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Comment by dr_ | Hacker News Reader

It’s not clear to me how any of this is new. What id like to hear is how researchers reconcile this concept with what is seen certain other countries, mostly Asian, where rice is a staple of their diet, and where you don’t see the levels of obesity we have in the US.

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Sugars in general, and high-fructose corn syrup in particular. It is added to a lot of products in the US "to make them more pallatable". Which is an euphemism for "to sell more".

Rice is carbs, yes. But it also fills the stomach (for a while, at least - beans are better and proteins are much better on that field). Sugar/Syrup has the opposite effect. It is addictive and it makes you crave for more. It is also very cheap. So food vendors add it to everything - to sell you more. Meat. Cheese. To me (from Europe) US bread tastes like cake.

European and Asian food producers are gradually catching up on this strategy and are adding extra sugars, so the obesity levels are also increasing, especially in big cities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_China

It just has not reached US levels.

To me doesn't make sense that something so unhealthy as corn syrup (and other sugars) isn't more heavily taxed. Right now food producers are making their buck by passing the bill to the US health care, which is a big chunk of the US central budget (and also very inefficient). It's a drag on the whole US economy, in addition of causing a lot of human tragedy.

In my country (France) bread used to be a staple of the diet and there was no obesity epidemic at the time.

Perhaps it has to do with total food intake. I live in Bangkok at the moment, rice is a staple food and Thais eat all the time (they remind me of Hobbits). Portions are small though, so perhaps that's why I don't see a lot of overweight people.

This is correct from my perspective as well (I live in Japan). Not just portion sizes, but total calories in a meal are dramatically smaller. I went back to the UK a week ago for a visit and I was stunned to see menus with calories listed that had individual meals (without drinks or desert!) listed as considerably over 1000 kcal.

Japanese people often have a good breakfast, but then eat maybe 5-700 kcal for lunch (in the form of a bentou) and maybe the same for dinner. Sometimes you get a set bentou at work and it often works out to about 1000 kcal -- but nobody I know who eats those ever eats dinner. They'll have a drink or two after work with whatever otoshi (side dish imposed on you as a cover charge in the drinking establishment) and maybe some snacks.

It seems that the carbohydrate intake in these study is mostly based on processed carbohydrates, which are distinguished from unprocessed/lesser processed ones (like beans, fruits, and to a lesser extent rice). Those make a huge difference for our metabolism compared to white flour or industrial sugar. Fruits may contain a lot of sugar as well but it seems to make a big difference if sugar comes with fibres or not.

italy has also been in the top 10 countries by longevity for decades even with a diet heavily skewed towards pasta/bread/pizza.

I feel the problem of the US is a cultural one which goes beyond the basic carb/fat split.

I think we do a disservice to people to lump all carbs together. For many, it makes any dietary change seem overwhelming. I doubt many people are getting fat eating a diet of fish, veggies, and rice. In fact, that sounds like a healthy meal.

The problem is that people are eating candy bars, sugared soda, potato chips, french fries, pop tarts, and basically crap.

They do also get diabetes, though:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nutrition/comments/9x47lg/are_simpl...

It's about portions when eating Asian food in Singapore my rice always used to finish before the proteins that come with a dish so I sometimes ordered extra rice. Plus Asian food have lots of soups on the sides so I think their carbohydrate and protein intake is more balanced then it looks.

When you look at a population you have to consider its whole culture.

Healthy Asian populations also eat a lot of fish and seaweed. They eat much more salt (!) than we do. And they don’t eat so much junk food.

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