Question about Asian diet

[GonePaleo]

I stumbled across this website three weeks ago after hearing about paleo diets from a friend and have found it to be tremendously helpful.  I started the caveman power diet two weeks ago, lost 14 pounds in phase 1, and started phase 2 today with a whole new attitude towards food.  I love that it feels like I've adopted a new lifestyle instead of simply starting a new diet.  This forum is full of insightful information and the community seems genuinely supporting of one another. 

I've read Gary Taubes' books as well as quite a bit of additional literature supporting a low-carb diet and I love that it's working for me.  Having said that, I have one question that has been really bugging me for the last few days.  If white rice and noodles, and their associated carbohydrates, are so bad for you and I, why are there entire cultures of predominately slim people whose diets are built around them? 

[houmax]

Here ya go...


source
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/is-rice-unhealthy/
The Asian Paradox
This probably deserves a full post, but I’ll briefly discuss it here. I’m not going to sit here and claim that Asians don’t actually eat rice. They do. And they have for centuries while maintaining pretty good health and staying fairly lean. That’s changing nowadays, though, with the Westernization of their food. They’re eating more sugar and using vegetable oils for cooking, rather than traditional animal fats. These factors are deranging their metabolisms, turning the relatively benign rice starch into an enemy. It just suggests that carbs, in and of themselves, are benign in a metabolic vacuum. If you have everything else going right – insulin sensitivity, regular activity, absence of metabolic deranging foods like fructose, lectins, and excessive linoleic acid – pure starchy carbs aren’t going to be a big problem. But, especially in the States, we live in anything but a nutritional vacuum. We aren’t starting from ground zero. The overweight perimenopausal wife and mother of three working 50 hours a week is not starting from square one. She has an issue with glucose, one that might not be cured in a lifetime. For a person like that, avoidance of rice is recommended and probably necessary.

We have to face facts. Deranged has become normal. Glucose intolerance – or perhaps “mishandling” is better – has become standard. Where rice belongs in your life depends on where you fall on the metabolic derangement continuum.

[SidheDraoi]

wonderful article Houmax!

I eat a primarily asian diet, but I nix the rice or just eat it very sparingly. I haven't eaten rice since october of 2010, but that was the last day I made Oyakodon (one of my favorite japanese dishes).  I try to subsititute brown rice with white rice as brown rice is less processed and a tad sweeter than white rice.  what I have found with the asian diet is that there is a lot of emphasis on vegetables and fish. rice is a filler food, only meant to fill in the "gap" but it holds little to no nutritional value, other than a ton of carbohydrates.  I still eat wontons on occasion, I make an immunity boosting soup that has wontons in it, though the wontons are optional it is helpful when one is sick and in need of a little "filler". I think I will post my recipe today, ohne wontons that is. if you stick to the lots of fish and vegetables ideal then you can still eat an asian diet and still be peleo friendly. also, the asians have the 80% full rule when eating. eat till you are 80% full and stop, this is very important for the paleo diet as well, as it keeps you from over eating.