to the bad things".) But eating less on an absolute scale is probably a critical component.
The reason is that carbs aren't the problem. Fructose is (largely) the problem. Refined grains (and refined sugars made from grains) shock the insulin system by causing a blood sugar spike (which can be especially bad for diabetics), but they don't cause long term effects. Fructose, on the other hand, which is found in ENORMOUS amounts in both HFCS, table sugar, and "fruit sweetened" things (and in small amounts in fresh fruit) causes kidney issues, must largely be metabolized into fat before being burned, puts a load on the liver, increases appetite and more. I've lost and kept off weight with no effort simply by learning some very basic biochem and switching in glucose, dextrose and maltose for fructose and sucrose.
For more informations (and scientific peer reviewed papers that back me up), I'd recommend googling for "fructose metabolism". There is also a great lecture about fructose on youtube called "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
It's not just carbohydrates so much as refined carbohydrates. The sugar and white flour that make up so much of the typical American diet have a very high glycemic index, which causes the body's blood sugar to spike pretty heavily. What makes this really fun is that the constant blood sugar spikes make you hungrier and you tend to eat more as a result.
White rice still isn't great in this regard, but it's not as bad as comparable American staples.
That makes sense but my experience of travelling in Asia is that a lot of people eat tons of white rice every day. Portions weren't significantly smaller than those I see in the U.S. either. Is white rice really that much better than white bread or is there more to the equation?
I don't know about the numbers, but as an Asian I can assure you that heart disease, hypertension, etc etc are all very common in Asia still, particularly in wealthy, developed areas.
Many health-conscious Asians have moved to brown rice, much like how many Western folk have moved off white bread.
My general impression is that refined carbs are simply not great for you.
It depends a lot of the exact type of rice and preparation. Parboiled long grain rice can have a GI as low as the 40s while instant white rice can have a GI in the 90s. White bread generally has a GI of 70 or up. Glucose sits at the top at 100.
...it is because they eat the rice with a lot of high fiber content vegetables (and not so much meat, and practically no sugar). what counts (amongh other things) is the energy/diatary fiber ratio of you meals... I presume you understand the energy part. The fiber will slow down absorption, so you stay away from eating for longer if your meals have low EFR ratio. see http://www.scribd.com/doc/23466990/Slim-Logic
