auntblabby wrote:
a question- what are the Chinese doing right in order to avoid outright hunger? or what is America doing WRONG to be so chronically hungry?
Maybe they just ignore it. Like us they eat three meals per day but, having spoken to some middle class Chinese people they don't have as many snacks as us westerners, not because they can't afford snacks but because they don't have much time for snacking.
There's a lot of pressure to be thin in China so if some of them get overweight you can bet they go on crash diet. I've seen for myself Chinese parents encouraging their kids to go on crash diets. That could be another reason why there are less fat Chinese people.
Their idea of a healthy weight is lower than ours. By western standards some Chinese people would be underweight but they actually have more petite bodies so that might be a healthy weight for them. They may have an underweight BMI but you can't always accurately measure if someone is overweight or underweight just based on BMI without taking their build into account.
As for what is America doing wrong to be so chronically hungry, I think the answer is they're designing food to be addictive so that you crave more and more of it, even after you're full.
I'm not anti-corporate, my favourite products are made by corporations and market competition can lead to higher quality products. But I hate when corporations abandon competing to make the best product and start competing to create an artificial demand for something people don't need.
Traditional Chinese food is not addictive but of course, traditional food from any country is not addictive. Selling addictive food is a recent invention and it's killing people.
Also the Chinese drink tea with no milk and no sugar. Tea is a zero calorie drink for them. I honestly think that westerners absorbe a significant fraction of their calories through their beverages. Your typical salary man might eat a healthy 2,000 calories but if he also drinks 5 cappicinos at 200 calories each, now he's up to 3,000 calories.
I think in a way it's easier to go over your healthy amount of calories with beverages rather than food, partly because there's less feeling of fullness with drinks. Even after people are too full to eat any more, they can still drink a high calorie beverage.
While the Chinese drink their tea us westerners have drinks like this.
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