7 ms·

Rice is one of the main ingridients of various Asian cuisines, e.g. the Japanese one. And somehow Japan is one of the healthiest nations in the world. We've bee

by usrnm 6y ago

Rice is one of the main ingridients of various Asian cuisines, e.g. the Japanese one. And somehow Japan is one of the healthiest nations in the world. We've been eating bread for millenia, but, somehow, obesity has never been a major health problem until modern times. How do you explain all this?

NullPrefix 6y ago
>obesity has never been a major health problem until modern times I would suggest a link between abundance of food and obesity. Also sedentary lifestyle
- carlmr 6y ago
  But we've had abundance of food in the 20th century long before the obesity epidemic.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    The US left subsistence farming behind around 1800 and had consistent surpluses ever since. You can see this in statistics of average height, they shoot up in the 1800's.
  - tremon 6y ago
    how "long"? Several studies have indicated (sorry, no sources) out that a person's diet during childhood affects the expressed genes of its offspring. There may be a generational lag (say, 20 years) between a change in diet and how it affects the population, it doesn't have to occur instantly.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    We also had factory jobs, hands-on farm jobs, and plenty of other physical labor.
andi999 6y ago
I remember when talking to another tourist in Japan, he was like: this food is all crap, it is mostly carbohydrates. Nowadays I think, it probably doesnt matter what you eat, but how much.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  It does matter. 1 calorie from sugar is more fattening than other calorie sources because your body metabolises sugar directly to fat. You can see this in action with this procedure (or thought experiment): 1. Lose most of your belly fat so that you look thin. 2. Eat a tub of ice cream. Do this for two nights. You’ll see a lump on your belly. It is 4 pounds of new fat. That won’t happen if you replace ice cream with the same weight of fruit.
  - andi999 6y ago
    With how much I meant as long as you stay lean.
valenterry 6y ago
That's a good point. I would say it is a combination: the amount of food you eat at once vs. the amount of energy you spent (sports/working). You can eat a lot of carbs over time when being physically active. But once you stop being as physically active, you have to adjust your carbs accordingly. So what OP says is correct for how most people live nowadays.
staplers 6y ago
See "refined". Removing the husk of wheat and rice removes the source of fiber which then speeds up the metabolic process of your body turning the carbs into sugar. It overwhelms the glucose regulator in your body similar to eating raw sugar. This is why consuming whole fruit instead of juice is so much healthier. It's about speed of glucose delivery.
- krageon 6y ago
  White rice is a staple in large parts of Asia, where folks don't look like the average US citizen. Life isn't as simple as you present it here.
  - staplers 6y ago
    Can you explain how I simplified life? I simply presented a fact about refined foods.
AmVess 6y ago
Modern supermarket bread in the USA is some pretty awful crap. Loaded with cheap leavening agents, made from cheap low nutritional value wheat, and loaded with sugar. Sure, it is bread, but it might as well be called bread substitute. It is not easy to find bread that isn't made up of primarily cheap ingredients. Even so-called supermarket "artisanal" barely resembles actual quality bread.
zaptheimpaler 6y ago
Maybe Japan is healthier despite eating more refined carbs because they eat less, or they eat seafood, or something in the air, or genetics, or they move more, or any one of a million other possible factors. Pointing to the fact that they eat rice does NOT prove anything. We've been eating bread for millenia but we also moved a lot more until recently. Also, lifespans and health were worse than they are now. Also, how much does the bread we get at a supermarket today resemble the bread people ate 500 years ago? Its easy to explain ANY side you like because there are millions of factors. That's exactly why diet research is conducted by doing statistics to isolate the impact of particular variables even as 100s of things vary across any group of people. I think people like to argue against dietary research because it tells them things they don't want to hear. Admittedly, i didn't believe in any of this or like hearing it until recently because its made to sound so difficult - cut out sugar/refined carbs/carbs completely! Personally i was able to move to a healthier diet after just going through a simple book on sports nutrition. It drills in a few key points that tend to get lost in clickbait. For example, what you eat over a period of time (i.e a DIET) can be unhealthy or healthy, but pointing to any ONE meal/food as healthy/unheathy doesn't make a lot of sense
- hedberg10 6y ago
  Japanese people take in 1000 kcal less than their American peers.[1] Daily! That is, pardon the pun, huge. It would be nice to get some more recent data and to adjust for height. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_energy_intake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_ener...
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  > Also, how much does the bread we get at a supermarket today resemble the bread people ate 500 years ago? I grind my own grain at home and make my own bread. 100% difference from what's available in stores vs. at home. You'll never find any of the artisan-style almost-burn loaves that you see on pinterst using 100% whole grain. Will never poof up like that, you'll get something closer to German-style brown breads. They pull the wheat germ -- essentially the plant embryo, but also a source of nutrients that can go bad -- out of the flour to extend shelf life. Ditto for taking out all of the bran -- fiber! -- though "whole wheat" flours will add some of that back in later. But for the most part modern breads are nothing but refined carbs with a touch of fiber. The germ is sold separately, as a health food or feedstock for animals. The difference in taste and shape is noticeable. It's also much, much more filling and satisfying. Not as great for avocado toast, but does pretty well with a little cream cheese and tomato (plus a pinch of salt).
bpizzi 6y ago
> We've been eating bread for millenia According to wikipedia [0]: approximately from 10,000 to 30,000 years ago. Let's take an average reproduction age of 25y and you've got roughly 1000 human generations eating bread. But, also according to wikipedia [1], the oldest Homo Sapiens that we can date range from 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. That's 70-90% of our direct ancestors' natural selection process not having been exposed to bread (widespread grains, in fact). And, if we dare to argue that human metabolism have mainly not changed since Homo Erectus, then we are in another world in terms of comparison, because Wikipedia trace the oldest signs of Erectus as far as 2,000,000 years ago [2], which represent 80,000 generations, and that's ~1% of our ancestors having evolved exposed to grains. So, all in all, "we've been eating bread for millenia" is clearly not all that there is to say on that matter. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bread [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo
marcyb5st 6y ago
I think it has to do with desk jobs/sedentary life-style. I believe that before machines/computers came along an average person burned in excess of 3k calories/day toiling in the field or doing some other physical job. Now I would be surprised if the average person burns more than 2k calories/day. Moreover, once you get to high fat levels your body produces more estrogen like hormones. These indirectly lower your metabolism even further. This is because those hormones impede the synthesis of testosterone, which is highly correlated with muscle-synthesis and muscle fibers are much more metabolic active tissues than fat. A feedback loop that is really hard to escape from.
inglor_cz 6y ago
An interesting observation from Japan (2009): Vinegar Intake Reduces Body Weight, Body Fat Mass, and Serum Triglyceride Levels in Obese Japanese Subjects https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1271/bbb.90231 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1271/bbb.90231 Maybe Japanese cuisine compensates some of the negative effects by using vinegar more often than we do. My wife used to make sushi according to Japanese recipes; the rice was soaked in vinegar. But Westerners do not soak their bread or rice in vinegar. We generally think about an element of nutrition being a cause of some disease (cholesterol, fat, sugar etc.). We spend less time thinking about the question whether an element of nutrition may have protective effect against deleterious effects of another element.
- fomine3 6y ago
  I don't think vinegar is frequently used in Japan. Sushi (or Sumeshi, vinegared rice) is tend to eaten on something special time. I tend to use vinegars on (Japanese styled) Chinese dishes rather than Japanese.
quantumsequoia 6y ago
It should be noted that while Japan is one of the healthiest countries in terms of obesity rate, they have a very high diabetes rate. The article was discussing diabetes 12.1% of Japanese have diabetes (https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00249/ https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00249/) For comparison, about 13% of people in the US have diabetes (https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pdfs/data/statistics/national-diabetes-statistics-report.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pdfs/data/statistics/national-d...)
jraby3 6y ago
I believe it’s all the fiber that’s been stripped out in an effort to make it more palatable.

by usrnm 6y ago

NullPrefix 6y ago

>obesity has never been a major health problem until modern times I would suggest a link between abundance of food and obesity. Also sedentary lifestyle

carlmr 6y ago
But we've had abundance of food in the 20th century long before the obesity epidemic.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  The US left subsistence farming behind around 1800 and had consistent surpluses ever since. You can see this in statistics of average height, they shoot up in the 1800's.
- tremon 6y ago
  how "long"? Several studies have indicated (sorry, no sources) out that a person's diet during childhood affects the expressed genes of its offspring. There may be a generational lag (say, 20 years) between a change in diet and how it affects the population, it doesn't have to occur instantly.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  We also had factory jobs, hands-on farm jobs, and plenty of other physical labor.

andi999 6y ago

I remember when talking to another tourist in Japan, he was like: this food is all crap, it is mostly carbohydrates. Nowadays I think, it probably doesnt matter what you eat, but how much.

wombatmobile 6y ago
It does matter. 1 calorie from sugar is more fattening than other calorie sources because your body metabolises sugar directly to fat. You can see this in action with this procedure (or thought experiment): 1. Lose most of your belly fat so that you look thin. 2. Eat a tub of ice cream. Do this for two nights. You’ll see a lump on your belly. It is 4 pounds of new fat. That won’t happen if you replace ice cream with the same weight of fruit.
- andi999 6y ago
  With how much I meant as long as you stay lean.

valenterry 6y ago

That's a good point. I would say it is a combination: the amount of food you eat at once vs. the amount of energy you spent (sports/working). You can eat a lot of carbs over time when being physically active. But once you stop being as physically active, you have to adjust your carbs accordingly. So what OP says is correct for how most people live nowadays.

staplers 6y ago

See "refined". Removing the husk of wheat and rice removes the source of fiber which then speeds up the metabolic process of your body turning the carbs into sugar. It overwhelms the glucose regulator in your body similar to eating raw sugar. This is why consuming whole fruit instead of juice is so much healthier. It's about speed of glucose delivery.

krageon 6y ago
White rice is a staple in large parts of Asia, where folks don't look like the average US citizen. Life isn't as simple as you present it here.
- staplers 6y ago
  Can you explain how I simplified life? I simply presented a fact about refined foods.

AmVess 6y ago

Modern supermarket bread in the USA is some pretty awful crap. Loaded with cheap leavening agents, made from cheap low nutritional value wheat, and loaded with sugar. Sure, it is bread, but it might as well be called bread substitute. It is not easy to find bread that isn't made up of primarily cheap ingredients. Even so-called supermarket "artisanal" barely resembles actual quality bread.

zaptheimpaler 6y ago

Maybe Japan is healthier despite eating more refined carbs because they eat less, or they eat seafood, or something in the air, or genetics, or they move more, or any one of a million other possible factors. Pointing to the fact that they eat rice does NOT prove anything. We've been eating bread for millenia but we also moved a lot more until recently. Also, lifespans and health were worse than they are now. Also, how much does the bread we get at a supermarket today resemble the bread people ate 500 years ago? Its easy to explain ANY side you like because there are millions of factors. That's exactly why diet research is conducted by doing statistics to isolate the impact of particular variables even as 100s of things vary across any group of people. I think people like to argue against dietary research because it tells them things they don't want to hear. Admittedly, i didn't believe in any of this or like hearing it until recently because its made to sound so difficult - cut out sugar/refined carbs/carbs completely! Personally i was able to move to a healthier diet after just going through a simple book on sports nutrition. It drills in a few key points that tend to get lost in clickbait. For example, what you eat over a period of time (i.e a DIET) can be unhealthy or healthy, but pointing to any ONE meal/food as healthy/unheathy doesn't make a lot of sense

hedberg10 6y ago
Japanese people take in 1000 kcal less than their American peers.[1] Daily! That is, pardon the pun, huge. It would be nice to get some more recent data and to adjust for height. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_energy_intake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_food_ener...
blaser-waffle 6y ago
> Also, how much does the bread we get at a supermarket today resemble the bread people ate 500 years ago? I grind my own grain at home and make my own bread. 100% difference from what's available in stores vs. at home. You'll never find any of the artisan-style almost-burn loaves that you see on pinterst using 100% whole grain. Will never poof up like that, you'll get something closer to German-style brown breads. They pull the wheat germ -- essentially the plant embryo, but also a source of nutrients that can go bad -- out of the flour to extend shelf life. Ditto for taking out all of the bran -- fiber! -- though "whole wheat" flours will add some of that back in later. But for the most part modern breads are nothing but refined carbs with a touch of fiber. The germ is sold separately, as a health food or feedstock for animals. The difference in taste and shape is noticeable. It's also much, much more filling and satisfying. Not as great for avocado toast, but does pretty well with a little cream cheese and tomato (plus a pinch of salt).

bpizzi 6y ago

> We've been eating bread for millenia According to wikipedia [0]: approximately from 10,000 to 30,000 years ago. Let's take an average reproduction age of 25y and you've got roughly 1000 human generations eating bread. But, also according to wikipedia [1], the oldest Homo Sapiens that we can date range from 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. That's 70-90% of our direct ancestors' natural selection process not having been exposed to bread (widespread grains, in fact). And, if we dare to argue that human metabolism have mainly not changed since Homo Erectus, then we are in another world in terms of comparison, because Wikipedia trace the oldest signs of Erectus as far as 2,000,000 years ago [2], which represent 80,000 generations, and that's ~1% of our ancestors having evolved exposed to grains. So, all in all, "we've been eating bread for millenia" is clearly not all that there is to say on that matter. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bread [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_human [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo

marcyb5st 6y ago

I think it has to do with desk jobs/sedentary life-style. I believe that before machines/computers came along an average person burned in excess of 3k calories/day toiling in the field or doing some other physical job. Now I would be surprised if the average person burns more than 2k calories/day. Moreover, once you get to high fat levels your body produces more estrogen like hormones. These indirectly lower your metabolism even further. This is because those hormones impede the synthesis of testosterone, which is highly correlated with muscle-synthesis and muscle fibers are much more metabolic active tissues than fat. A feedback loop that is really hard to escape from.

inglor_cz 6y ago

An interesting observation from Japan (2009): Vinegar Intake Reduces Body Weight, Body Fat Mass, and Serum Triglyceride Levels in Obese Japanese Subjects https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1271/bbb.90231 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1271/bbb.90231 Maybe Japanese cuisine compensates some of the negative effects by using vinegar more often than we do. My wife used to make sushi according to Japanese recipes; the rice was soaked in vinegar. But Westerners do not soak their bread or rice in vinegar. We generally think about an element of nutrition being a cause of some disease (cholesterol, fat, sugar etc.). We spend less time thinking about the question whether an element of nutrition may have protective effect against deleterious effects of another element.

fomine3 6y ago
I don't think vinegar is frequently used in Japan. Sushi (or Sumeshi, vinegared rice) is tend to eaten on something special time. I tend to use vinegars on (Japanese styled) Chinese dishes rather than Japanese.

quantumsequoia 6y ago

It should be noted that while Japan is one of the healthiest countries in terms of obesity rate, they have a very high diabetes rate. The article was discussing diabetes 12.1% of Japanese have diabetes (https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00249/ https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00249/) For comparison, about 13% of people in the US have diabetes (https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pdfs/data/statistics/national-diabetes-statistics-report.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pdfs/data/statistics/national-d...)

jraby3 6y ago

I believe it’s all the fiber that’s been stripped out in an effort to make it more palatable.