Why Aren't Japanese People Fat?

What I will say is that there is a strong social pressure to not be fat in Japan and it starts with mothers teaching their children to only eat until they are 80% full. If you are a woman and an American size 10 in Japan you will not find much in the way of clothing that fits you. And it is the same for men. All of my suits that I owned there were either purchased in Hong Kong or the U.S. or were custom made. That alone provides quite an incentive for many people to stop growing.

Whereas in the U.S. it's more of a... "If you're fat you're beautiful and if you don't think fat people are beautiful then you're a degenerate waste of a human being who promotes anorexia" kind of thing. If you can't find clothing that fits you, it's because the clothing makers are perpetuating an unattainable ideal and you should definitely write a blog complaining about how Marilyn Monroe would be a size 14 today and maybe file a civil lawsuit.

I mean, whatever. Society man.

I don't think the US, or any other Western society admires being fat as much as you just said. There may be a minority of people who are accepting, that's as far as it goes. Fat is hardly ever seen as beautiful.

so, are Sumo wrestlers a figment of our imagination? or are they automatons?

Yes. Don't you realise there is only ONE rigid definition of what a Japanese person can be? Shame on you for suggesting that Japanese people are anything other than thin and zen-like. :laugh:

This is actually part of the point. The article is refuting a lot of the cultural "observations" that have been made by casual observers who like to compare the U.S. to other cultures, and I will grant that this is yet another somewhat casual observation. It doesn't have to be just the comparison between the U.S. and Japan. Similar arguments have been made about the Mediterranean diet, for example. The Japanese eat a variety of foods, some "healthy" in the sense that they are nutrient dense and lower in calories, and much that would not fit that description. The point is simply that while the Japanese do consume fatty, sugary, and msg laden food, they eat a lot less overall than what you see in the U.S., and if you want to point to any key input in that mix, it is fewer calories.

Well shoot eating with chopsticks alone is like an intense cardiac exercise. Try eating rice without breaking a sweat.

Its a cultural thing. Among my friends, Asians are the only people who will greet me hello, and then in the same breath comment on how I'm getting fat. They don't say it to be rude like you'd expect, more that like 'hey you should be careful'.

*source: I'm half Chinese*

Yup, yup yup. And I will say that in Asian countries, it's a pain in the *kitten* to be fat. My aunt lives in Thailand and has hypothyroidism so she is something like an American size 18, maybe a 20. There are no stores that sell clothes that fit her so she has to have clothing custom made (like for her job, which requires a uniform) or she buys clothes here in America when she visits.

It can be the way eat and exercise and stuff, but I strongly believe it's their genetics. DNA is very sensitive and diet has a huge impact on our internal structure. The food that has been processed so much and GMO and fast food, I believe, messed up our genetics over the past decades. America wasn't always known as being fat.