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Comment by ajju | Hacker News Reader

Carbs in diet. The diet of most Indians has more carbs than most other diets.

Don't be so sure about that. My family is Indian and Catholic, which means our diets have always been much more like the "typical" American diet... lots of beef, pork, and chicken; less ghee than vegetarian Indian food; no fried food (why fry vegetables, when you can just cook in animal fat?); and about as much potato and bread as in the US. Grandparents still have or had all the problems in the article even though they don't eat any added sugar, and have cut down on fats, etc. Parents and aunts/uncles shaping out to be the same way.

> and about as much potato and bread as in the US

so in other words, way too much.

Potatoes and bread are not intrinsically bad. I grew up on the farm, and we ate mass quantities of them plus red meat. But we worked it off every afternoon pitching hay or hauling grain or painting fences or whatever.

Fundamentally its a sedentary lifestyle that's incompatible with these foods. They are not evil; they're inappropriate for the American level of activity (taking vehicles everywhere; sitting all day; watching TV in the evenings). Indians come to America begin to do these things, and begin to have problems. No surprise.

I am sure there is a genetic component to it as well, but my observations from being Indian, living in India for more than 2 decades, and having a large group of Indian friends tell me that Indians consume a high (and quickly growing) proportion of their diet as carbs. Worse - most of the carb calories seem to come from fried carbs, or sugar rich sweets. This is separate from the "westernized" fast food for which India is one of the fastest growing markets.

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