Question:
According a Japanese study reported to us by John de Hoog, Thailand
has a lowest incidence of T2 diabetes while Italy had the highest.
India is reporting a T2 diabetes epidemic every bit as bad as in
Western countries where excessive calorie consumption and obesity are
rightly or wrongly often seen as being as prime causal factors.
Apart from a suggestion that the calorific value of the Thai diet is
low what other possible factors can we come up with that make the Thai
diet different from other Asian diets?
Answer:
According to a Japanese study reported to us by John de Hoog, Thailand has the lowest incidence of T2 diabetes while Italy had the highest. India is reporting a T2 diabetes epidemic every bit as bad as in Western countries where excessive calorie consumption and obesity are rightly or wrongly often seen as being as prime causal factors. Apart from a suggestion that the calorific value of the Thai diet is low what other possible factors can we come up with that make the Thai diet different from other Asian diets?
Now that Thai restaurants are becoming popular in the US and elsewhere, we
are starting to see "nutrition" and "dietary" guides to eating Thai food. A
typical example is at the site below.
http://www.diabeteswell.com/education/nutrition/eating/food_thai.asp
The problem with these analyses is that they start with the biases of the
person doing the analysis. They see a Thai meal strictly in terms of how
much fat, how much sugar, how much sodium, etc., rather than trying to
determine why the Thai diet works. The other thing to note is that the food
in Thai restaurants is generally not everyday fare, but banquet food. So
these kinds of analyses are not much help.
The book I originally referred to seemed to think the biggest factor
distinguishing low-diabetes from high-diabetes cultures was exactly
calories. Too many calories is an invitation to diabetes. When we visited
Thailand, we didn't see any fat people other than the tourists. Italy is a
different story.
