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Comment by steelbrain | Hacker News Reader

I don’t understand. There are entire nations (eg. Pakistan, Bangladesh) where meat is a delicacy and Rice and Wheat is what feeds the masses, the obesity ratio I’ve personally observed is nowhere near the US.

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India and Pakistan suffer from the lowest life expectancy in the world and diabetes is exploding. They do in fact have a fair amount of obesity, but the rate is not as high as it is in the west because it is overpowered by poverty, so they are on a low-calorie version of a poor diet. There is also much more manual labor happening in India, which keeps the weight off.

There are rich countries like Japan and South Korea that consume between 8 to 12 times [0] as much rice as the US and have much lower obesity rates (almost a tenth) [1].

[0] https://www.helgilibrary.com/indicators/rice-consumption-per...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r...

8 to 12 times rice doesn't mean much if its substituted by a different carb, like bread or pasta. But the point holds. I've heard tell of Japanese doctors recommending people eat more rice as western diets begin to cause problems in Japan.

Good point, rice could be substituted by another carb, but OP was explicitly talking about low carb diets. South Korean maybe don't eat as much beard or pasta, but for sure they are not having a low carb diet, yet they are not fat.

Japanese also eat a fairly high amount of meat. But I also think you may be correct that rice is a less dangerous carb than wheat, which contains gluten. In South Korea obesity rates are in fact increasing and the fact that you should avoid eating a lot of rice if you want to stay slender is well-understood. In North Korea, on the other hand, white rice is more of a staple and yet obesity rates are not as high because the general poverty of the society as a whole is overpowering.

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