CaliforniaMan
Full time employment: Posting here.
My study, sample size of one. Every time I spend some time in SE Asia, where my wife is from (now here for 3 months), I eat well, never hungry and loose weight. When I return back to California, even though I exercise more I gain the weight back. Have noticed this every time for many trips over a number of years.
Mostly we eat home cooked food, chicken, pork, fish, always with rice, always with MSG. The chickens are tiny compared with the U.S., even the breast meat, small as it is, is delicious. The meat, pork, chicken is served always cooked with the bone in. The spices and flavors are amazing. Even so I find i am satisfied eating less, and I am less hungry in between.
Somehow, for me anyway, the multitude of flavors in the food, vs. the relatively simple flavors sweet and fat that I eat in the U.S. seem to satisfy me more.
The food is also fresh. Most of the food is bought at the local market, the meat and vegitables. You know it is fresh, (vs. the plastic wrapped you can get in the supermarkets here) because there is no refregeration where it is sold. The meat, fish and vegitables are sold in an outdoor market, fresh from the farm. The fish are alive.
I contrast the satisfied feeling I get eating this well flavored food with the feeling I have after eating at a fast food burger place. I can eat a burger and fries and coke, and walking out I don't feel satisified, not really hungry but feeling I want to eat more. Why it is I don't know.
Some come to SE Asia if you want to loose weight? Well, ten years ago nobody I talked to here had ever tasted a pizza or had a burger. Fast forward to today, there are burger and pizza places all over the place, packed with young locals. If you were to ask me what the favorite food of young people here is today when they can afford it, I would probably guess, pizza and coke.
Even my wife's family, who had never eaten either before want to go to get a pizza, soft drink or burger and fries.
And now it is popular, if you have enough money, to have fat kids, not look skinny like the poor kids. You have higher status if your kids are fat, like the western kids. And people in general are getting fatter here too.
Progress.
Mostly we eat home cooked food, chicken, pork, fish, always with rice, always with MSG. The chickens are tiny compared with the U.S., even the breast meat, small as it is, is delicious. The meat, pork, chicken is served always cooked with the bone in. The spices and flavors are amazing. Even so I find i am satisfied eating less, and I am less hungry in between.
Somehow, for me anyway, the multitude of flavors in the food, vs. the relatively simple flavors sweet and fat that I eat in the U.S. seem to satisfy me more.
The food is also fresh. Most of the food is bought at the local market, the meat and vegitables. You know it is fresh, (vs. the plastic wrapped you can get in the supermarkets here) because there is no refregeration where it is sold. The meat, fish and vegitables are sold in an outdoor market, fresh from the farm. The fish are alive.
I contrast the satisfied feeling I get eating this well flavored food with the feeling I have after eating at a fast food burger place. I can eat a burger and fries and coke, and walking out I don't feel satisified, not really hungry but feeling I want to eat more. Why it is I don't know.
Some come to SE Asia if you want to loose weight? Well, ten years ago nobody I talked to here had ever tasted a pizza or had a burger. Fast forward to today, there are burger and pizza places all over the place, packed with young locals. If you were to ask me what the favorite food of young people here is today when they can afford it, I would probably guess, pizza and coke.
Even my wife's family, who had never eaten either before want to go to get a pizza, soft drink or burger and fries.
And now it is popular, if you have enough money, to have fat kids, not look skinny like the poor kids. You have higher status if your kids are fat, like the western kids. And people in general are getting fatter here too.
Progress.