Putting the Asian Paradox in Perspective

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Have you ever heard of the French Paradox? It's the idea that French people eat food smothered in butter and other forms of fat and drink a bottle of wine every day but don't get heart disease. We seem to be noticing another food paradox coming from a different part of the globe. The "Asian" paradox. We know that eating foods made from sugar or grains raises blood sugar and triggers a release mechanism which floods the blood stream with insulin. The primary duty of insulin is to remove glucose (sugar) from the blood before it causes harm to the body. It has to put the sugar somewhere though and it's favorite place to do so is the fat cells. Inside the fat cells, the glucose is converted into fat and stored just like any other fat. While insulin is in the blood stream it keeps trying to put more and more sugar and fat into the fat cells. Making the fat cells bigger and preventing them from releasing their high-calorie cargo into the blood stream so it can be used by the body for energy. But if this is the way things work in the body, why are Asian people typically skinny if they're eating rice by the barrel? It does come across as a bit of a paradox which is why it's called one. Let's look a bit deeper though and see how real this paradox is.

The majority of the world's rice is produced in Asia. Rice is very different from other grain-producing plants. You can tell this simply by looking at a photo of a rice patty. Wet areas are where rice thrives which is not the case with any other cereal. These conditions are flat fields which can be flooded during monsoon seasons which come around in a predictable manner. Not a lot of places are ideally suited for these types of conditions. Asia just so happens to be the place where all these elements converge. So they grow rice instead of wheat and corn over there. So, as they've done for thousands of years, the various Asian peoples grow large amounts of rice and use it to feed the masses. Rice seems to have so much going for it that we need to step back and remember what it really is. The lesser of evils. It's still sugar in disguise and has the potential to boost blood sugar and insulin both, just not at the same rate as wheat or sugar. If you're forced to live on grains as some type of survival food and you can only choose one kind, then it's best to go with rice. I guess anything is pretty much better than eating wheat. I guess if you're gonna eat grains, then rice is the best choice.

Rice is not wheat, so it doesn't have amelopectin-a and doesn't react the same when consumed. It's truly a "complex" carbohydrate which takes longer to burn as a fuel source and thus doesn't induce as large of an insulin spike when eaten. Wheat and rice are just very different animals. I mean plants. Very different plants. Wheat seems to be closely identified with diseases of civilization and rice is not. Bottom line is that you need to go with rice if you're going to eat grains at all. It's go a long way in helping to keep you from getting fat. While I tend to stay away from eating rice, I don't blame the Asian people for doing so. It seems to be the least dangerous of the grains and other areas of their lives have enabled them to overcome the potentially negative health effects of eating so much starch so that they have found ways to live a very long time.

Another thing we known about Asian people and their diets is that, with few exceptions such as we find in North Korea, rice doesn't not make up the primary source of calories for many Asian people. People in America tend to think that what they see on a Chinese takeout menu here is what people over in Asia eat every day. That's not the case. The diets of Asian people is very diverse and differs from region to region. Other nutrient dense foods such as meat and vegetables are also central elements of the diet in Asian countries. The idea of Asians eating nothing but rice is fictitious.

Another major factor that sets Asians apart from others is their consistently active lifestyle. People in Asia are very familiar with walking. Or riding bicycles. I don't even think people in France ride bicycles more than those in China and a few other Asian countries. Asian people walk quite a bit more than Americans do. Even if you visit large Asian communities in the United States you'll notice that they are very much active. You'll see older people in Asian communities still walking on a daily basis. Younger people will be very active in either personal exercise programs or high-intensity activities. More physical activity translates into a higher ability to deal with larger glucose loads in the body's system.

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Add up all the fact that they eat a highly diverse diet, get a lot of exercise, and consume rice instead of wheat and I'm sure that the case can be made that there is no Asian Paradox. These people are just living a far healthier type of life while at the same time avoiding all the worst foods that we tend to gorge on. Now if only we could figure out a way to educate everyone about this..