It doesn’t sound right, Taiwanese eat out a lot, are they gaining weight, are they broke?
It’s the portions.
6 Likes
What most people in America perceive as a normal portion in the US is 4 times what a normal meal in my country looks like. I was shocked when I went there, and I also gained a lot of weight.
Yup. The problem there is that rent and manpower is expensive, but bulk food is incredibly cheap - especially anything grain-based, because it’s heavily subsidized. So it’s in the restaurant’s interests to heap up the plate fit fattening stodge so that the customer thinks, well, I just paid $20 for that, but at least I got a shitload of food.
4 Likes
Here they have friggin’ cheap all you can eat hotpot and buffets. Loading up on fattening crap is not the problem here.
They usually have ways of making not all you can eat. Extra slow service, time limit, small plates to bring the stuff etc.
it’s not just the portions - restaurants in the states compete on flavor, taste, texture, etc and thus load up butter and other high calorie ingredients in their offerings. even a smaller portion of some dish might still have half a stick of butter in it. stuff in taiwan is far less rich, generally speaking.
1 Like
I get fat here easier than in the USA. Meanwhile all the Taiwanese around me stay slim. I try to eat ‘healthish’ but I eat out 100% of the time. The sauces are very caloric, and the oil in the local food is not drained well. But I still think it has to do a lot with DNA and hormonal imbalances. I seldom see obese Asians in the US even if they have been living there for several generations and have picked up the American food habit. Ocassionally there is fat there as well as here in Taiwan, but mostly they have some other underlining medical condition that makes them more prune to gain weight. The average Taiwanese May eat crap and lots of it and never become obese.
Add that to a lifetime of bad habits since childhood. Think about the cafeteria food in the US, this is how they teach kids to eat. Also the loads of misinformation about dietary needs. BS like drinking milk to make bones strong and grow.
1 Like
Seems very unlikely…
This is the BS they teach people to eat
Like really? You want me to eat sugar from fruits, carbs from grains and fat from meat and milk…at the same setting in these portions? Does no one understand what your body uses for energy, that will go directly converted into fat.
And when I ask about protein portions for men and bigger athletes, dietitians go blank with confusion. No one can eat this way and get to where they want. This is the worst diet I can think of for anyone. You’ll look and feel like shit eating this way.
Why is dairy so important? It’s ridiculous they tell people they need it.
1 Like
Agreed. It’s based largely on what makes the most money for the USDA’s buddies, rather than what’s sensible.
I eat low-carb high-fat, so of necessity a fair amount of dairy; but not even close to what’s implied in that picture, and certainly not in conjunction with a mountain of carbs.
If you wanted to design a diet to make people fat in the shortest possible time, that picture would be it.
It’s the same in the UK. Shite wrapped in breadcrumbs. With fries.
1 Like
This thread is making me feel like eating some very unhealthy food. I’ve just eaten some beef noodles, but now I’m wishing for a steak and kidney pie, and chips cooked in lard. And then a large bowl of English trifle for pudding…
2 Likes
If your choices are making you fat, and their choices are not making them fat, wouldn’t the most likely explanation be in their choices? You are almost certainly not “eating healthy” if you’re following USDA recommendations.
They need to seriously invest in dietary education for children everywhere. There’s no reason to teach and feed kids this way outside of laziness. Eating healthy doesn’t have to be miserable. So many diseases and sickness are preventable if people just ate better. Just a little bit better would make a huge difference.
They should also take kids to farms and markets. I grew up eating food from the street market. The chicken I ate was killed in front of me, the vegetables came from the farm with dirt still on it. Fish came from the ocean looking like a fish. Kids these days think chicken come in nugget shapes and fish come like fillets and vegetables grow in cans. People have no connection to the food they eat anymore.
Oh, they do. They spend an absolute fortune in the UK on “healthy eating” education. Unfortunately, what they’re teaching is complete bollocks. And then, of course, they serve up rubbish in the canteens, thus proving to kids (who can usually put two and two together) that the adults aren’t really serious anyway.
But yeah, it’s sad. I read somewhere that the UK food budget for school meals is about US$2 per kid. For $3 you could make it halfway decent, and for $4 you could make it very good indeed. But no, they’d rather spend that $2-a-day on gender equality classes, or whatever they teach in schools these days.
There’s a more sinister side to this that’s going to blow up in our faces. Some kids who grow up with this disconnect become earnest academics researching “environmental problems”, and they come up with all sorts of misguided nonsense because they don’t really grok the way ecosystems work, and how agriculture (and human activity in general) is part of that. These are people who have probably never even grown a tomato plant in a pot or kept a gerbil alive for more than six months, and they think they’re experts on agricultural policy because they read some UN reports about it. They come to their conclusions by fiddling about with Excel spreadsheets, rather than via hard experience.
So, the latest wheeze from these idiots is that we should all be vegans, because that would save the planet. Their observations are basically correct (ie., factory-farming and the government support for it are horribly inefficient and wasteful) but their conclusions are totally off the mark. The problem is that governments take it seriously, and it’s only a matter of time before they start taxing steaks because they are “carcinogenic” or “responsible for greenhouse gas emissions”.
You’re also forgetting that Taiwanese walk a lot more. Americans in most states drive everywhere.
2 reasons, actually. Anti-communism and Weird Al.
https://youtu.be/ZcJjMnHoIBI
1 Like
Being skinny doesn’t mean you’re not ‘fat’! Skinny people can have more fat and less muscle than some ‘big’ people.
Ate the same thing as a Taiwanese for a month as a challenge to try. Not regarding choices.