Rice and Pasta

American portion sizes are vast in comparison with the rest of the world's. Not only that, but Americans eat rice and pasta improperly. They'll pile up side salads covered not in vinaigrette but in heavy blue cheese dressings, and snack constantly.

Rice actually lowers testosterone.

As foods they aren't bad, it's too much of them. It's like the much maligned potato. It's good for you, it's just that, well, who eats a plain old potato? No one, it's the way you fix it(as in fries or chips) or all the toppings and such that ruin it.

Portion sizes (e.g., Italians don't eat huge plates of spaghetti as a main course.). Additions (e.g., Italians use very little sauce per serving, I was surprised to find out). Europeans tend to walk more. Europeans want to look sexier longer.

Europeans also eat their main meal in the middle of the day, unlike Americans that eat it at night. Much more time to digest and burn off during the day.

Plain potatoes are bad for you.

If eating healthy is so good for you, why are there so many fat asses walking around Whole Foods Stores

rofl r7.

That is the truth!

The new belief is that the microbiota of some people don't have the correct microbes in their gut to handle these high carb foods.

Oh yes, OP, because your spotty eyewitness testimony amounts to a scientific survey.

STFU stupid cunt R10.

Why is there always one dumb fucking cunt who has to shit on every thread? Stinking miserable fucking cuntface!

R11 I think I love you. Fucking cunt frau bitch at R10.

If I was to taken any random person and throw them in a jail cell for a month and feed them a few slices of bread and water in a month they will lose about one third of their body weight.

Absent a "real" metabolic illness, like thyroid problems and type one diabetes, it's all about HOW MUCH you eat. A study done at Johns Hopkins University showed that nutritionists and dietitians overestimated the amount of calories they consumed daily by an average of one third. The lowest was 24% and the highest was over 40%.

So if you stop to consider nutritionists and dietitians people TRAINED AND EDUCATED about food, get it wrong so often, how well do you think an average Joe does at counting calories?

[quote]Portion sizes (e.g., Italians don't eat huge plates of spaghetti as a main course.).

Yes, they do.

Go to any back street trattoria and that's what they're having...and that's what Mama's making.

A lot of people here seem to form their ideas about Italian eating habits from the restaurant attached to the boutique hotel they were staying at in Milan in 1997.

[quote]Europeans also eat their main meal in the middle of the day,

Also not true, the Italians FEAST at night....and try not to generalise about 'Europeans', it shows your ignorance.

So in your experience, R14, are they also all fat?

Your post would suggest that.

Although our modern "Mommyblog" science-free science, it's mostly calories in vs. calories burned. Pure and simple. Lowering one's starchy carbs is a nice start because you'll get plenty of carbs anyway. Determining a caloric intake level slightly less than your calories burned will help you lose weight very gradually without suffering, but most people just consume way too much high-calorie crap. It's not complicated, though others will tell you it is.

[quote]So in your experience, [R14], are they also all fat?

No, not at all.

Though 'Mama' often seems to be a little on the fat side.

Have you been to Southern Italy or Sicily? There are plenty of fat people there and they eat a lot of pasta. When women in Italy want to lose weight they lay off pasta and bread. In addition Italy has the most obese children in Europe now.

R14 I think most people would be shocked at eating at a house in Southern Italy. When you are a guest or the family is getting together on a Sunday a lot of food is served.

[quote]I think most people would be shocked at eating at a house in Southern Italy.

I agree, they think Italian food looks like this >>>

r4 is not r5. I'm well aware of the late eating hours of Mediterranean cultures.

Some human populations evolved to handle high-starch foods efficiently, and others not so much.

If dining in Italy, do most restaurants offer endless salad and breadsticks?

Eat three bowls of rice per day, and you'll be full AND thin.

Trust me on this.

White rice is very high on the glycemic index. It is a terrible food for diabetics who have sugar/carb problems to begin with.

Plain potatoes one can subsist on, that and milk.

When I was a kid, there were several 1nd and 2nd generation Italian families who had emigrated from Naples and settled in my town. On Sunday afternoons those kids would all disappear from the neighborhood for dinner and we wouldn't see them again till Monday morning. Those kids could eat and their family dinners lasted hours. Most of them had a Nonna living with them who cooked all day. Our school bus reeked of garlic on Mondays. The kids weren't fat but the adults all were. I wonder if the kids got fat later in life.

White potatoes are another one of those problems foods like white rice. Sweet potatoes on the other hand are much better for your waistline.

The so-called Italian American Sunday dinners have their origin in Southern Italy. It is a big deal in Southern Italy and people eat enormous amounts of food on Sunday when family gets together. So this myth about skinny Italians is exactly that unless you go to Northern Italy. Where they have been taller and skinnier traditionally but even their children are becoming obese.

You have to eat a LOT of potatoes to get all your nutrition from that.

Anyway, there are a lot more obese people in Europe than you think.

Indeed, the whole world has gone obese. There used to be places that didn't know obesity,but not anymore.

For a grain staple that won't cause you to overeat, I'm thinking millet.

Potatoes are awesome---I always feel good when I eat them. However, I usually go with new potatoes, not the starchier "old" potatoes.

However, I'm Slavic and Irish. My mom would often JUST eat potatoes, or just noodles, or just rice...

They aren't as bad a white patatoes, believe it or not.

I love potatoes too but if you are diabetic, they are bad for you.

I like potatoes. I eat them instead of prozac, which made me paranoid. I feel good, and I feel well, after I eat one for longer than I do after any other food. And less like eating again.

I usually cut up one medium Yukon Gold, toss it with EVOO, rosemary, S&P, and roast it. Delicious and more satisfying than either pasta or rice. Goes well with eggs.

The Italian thing does seem to depend on where in Italy your family came from. My family's originally from the north of Italy (Aosta Valley. Look it up - it's bloody tiny!) and, yeah, the cooking that my grandmother and her family called "their own" was very simple. It was pretty much good, solid food, a fair few dishes that my grandmother makes are nothing like what you'd see further south. Compare that to my boyfriend at college, whose parents came from Calabria (that's the section of Itay that makes up the "toe" of the "boot". Forever whacking Sicily where it hurts!) and the stuff he would make was lightyears from what my Grandmother would have probably grown up cooking. Think...vegetables (a tonne of them it seemed), fresh fish, fruit and meat, and a high degree of pasta dishes. No disrespect to my grandmother, but I always found the Calabrian cuisine more exciting - hell, they have 'Nduja down there (it's like a sausage-based spread, packed with meat and spices. Very good on toast!)

Thing it, I agree with the earlier poster who said that Italians eat pasta in moderation. I remember a tale I was told about my grandparents going to visit my grandfather's sister in the States back in the seventies and my grandmother being horrified at the *mountain* of spaghetti that they were served in a restaurant along with a pretty bland and basic tomato sauce and meatballs. Always the meatballs, people. I think (and I can't speak for all Italians or people from Italian families!) that not every Italian family has a Big Family Secret Recipe for something like lasagne (okay, mine does. This sucker won me a cooking contest at work, you know) or a million and one pasta recipes. What I will say though is that traditional, *proper* Italian food is unlike anything you're bound to see in a restaurant outside of Italy - it's usually a lot simpler than what we're used to in the UK and US, an emphasis is placed on the quality of the ingredients, not the quantity or complexity. The simplest dishes can sometimes yield the most extraordinary flavours with very, very few ingredients. (And don't get me started on pizza...)

Who cares. Here in America its the Mexicans who make all the Italian food in the restaurants anyhoo.

[quote]Thing it, I agree with the earlier poster who said that Italians eat pasta in moderation. I remember a tale I was told about my grandparents going to visit my grandfather's sister in the States back in the seventies and my grandmother being horrified at the *mountain* of spaghetti that they were served in a restaurant along with a pretty bland and basic tomato sauce and meatballs.

R34 I think you're contradicting yourself.

You acknowledge that your Calabrese BF in college came from a family that ate "a high degree of pasta dishes."

Given that the overwhelming majority of the families of Italian Americans who come to America came from southern Italy, it's no surprise that they brought their eating habits with them and passed them on to their children - and also passed that on to the Italians not from southern Italy who, like yourself, may have found those cuisines 'more exciting" than their own.

Therefore, it's no surprise they're most definitely not eating pasta in moderation (while also eating the fish, meat, fruit & vegetables - especially when families get together like on holidays.

So of course your grandmother from Aosta Valley would be "horrified."

The Italians I know in Italy eat pasta everyday and are not fat.

Yeah its all about portions. Most traditional Asian foods involve meticulous preparation so they don't get huge portions.

Indian basmati and SE Asian glutinous rice are bad, but jasmine rice is good.

What’s making Americans fat isn’t rice and pasta, it’s putting corn oil and soy in everything.

Recently I found out I was allergic to both of these, which are in everything. Bread, all bakery items, prepared food of every kind, if you buy fast food or cheap prepared food it’s in there.

When I found out I couldn’t eat them, I started cooking from scratch and using olive oil. I lost twenty pounds. This last week, I bought a pumpkin pie from Sprouts that has sugar, not corn oil. I ate it all by myself. When I stepped on the scale, I thought, oh no, I blew my diet. But my pants still felt loose. I lost a pound. Believe me, I wasn’t even trying. The last couple months, I’ve eaten a lot of bread (no soy) with olive oil, not butter, handmade cookies, sweet potatoes, lots of carbs. I can now taste really acrid, sharp chemicals in prepared food and cake mixes so strongly I can’t eat it, and my sinuses are a lot better.

Soy oil and corn syrup are just invisible empty calories.

Isn't that cultural appropriation, R35?

[quote]Europeans also eat their main meal in the middle of the day, unlike Americans that eat it at night.

not uniformly, spaniards and french might, but might not. the dutch don't, the belgians likely at TWO main meals a day, and yes, germans may or may not have only bread and cheese in the evening - but sometimes not