This post is inspired by Ben’s recent entry.
My wife always tells me that she does not feel full for a long time unless she eats rice. If we eat Danish food (potatoes, pasta, salad, bread or whatever) one day, she will often complain that she miss rice the next.
When I giggled at her attempt to convince me to eat rice for dinner, she said something like this: “You don’t know what it’s like. I’m Chinese, and we NEED rice”. I believed her. I remembered how I missed huge chunks of meat when she moved here, and the menu suddenly changed to meaty to “vegetably” overnight.
By now I don’t eat that much meat anymore, but sometimes I crave for a huge beef or similar. As my wife started working, I noticed that she started yearning meat after a long days work too. Then she went back to studying and changed again. Now she work again, and guess what?
When she studied she didn’t use as much energy as now when she is walking/moving all day, so that might be the explanation? Now I pretty sure the two goes hand in hand. Work = crave meat. Less physically active = less meat.
Of course that doesn’t explain why Chinese eat less meat generally, unless you think they work less hard? ;-)
I think it’s mostly a matter of finance that many Chinese eat less meat. Meat is more expensive than rice so many Chinese have no other choice than to eat more rice and vegetables.
Now more and more people have money so it will probable change – chinese people are also getting overweight, because the adapt to the western eating habit.