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> A country like China could easily control obesity by banning all the companies producing obesity by selling obesity causing food products really? so ban rice

> A country like China could easily control obesity by banning all the companies producing obesity by selling obesity causing food products really? so ban rice and wheat production? I'm pretty sure I can get fat on natural foods. There have been fat people long before Coke. Japanese Sumo get fat on chanko nabe. Nothing artificial about it.

TACIXAT 8y ago
Yes, you can get fat on rice, but it's much easier to get fat on sugar. Sugar messes with your body's signaling causing you to consume more than if you were just eating carbs. If we outlawed sugar today, I would place all my savings on the obesity rate declining.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  Despite soda consumption dropping over the past 5 years, obesity rates have kept going up....
  - lhl 8y ago
    Do you have a source for this? The data I've seen in peer reviewed publications are based primarily on NHANES data, which doesn't cover recent history. I've seen a Beverage Marketing Corporation graph that shows a 1% decline in soft drinks, but a 4-5% increase in ready-to-drink tea, sports drinks, and energy drinks. The raw Excel data is sold for $3000, so I don't know what the absolute values are, but it seems likely the decline is soda is largely being offset by equivalently bad/sugary replacement drinks.
  - dexterbt1 8y ago
    I'm personally observing that soda companies have diversified their products across sugary drinks and foods, acquisition or new proxy companies even (at least here in Asia). So called sports drinks, fruit juices, coffee/milk/chocolate/soy based sugary drinks, even oat-meals/cereals have over the years increased in SKUs; I bet the net sugar consumption would still be higher if you account all of these.
    - tarsinge 8y ago
      Same here in Europe (France), there is a dramatic increase in the consumption of Starbucks like sugary drinks in the recent years. And yes plus a whole range of "healthy" fruit/soy juices which are full of sugar.
  - ensiferum 8y ago
    It's just not the soda. The hidden sugar i.e. high fructose corn syrup is not literally in almost every imaginable product.
bad_user 8y ago
Rice isn't obesogenic. There are Asian cultures for which rice has been a staple food and that are lean. Wheat on the other hand is fairly toxic and eliminating grains from the diet is one of the best things you can do for your health. That said, here we aren't talking carbohydrates, but rather sugar, as in sucrose or HCFS. The problem with sugar is that it contains fructose and the problem with fructose is that it gets metabolized completely in the liver, competing with other nutrients, like the poly-unsaturated fats from vegetable oils (ironically misnamed the "healthy fats"). And when the liver's glycogen store is full, that fructose gets deposited as fat, on the liver, on the pancreas, wherever it can. And a fatty liver or even worse, a fatty pancreas, is the best predictor of obesity or diabetes. Interestingly medical professionals advise people to cut the fat from the diet in order to treat a fatty liver. It is true that it can help, however a much more effective strategy is to cut the sugar ;-) N.B. the fructose we eats from fruits and sugary vegetables like carrots is in much lower quantities than the fructose we get from industrially processed foods. And processed food usually doesn't have fiber either, or if it does, it has the wrong kind of fiber. As usual "the dose makes the poison". So yes, as a matter of fact beverages like Coca-Cola are toxic in a way that rice isn't.
- apta 8y ago
  > Wheat on the other hand is fairly toxic and eliminating grains from the diet is one of the best things you can do for your health. Even whole grains?
  - bad_user 8y ago
    Yes, even whole grains.
    - apta 8y ago
      Do you have a source on that? I see contradictory posts here, some saying that grains are good for you and rice is bad, and vice-versa.
- mango7283 8y ago
  So by this logic, would Northern China be less lean than Southern China since the North is more grain as a staple than the rice eating South...?

TACIXAT 8y ago

Yes, you can get fat on rice, but it's much easier to get fat on sugar. Sugar messes with your body's signaling causing you to consume more than if you were just eating carbs. If we outlawed sugar today, I would place all my savings on the obesity rate declining.

gamblor956 8y ago
Despite soda consumption dropping over the past 5 years, obesity rates have kept going up....
- lhl 8y ago
  Do you have a source for this? The data I've seen in peer reviewed publications are based primarily on NHANES data, which doesn't cover recent history. I've seen a Beverage Marketing Corporation graph that shows a 1% decline in soft drinks, but a 4-5% increase in ready-to-drink tea, sports drinks, and energy drinks. The raw Excel data is sold for $3000, so I don't know what the absolute values are, but it seems likely the decline is soda is largely being offset by equivalently bad/sugary replacement drinks.
- dexterbt1 8y ago
  I'm personally observing that soda companies have diversified their products across sugary drinks and foods, acquisition or new proxy companies even (at least here in Asia). So called sports drinks, fruit juices, coffee/milk/chocolate/soy based sugary drinks, even oat-meals/cereals have over the years increased in SKUs; I bet the net sugar consumption would still be higher if you account all of these.
  - tarsinge 8y ago
    Same here in Europe (France), there is a dramatic increase in the consumption of Starbucks like sugary drinks in the recent years. And yes plus a whole range of "healthy" fruit/soy juices which are full of sugar.
- ensiferum 8y ago
  It's just not the soda. The hidden sugar i.e. high fructose corn syrup is not literally in almost every imaginable product.

bad_user 8y ago

Rice isn't obesogenic. There are Asian cultures for which rice has been a staple food and that are lean. Wheat on the other hand is fairly toxic and eliminating grains from the diet is one of the best things you can do for your health. That said, here we aren't talking carbohydrates, but rather sugar, as in sucrose or HCFS. The problem with sugar is that it contains fructose and the problem with fructose is that it gets metabolized completely in the liver, competing with other nutrients, like the poly-unsaturated fats from vegetable oils (ironically misnamed the "healthy fats"). And when the liver's glycogen store is full, that fructose gets deposited as fat, on the liver, on the pancreas, wherever it can. And a fatty liver or even worse, a fatty pancreas, is the best predictor of obesity or diabetes. Interestingly medical professionals advise people to cut the fat from the diet in order to treat a fatty liver. It is true that it can help, however a much more effective strategy is to cut the sugar ;-) N.B. the fructose we eats from fruits and sugary vegetables like carrots is in much lower quantities than the fructose we get from industrially processed foods. And processed food usually doesn't have fiber either, or if it does, it has the wrong kind of fiber. As usual "the dose makes the poison". So yes, as a matter of fact beverages like Coca-Cola are toxic in a way that rice isn't.

apta 8y ago
> Wheat on the other hand is fairly toxic and eliminating grains from the diet is one of the best things you can do for your health. Even whole grains?
- bad_user 8y ago
  Yes, even whole grains.
  - apta 8y ago
    Do you have a source on that? I see contradictory posts here, some saying that grains are good for you and rice is bad, and vice-versa.
mango7283 8y ago
So by this logic, would Northern China be less lean than Southern China since the North is more grain as a staple than the rice eating South...?