Also interesting in the data table was that the group most prone to obesity got far more of their fat from veggie sources and veggie oil (PUFA’s & n-6 galore), and much less of their fat from animal sources.

I have Chinese friends who are thin but have health problems. One of my Chinese co-workers is having an operation for a tumor – and she’s one of the thinnest people at work!

My mother is Chinese and she developed heart disease after moving to the city and began eating more Western foods – vegetable oil, wheat, sugar, processed foods. She’s been skinny her whole life, but her heart wasn’t healthy.

However, my great grandmother was a centenarian! She ate loads of lard and meat. Yes traditional Chinese cooking uses lard not vegie oil. She was thin till the day she died (at age 100) and was walking around doing stuff before she passed away.

You have two women in the same family who are both skinny, one who lived on rice, lard, meat, eggs and fish – the other on wheat/rice, vegetable oil, little meat, veggies and some tofu. Who lived to 100, disease-free, with natural death? My great grandmother who ate a mostly paleo diet.

My grandmother is still alive =) she’s pretty healthy and she also eats similar to my great grandmother. Although it pains her to remember the Cultural Revolution where there was little meat to be had – but she made up for it in the 1980s.

My mother is returning to her roots and eating like my great grandmother did. It’s funny because I’m teaching HER how to eat traditionally when it’s usually the other way around. It’s hard, because she still thinks saturated fat is bad and she’s addicted to wheat products (bread, pastry, cookies, biscuits). She’s starting to refrain from buying that stuff.

Joyce: yes, Shandong is in the north; very wheat intensive. My mother is from Canton where they eat rice instead; no heart attacks that I know of on that side of the family, though I think I had a degree of insulin resistance until I went on a low carb diet.

When my parents reminisce about the poverty of the Cultural Revolution, they often talk about the scarcity of meat. They had little to eat but rice and vegetables and they said they were never full. My mother enviously remembers a wealthy family who fed their two children a whole chicken every morning. She remembers that the children grew very robust and healthy.

From what I know of my mother’s diet while pregnant, I’m sure I was born with a ridiculous amount of insulin resistance. Moral I’m taking away from this: Eat meat!

Joyce