{"id":5343,"date":"2013-03-25T19:12:05","date_gmt":"2013-03-26T01:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/?p=5343"},"modified":"2013-03-25T19:12:05","modified_gmt":"2013-03-26T01:12:05","slug":"the-asian-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/2013\/03\/25\/the-asian-question\/","title":{"rendered":"The Asian Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the yeah-but<\/em> questions I\u2019ve received frequently in emails is \u201cBut what about the Asians?\u00a0 They eat a lot more carbohydrates than we do, and they\u2019re not all fat and diabetic!\u201d<\/p>\n

I usually reply that while it\u2019s true that Asians eat more rice than most Americans, they don\u2019t match our consumption of sodas, pasta, muffins, ice cream, pancakes, cereal and Little Debbie Snack Cakes.\u00a0 Their total carbohydrate consumption may not be higher than ours, and even if it is, they don\u2019t still consume nearly as much sugar.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve tried without success to find recent statistics on what Americans eat vs. what the Japanese and Chinese eat, but perhaps those figures wouldn\u2019t be relevant anyway.\u00a0 After all, diabetes is becoming a huge problem in China, so we can no longer point to them as an example of people who eat a high-carb diet without becoming diabetic.\u00a0 My guess is that as their incomes rose, they began buying more sugary foods.<\/p>\n

I did, however, manage to find some data from the late 1990s, when the \u201cAsians eat a lot of carbohydrates but don\u2019t become fat or diabetic\u201d opinion was probably more accurate.\u00a0 So let\u2019s look at what the data tells us.<\/p>\n

According to an article in the Journal of Hypertension<\/a>, here are (or were) the macronutrient intakes among men in Japan, China, the U.K. and the U.S:<\/p>\n

Calories per day<\/span>
\nJapan:\u00a0 2278
\nChina:\u00a0 2347
\nUK:\u00a0 2470
\nUS:\u00a0 2609<\/p>\n

Percent calories as carbohydrates<\/span>
\nJapan:\u00a0 52.3%
\nChina:\u00a0 61.8%
\nUK:\u00a0 46.6%
\nUS:\u00a0 48.4%<\/p>\n

Percent calories as sugar<\/span>
\nJapan:\u00a0 15.8%
\nChina:\u00a0 7.1%
\nUK:\u00a0 17.9%
\nUS:\u00a0 24.3%<\/p>\n

The first thing that jumps out at me is that even in the late 1990s, American men were getting nearly one-fourth of their calories from sugar.\u00a0 Yeesh.<\/p>\n

Plugging the figures above into Excel, here\u2019s what we get for carbohydrate and sugar consumption:<\/p>\n

Carbohydrate grams per day<\/span>
\nJapan:\u00a0 298
\nChina:\u00a0 363
\nUK:\u00a0 288
\nUS:\u00a0 316<\/p>\n

As I suspected even before I ran the numbers, Japanese men do not (or did not in the late 1990s) consume more carbohydrates per day than American men.\u00a0 However, Chinese men do.\u00a0 So why weren\u2019t the Chinese afflicted with diabetes in the 1990s?\u00a0 Well, take a look at these figures:<\/p>\n

Sugar grams per day<\/span>
\nJapan:\u00a0 90
\nChina:\u00a0 42
\nUK:\u00a0 111
\nUS:\u00a0 158<\/p>\n

In the 1990s, at least according to this study, Japanese men consumed slightly fewer carbohydrates overall than American men and significantly less sugar.\u00a0 The Chinese consumed more carbohydrates overall, but only about one-fourth as much sugar<\/em> as American men.<\/p>\n

The figures for women are similar.\u00a0 I won\u2019t go through them all, but here are the numbers for carbohydrate and sugar intake:<\/p>\n

Carbohydrate grams per day<\/span>
\nJapan:\u00a0 253
\nChina:\u00a0 295
\nUK:\u00a0 221
\nUS:\u00a0 231<\/p>\n

Sugar grams per day<\/span>
\nJapan:\u00a0 87
\nChina:\u00a0 39
\nUK:\u00a0 92
\nUS:\u00a0 117<\/p>\n

I think the message is clear:\u00a0 American got itself into a big ol\u2019 health crisis largely by consuming too much sugar.\u00a0 If you’re metabolically healthy and enjoy rice, fine.\u00a0 It probably won’t hurt you.\u00a0 But if you want to remain metabolically healthy, stay away from sugar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the yeah-but questions I\u2019ve received frequently in emails is \u201cBut what about the Asians?\u00a0 They eat a lot more carbohydrates than we do, and they\u2019re not all fat… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5343"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5345,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5343\/revisions\/5345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}