In China, you're correct, they consume about 198-pounds of rice per person annually - about 1/2 pound per person each day. The is 10x more than the USA consumption rate however, not 15x - in the US annual consumption per person is 20-pounds.

And, let's be clear - rice isn't necessarily *bad* - I also eat it, but not in high quantity, and that's mainly because it's not a food I really, really like anyway, but it complements some of the foods I do like well. Would I ever base my diet on it, even if I really liked it a lot? No - it's one of those foods with more nutritional inadequacy than nutrient-density IMO.

It serves its place in the Asian diet for one main reason - it limits starvation across the continent with calories. There isn't one essential nutrient that it contains that reaches "excellent" status for RDA, but like I said, when you're in need of calories, it provides - and China only has 2,766 calories a day available in its food supply, of that 2306 are plant-based calories and just 461 are animal food calories - 83% of their calories are plant-based.

If you're living in China your diet is limited by the food supply availability - you simply cannot gorge yourself on animal food calories because they're simply not there!

But, ya know, we're talking China - not exactly the country that is leading the world in health or longevity - so why not base your case on a country where longevity is strong and health is good? That might be a much more useful debate, wouldn't you think?

Also, don't overlook millet. Asia is very large; major areas of northern China, Japan, and Korea grew millet as a staple. It grows better in dry areas, where rice does better in wet areas. Millet is also very important in Africa.

Millet consumption seems to be going down, though.

I play a video game called "Emperor" which is like an ancient chinese "Sims." I (the mayor) start my community as a village and control the economy. Besides other things, I set up farms, housing, food mills, shops (ceramics, hemp), warehouses, etc. Farms can produce rice, millet, wheat, cabbage and soybeans. Hunting tents collect local game (pork, venison or fowl). Fishermen fish. All this food is placed in a central warehouse where the food shops purchase it for making food. The food that goes the fastest is fish and game, followed by cabbage and soybean with the grains only being bought if there is nothing else available. I find that very interesting.

(1) There is no compelling reason to even eat rice. The point was to show that unrefined high-carb food is not so much of an evil that some people think here - like a religion. We can add to the rice example, the genuine pastas in Italy. A lot of old folks there and no more diabete than most elsewhere.
(2) The best rice is probably the one WITH a lot of vegetables.




I refute this. If it would be so, wouldn't you think that rice would represent 20%+ of the global in all the countries?



Behave yourself, smart-*. This is just a discussion.



... depending the source you are taking. It doesn't do much of a difference!

Lots of people here have found out that they can't handle rice, or pasta, or any high carb food. So you are telling people who know a lot more about themselves and the science of all this than you do that they are wrong. That's pretty stupid and rude, if you stop and think about it. What do you think is going to happen as a result of your post? Are people going to slap themselves on the foreheads and say, "Wow, that Saintor guy is right, I've been a fool all this time. Uncle Ben's here I come!"? Or are you going to start a lot of arguments and foster a lot of ill will? I think you knew what would happen when you started this supidity.





You really aren't very bright, are you?

I

No, I wouldn't think that. At the end of the day, tired, bloated and icky is still better than starving, starved and dead. As Regina has already pointed out, rice may not be the greatest food out there, but when calories are needed, it suffices. Many people eat it simply because it is better than starvation (but only marginally, IMO).

Saintor,

Before this thread completely deterioates I wanted to thank you for initiating this topic. Although I had difficulty in understanding your point initially, I believe I finally got it from one of your recent responses.......

"(1) There is no compelling reason to even eat rice. The point was to show that unrefined high-carb food is not so much of an evil that some people think here - like a religion. We can add to the rice example, the genuine pastas in Italy. A lot of old folks there and no more diabete than most elsewhere.
(2) The best rice is probably the one WITH a lot of vegetable"

I wanted you to let you know this discussion provided me with new and interesting information/resources. Like you, I needed to make a change in my nutritional intake. After much research, like most others posting on this forum, I decided to try a restricted carbohydate "diet". And for me it worked well (reduced body fat, improved blood lipid values, more energy, elimination of upper and lower GI discomfort, etc...). Unlike many others on this forum I have not chosen to share my success nor participate often in posting, but I do think a "restricted carb" WOE is valid. And after reading the information on your website I believe you also hold this belief. What you must realize is that for everyone participating in ths forum "restricted carb" probably has a different meaning (parameters). When someone says this WOE is not valid the defenses rise, some logical others not so logical, because for most it has resolved health and weight issues and therefore they will be adamant in defending what has worked for them, just as you are.

Finally, I wanted to congratulate you on your success to date and wish you all the best in your quest for a healthy lifestyle. Hopefully, you will continue to bring questions/doubts to this forum because regardless of the outcome, it is learning experience for me, if not for others.

Best regards,

Andy

Again, I reaffirm that I certainly saw some benefit of low-carb eating. It contributed to keep me from being starved longer and to change my taste for healthier foods.

But assuming an appropriate intake of calories, I don't buy some of the extreme vertues that some people sees in low-carb.

On the metablism side, the link between high carbs, obesity and diabete is just not true.

Otherwise, Italy (with their pastas) and Asian countries (with rice) would all have higher than normal rates of obesity and diabete.

Guess what? It is not the case.

That poor old rice farmer probably is suffering from
the side effects of the millions of gallons of AGENT ORANGE
that the US poured on Vietnam during that ill conceived
and fruitless endeavor. For those that don't have a
memory, it was sort of like the War in Iraq only it
happened 35 yrs. ago. Will America Never Learn?

I will get off my soapbox now.

Again I would like to reiterate that these conditions do not have simple causes. Diseases, especially "lifestyle" ones, do not exist in a vaccuum. When we say "carbs cause diabetes and obesity" we do not literally mean if someone eats these foods they will become obese and diabetic sooner or later. We also do not mean to say these diseases are ONLY caused by carbohydrate.

We mean to say if other conditions are permitting of the development of obesity and diabetes, then carbohydrate is the decisive factor which trips the switch and starts the disease process.

Other conditions are unrestricted and consistent access to energy (1), physiological and psychological stresses (2), and high genetic sensitivity to the former catalysts (3)

Primary to these other 3 factors (catalysts), sits carbohydrate as the most important. That is to say, if carbohydrate is removed from the equation, even if other conditions remain true, the likelihood of developing obesity or diabetes decreases considerably to almost nothingness. On the other hand, if carbohydrate remains strong, but other catalysts are reduced or even removed, the likelihood of developing sicknesses does not reduce nearly as much. Therefore, carbohydrate is the most significant factor. We feel the reason there is an epidemic of disease today is because these other factors are so strong, combined with such a ridiculous amount of carbohydrate availability.

Other carbohydrate eating societies have a much lower representation of the other factors (1, 2, and/or 3) therefore they do not develop the same rates or types of diseases we have.

It's an interesting suggestion, but it seems unlikely. There is "modest" evidence of Agent Orange (actually dioxin) contributing to diabetes - other pages say it's "inconclusive," but veterans get benefits if they have diabetes because they don't really rule it out.
However, while I'm far from an expert, it looks like we didn't spray Agent Orange in north Vietnam, where the guy in the article lives (Thanh Hoa province) - no ground fighting there. We sprayed in south Vietnam and looking at a map, it looks like the closest the spray was, was about 200 miles away from his area (not that I know exactly where). That doesn't mean he was never exposed to it, of course. But, the article doesn't say anything about having a higher incidence of diabetes in areas that were sprayed, either.

There's a suggestion in the article:

The man is 58, so that would put his birth right after World War II when the world economy wasn't good, plus the French were messing around in the region. Malnourishment seems like a reasonable guess. Vietnam has fought off lots of aggressors, for centuries - they've never had a cushy situation.

I think the main idea here is, the Vietnamese people and probably other Asian groups have very thrifty genes, and they don't tolerate even a little weight gain very well. So now that for once they have more food available, it seems to make them sick. Having plenty seems to affect some more than others - if you look at the US, several minorities have a worse problem with diabetes than the mostly-European types seem to.

It's not as though you can never ever eat rice, but maybe the point is too much rice isn't good for us, and it's not good for some guy from Thanh Hoa either?

You can put it in bold as you want but I disagree.

Yes, excessive carbs can lead to diabete but only if you are seriously overweight and you don't move enough. So I won't say it is the decisive factor. At least directly. Because indirectly, carb + sugar multiplies the risk of making you eat more than you should.

This has nothing to do with people having parent with diabete history (genetic predispositions).

That just isn't true, Saintor. I work with a woman who is 5' 8" talll and maybe 125 pounds soaking wet who runs and bikes avidly. She's thin enough that I have wondered to myself a few times if she isn't anorexic. She was just diagosed with type 2 diabetes a few weeks ago. Her only risk factors are a high carbohydrate diet (she tends towards vegetarian eating) and the fact that she is African American.
Yes, a higher proportion of type 2 diabetes patients are going to be overweight and underactive (now which came first, the chicken or the egg?), but there are plently of active normal weight type 2 diabetics as well; enough to make your statement untrue.
In most cases, insulin resistance is not caused by overweight and inactivity, it is the underlying cause of the overweight and therefore the inactivity; it's a symptom, not a direct cause. Sort of like blaming severe arm pain as the cause of the fracture underneath.
Back to your assertion that China and Italy have a lower incidence of diabetes than we do. The fact is, their population still suffers from that disease and those populations that have a very low carbohydrate intake have a much closer to zero incidence of diabetes than any other cultures. We then have to ask ourselves what the difference is between us and those countries with a lower incidence of diabetes and Wooo did a very nice job of outlining those differences. It can be neatly summed up like this: an all carb diet is not going to cause obesity if you are eating starvation level calories. As soon as your calorie intake reaches or exceeds equilibrium with your caloric expenditure, trouble starts brewing.
I'd also like to point out that not every region in Italy is high on pasta consumption and that Sardinia, a region in Italy, has the second highest rate of diabetes in the world.
Still, average rate of pasta consumption is 60 pounds per capita per year. That works out to 2.63 ounces per day; obviously, Italians are eating way more of other things than they are pasta since their average daily pasta consumption contributes 294 calories daily to their diets so it seems that when given a choice, people at least in Italy are choosing to not make rice and pasta the cornerstone of their diets. What do Italians eat lots of ? Vegetables, fruits, olive oil (10 liters per person per year), butter, cheese and eggs. Interestingly enough, Japan has the highest egg consumption of all countries listed.

Sorry, but I just don't believe this kind of BS, as 95%+ of doctors.This is probably a problem with her organs or genetic predisposition.



Come ON. This is false; they eat a lot of carbs. Don't believe yourself; you'll be fooled at the end. BTW, I don't say "lower" about Italy. Rather 'no worse'.



You want to argue that one of the main meal in Italy is not pastas? Get REAL. 75g is one meal of pasta DAILY and every day. But yes, and exactly what I was saying, eating in moderation is the key, not the high-carb food itself.

As for Sardinia, it can be explained by genetic and this is a very small minority in Italy. It is not rare that a remote regions have specific issues. Here in north of Quebec, there is a region with a very high rate of disease of intolerance to milk.

Overall, Italy has not an higher rate of diabete. Period. And yes they eat more pastas than about anywhere else in the world.

Saintor, this isn't a religion to be believed or not believed. What I stated above is a fact or are you now calling me a liar? The woman eats a near vegetarian diet, is thin and active and now has type 2 diabetes. It's true that African Americans are more susceptible to diabetes but so are Asians and Native Americans. But I've shown that you don't have to be inactive and overweight to become a diabetic and that there are other factors in play.



They being who, exactly? So now we've gone from eating lots of rice and rice being a high nutrition to calorie food to lots of carbs in general? 294 calories per day on average from pasta is about 15% of an average adult's total calorie intake. Where do the other 85% come from?
When I said rates of diabetes among cultures where little carbohydrate is eaten, I was referring to cultures such as the Inuit, Masai and Aborigine; diabetes is not simply 'no worse' in these cultures when they are eating their native diets, it's unknown.
Lots of carbs? I'd like to see your sources of figures for that statement along with your definition of 'lots'. Is 'lots' 100 grams of carb per day? 200? 300? Certainly Mediterannean countries eat lots of veggies (143 kg/person/year) and a lesser amount of fruits (81.5 kg/person/year), dairy-mostly in the form of cheeses (145.5 kg/person/year), meat/fish (about 52 kg/person/year) and poultry (19.2 kg/person/year). Just to put everything in perspective and compare apples to apples, so to speak, the intake of pasta in kilograms per capita is 27.2 kg; the only thing I've listed that Italians eat less of per capita is poultry. By weight, they eat more than 5 times more veggies than they eat pasta, more than twice as much meat and almost 3 times more fruit (probably much of that in the form of olives, eggplant and tomatoes which are botanically fruits).