So we learn we don’t ‘need’ the carbs that come from starchy and processsd foods. But what about other cultures that have them as their primary diet? How do most stay healthy & thin? Any idea?
Examples: Asian cultures tend to eat rice. But I know they also eat fish & likely fermented foods. Wonder if that helps?
East Asian cultures: potatoe, rice, flat breads…
Hispanic/Latin American: Tortillas/flat breads, tropical fruits…
Just curious about some thoughts! 
Just like Europeans did okay when they used grains they’ve been using for a long time before they introduced sugar and refined grains in the wake of colonialism, the same seems to hold true for cultures where rice is the main carb staple. China did well for thousands of years, but in the past fifty-some years, once sugar industries like Coke got its foot in the door, a diabetes epidemic has erupted. China now has more diabetic people - approximately 120 million people - than any nation, and it’s only getting worse.
Long story short, sugar brings all other carbs down with it.
I think a lot of it is related to highly processed foods in general and high fructose specifically. Many people have eaten rice and potatoes and did fine in the past but in the late seventies the SAD changed. Diabetes and obesity skyrocketed even in cultures that we thought were immune like China and Japan.
I travel to China frequently for business. They are not all thin and healthy anymore. But Coca-Cola and KFC are there now and lots of processed foods (bags of chips and cookies) in their grocery stores.
Just like in the USA - the younger generations have been hit the hardest.
This was meant as a general question. Not meant to assume one culture or country is just only one way. I am familiar with fast foods in foreign urban areas - just like the US.
Still, there have to be people in these areas that eat traditional food and don’t have issues with weight gain. Maybe genetics.
I didn’t know the SAD changed dramatically at that time. Then again, I do recall reading an article about traditional meals in the 50’s & 60’s and it said usually a protein plus fresh veggies - as in bought that day from a farm or a seller. The writer addressed gravies and sauces. They said they were used sparingly - for maybe a holiday or special time - used as enhancements. As for processed foods - breads were homemade each week and starchy foods (like potatoes) were a few times a week. She also mentioned people literally walked everywhere as she could recall. Not much sitting around unless people came over. Pies & cakes were for guests or special times.
My grandfather, until he got sick and died, would walk to/from work - at least 2 miles each way. He was born in the 30’s.
I was not referring to the urban cities of Shanghai and Beijing. My company has manufacturing facilities that are very remote - 3 hr train ride on the high-speed (180 mph outside cities) to get to. There is Coca Cola and KFC there also and the younger generations are overweight. Not as bad as the USA, but more like we were say 20 years ago - right around the year 2000 before obesity went from a problem to an epidemic.
I travel internationally so I can speak in generalities of the cultures I have observed. I apologize in advance if I offend any group - just my causal observations.
Of all the Europeans, the Germans were the most overweight. Haven’t been to England so I can’t comment on them.
The Dutch as a group were the thinnest. They eat bread at meals, but they eat very light for breakfast and lunch, don’t snack and walk or bike ride everywhere they go.
The Belgians outside Brussels were very fit.
The Italians I’m not sure about because I was a tourist so most of the people around me were foreigners. The one local neighborhood I stayed in an AirBnB it was the older generation that the pasta/bread diet was catching up with. Overweight, red inflamed skin, etc.
The Danish were as fit as the Dutch. The Swedes were not too far behind but I saw more overweight people there than in Denmark and the Netherlands.
Spain was a mixture, but I was in Barcelona so too many tourists to say.
Same for the French - was in Paris so not sure how many I saw were locals. The ones I watched from the sidewalk cafe in the evenings were thin and fit and all had a long loaf of fresh bread sticking out of their backbacks. They shopped at small marts with locally grown produce, meats and dairy so that may have made a difference. Their small grocers had practically no processed foods in them.
We should also be weary of judging people’s health based on appearance. A significant number of those who are diabetic in China are SOFI - they’re skinny on the outside, but fat on the inside, which in many ways is more dangerous than carrying your fat on you more visibly. You cannot tell just by looking at someone whether or not they’re healthy.
Many cultures use to eat “real food” which is not exclusive to ketoers. Regardless of what way of eating you embrace it seems the healthiest ways of eating all have something in common, natural real food. Sadly many have moved to what many call the western diet now and the health problems have moved right in lockstep. Being active doesn’t hurt either.
Very intriguing!
Perhaps it’s the exercise or local ingredients. Thank you for all the information. I too have travelled internationally, and for some reason this popped in my head this morning.
I was never a big pasta person but I did have that red inflamed skin. However, I loved crackers & chips. Now that those are gone, my skin has returned to what I recall it looking like in my 20’s. I’m 41 now… so a long time! Thanks again for your detail! 
You are most welcome. I love observing other cultures and their dietary and exercise habits.
I also had the red, inflamed skin of a carb eater and was diagnosed with Roseacea. My skin tone vastly improved under keto. Unfortunately I am on 6 weeks of IV antibiotics and my red skin has come back. 
I hope it goes back to my “keto look” after I am finished.
I too had rosacea! A few weeks before turning full blown keto I had made an appt to get it looked at (again) b/c after a few years… nothing has worked. Now my skin is far less inflamed & smoother.
Even in America, prior the 1950’s, obesity and diabetes were pretty uncommon. We ate potatoes and bread and lots of meat and a fair amount of dairy. It wasn’t until processed foods started becoming ubiquitous, that everything changed.
You can follow how the availabilty of processed foods has spread across the globe and see the effect it has had on the health of people in its wake. Even people from cultures who were historical thin and mostly exempt from modern diseases and syndromes have been swept up in the madness.
Here’s an interesting article about sub saharan tribes who ate diets rich in natural carbs for eons without significant health problems. But that all changed when western poison found its way into their diet.
Edit: through all this wall of text and I failed to mention my wife is Korean. I met her here in North Carolina.
There was a joke I heard on TV when I was a kid in San Francisco.
“Why are asians so small? You try eating rice with chopsticks” {laugh track}
Ok, its borderline racist, and I never found it funny, but I could see where the humor is trying to be placed. So whoever wrote that joke, was in it for very cheap laughs. I’m not asian. I eat with chopsticks everyday, pretty much. I would safely say i use them more often than anything else. Moreover, back when I did eat rice everyday, I did use chopsticks. When you know how to use them you can eat anything with them.
Pro tip: practice eating sautéed button mushrooms. Little marble like shrooms slippery as whale shit on an ice flow
Ok, all that for a cheap laugh.
But on cultural eating. Something I noticed in San Francisco, and in Korea (I was stationed there for 1 year) the locals, and my asian friends in S.F., didnt eat themselves into a coma like us westerners do. They didnt snack. And they worked very, very hard.
I spent most of my days off, as well as general off time, in a local coffee shop. I loved it there. Nicest people I had ever met. And I’ve been to a few places around the world. The coffee shop opened at 0600. It closed at 2400. (6 am to midnight). It was one shift. Same people working the entire time. They had two days off a month. Not a week, a month. Two days off a month was considered luxury as well. Not many other shops near the Air Base took as many days off.
Very often I would be there as close to opening as i could, and stay as late as I could. They were truly gracious. They invited me to eat with them, and I would on occasion bring something from the base. Popeyes chicken strips were a favorite.
And the owner of the shop (had to be in his 70’s) loved Shivas Regal. Took me a while to figure that out. He called it Sheeba’s. Thats how i heard it anyway, lol. It was in that shop that I taught myself to read and write in 한굴 Hangul. I think i spelled it right. The korean alphabet. Read and write yes, translate, no. I never had the time for a formal class.
So pretty much everyone I had a meal with there, ate sparingly. But they always made sure their Miguk 미국 (American) friends had plenty on the plate. And I learnedbits an insult not to eat everything on your plate. So you only ever take the amount you will eat.
The point was made to me once at a restaurant that I needed to finish eating because ‘they have family living up north’ that are starving. So wasting food was an insult to their memory. Talk about feeling like the “ugly american” 
Ok, that was wildly side tracked. But again, I think other cultures, other than modern western culture, just see food as something they need to do and do it right, and in moderation (“do all things in moderation”). I can only speak for myself, but I used to eat for the joy of eating. I might have just ate three full plates at the buffet, but that pecan pie looks too good to pass up. I better get a plateful of that, maybe seconds while im here.
I used to eat that way because I could. Food was food. The only limiting factor was if you had to losen tour belt to stand up. Signals time to stop.
The modern, enlightened, know it all western culture has done a serious disservice to the rest of the world. We (the nebulous we) gave the world electricity, light, refrigeration (?), telephones, radio, TV, internet, and disbetes. 
I don’t like the insinuation that Americans got diabetes because they were lazy. They weren’t and aren’t (most remain an exploited working class). Americans didn’t get fat because they’re lazy, they got “lazy” because they got fat and they got fat because they got led astray with bad diet advice.
The misconception that Americans, and by extension Westerners, are fat because they’re lazy does a disserve not only to Americans but also to non-Western cultures currently facing obesity and diabetes epidemics because that means that 120 million Chinese people just got diabetes because they, too, must have gotten lazier. It doesn’t get to the root cause of obesity, it just treats it like a character flaw.
being thin and/or insulin sensitive doesn’t necessarily translate to being healthy. i’d wager that the skinny guy living off of donuts and pizza is far more likely to run into health problems than the pudgy guy who doesn’t consume many carbs or sugar