Ah, I should have known you were English, the pronunciation of the words you wrote would not sound right to an American (me). Law Bat Go would be Low Bot Go in Midwestern American. I remember my wife’s name on her passport (Houng Yoke – red jade) was spelled differently given the British (English) pronunciation.
It’s funny you should mention the way your father-in-law eats because my father-in-law ate much the same way. He’d always eat vegetables, pork, fish, duck, eggs, soup (sometimes bone broth), etc. and a little rice. If we had a piece of fruit after the meal, it would be sliced up into small pieces. The family (there were about 10-or 12 of us) would share maybe one or two oranges, or an apple, etc. I think he ate this way all his life. He was very thin and didn’t have diabetes. My father-in-law was eating low carb paleo and he didn’t even know it. He died when he was 90 or so. He lived a hard life.
It’s funny how the older Chinese generation eats better than the younger generation. Now type 2 diabetes is rampant in China and much of Asia. Two of my Chinese in-laws have type 2 diabetes. When we get together for a meal, I won’t eat. They usually get carry outs from a Chinese restaurant near where they live (Chinatown). There are so many noodles, so much rice and all covered in sauce which is ladened with sugar, etc. I just politely decline to eat.
This makes me think of when I was an engineer and I travelled between Korea, France, and the U.S. around 2000. I remember the French used to eat high fat and there wasn’t much if any sugar in any of the bakery products. They would eat bread, but there wasn’t much added sugar in anything else. Thus the French paradox; they ate high fat, but they had very little heart disease. I remember the Koreans would eat good traditional meals, but they’d also eat junk when they were in a rush. I also noticed a lot of fast food places in Korea (McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, etc) when I was there. Now diabetes is rampant in Korea.
I recently went to France on vacation, but I had the kids with and I didn’t have much of a chance to compare the way things are today to the way things used to be. I THINK there’s a little more sweet foods around, but I wasn’t paying much attention. I haven’t been to Korea in six or seven years.
I try to tell my diabetic U.S. in-laws to eat low carb, but they think I’m nuts. In their view fat causes heart disease. If they ate like me, they’d just be getting heart disease. In my view, sugar causes heart disease. One clue is if you look at a diabetic website, you’ll see the warning that people who can’t control their own blood sugar (diabetics) are 2-4 times more likely to die of a cardiac event as compared to non-diabetics. http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/More/Diabetes/WhyDiabetesMatters/Cardiovascular-Disease-Diabetes_UCM_313865_Article.jsp#.WIToGxsrKUl (“Adults with diabetes are two to four times more likely to die from heart disease than adults without diabetes”). So, they say, don’t eat too much meat or saturated fat. I still have figured that one out.
