FoodBanter.com - View Single Post - Newbie needs help with Green tea

10/14/04

>
>
> magnulus wrote:
>>
>> Many people have connecetd Chinese/Asian food with rice, but actually rice
>> was often eaten in large amounts because of poverty, and because the people
>> did alot of manual labor and physical activity (thus they burned more
>> calories, especially glucose/carbs, right away).
>
> Is this Atkins historical revisionism? In fact, in Japan at least, rice
> was not a mark of poverty, but rather a measure of wealth. A medieval
> fief's worth was counted in volume of rice. Most Asians today continue
> to eat rice or noodles (or bread) at every meal. Their lower incidence
> of obesity, compared to us Americans, is probably attributed to how much
> they eat -- and what they don't eat.
>
> --crymad

Quality of rice, according to the many people I spoke and ate with in my
wonderings years ago throughout India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, is a
matter of great national pride. In Afghanistan one person gently and
politely apologized for the poor quality of the rice he served, explaining
that it was in fact American rice. Undoubtedly rice, like water, is never
quite right away from home. I'm partial to Indian rice. I also have
developed quite a taste for Italian rice. By the way, when I was mucking
about India, nobody looked forward to the government enforced "no rice" days
caused by scarcities. We had to eat potato. Rice is *not* a sign of poverty,
that's for sure, although its absence might be. Consider also that a
vegetarian diet demands greater quanties of grains to balance proteins,
right? That seems a better explanation for large amounts of rice. Is it not
so that the word for "rice" and "food" are the same in Japanese? What about
Chinese? Rice. Yummy. I've never cooked Japanese rice, but I'm going to go
out of my way to find some.

Speaking of which, in New York City most of the Japanese restaurants are now
actually run and staffed by Chinese people. Hope nobody considers this
biased, biased though it be, but I eat only in Japanese restaurants owned
and staffed by Japanese people. This almost guarantees a reasonably high
quality.

Michael