This is completely off topic but . . . For years and years I have been reading in the New York Times and elsewhere that eating carbohydrates make you fat. That colossal nitwit Taubes, who caused such problems for cold fusion, wrote a book about this. He has become famous for this, and he has been in the NYT.
People say that the worst carbs are things like white bread, and white rice, which refined and easily digested. Anyone who has lived in traditional East Asia knows this is not true. Not only is it not true, it is preposterous. I have lived in rural Yamaguchi. It doesn't get more traditional than that. Their very speech is a 150 years out of date, sounding like something from the Edo period, similar to the way Georgia coastal Gullah dialects are the closest thing to Elizabethan rural English. Anyway, what they eat is mostly white refined rice, in quantities that would choke a horse. It's what's for dinner. Also, breakfast and lunch. That plus vegetables, pickles, miso, and moderate quantities of fish or meat. Most of these people are thin. Very thin, their whole lives. They get a lot of exercise, even in their 80s. Their longevity and general health is among the highest in the world. Eating mainly rice DOES NOT make them fat. They do have some dietary problems, mainly alcoholism and high blood pressure from salty foods. The later is more of a problem in northern Japan, I think. I am sure most people eat refined rice and not brown rice, because I've eaten it, because that's mainly what the store sell, and because many rural people grow rice and refine it themselves, in the milling machine in front of the agricultural co-op store, for 25 cents per 50 lbs. They usually set the dial to "refined." Health food fans do eat brown rice. - Jed
