Your opinion about diets,cuisines and regional cuisines. [interesting QE]

[Nomad92]

Hello everyone 

I am a bit bored and cofused at the time about my diet.

In general I am eating quite healthy, not too much meat, enough vegetables, fruits, no fizzy drinks ( I usually drink water only ). 

But I have catched myself not eating a specific cuisine. I mean, one day I eat asian type of food, the next day I might eat Indian or German food, the other day I eat a some self-made meals following self-made recipes.

Don't get me wrong. I am not ordering Indian or Chinese food, I cook all of it myself.

However, my question is: Should you STICK with one cuisine? Like, should you eat 90% - 100% for example Mediterranean cuisine and 10% something else, when for example visiting a restaurante? Or is it alright mixing all nationalies meals up as you want to ?

Sometimes I feel like it might not be a healthy and natural way switching between ingredients that are so extremely different from each other. The last 1000 years humans were not able to just consume food from the other end of the world, they usually sticked to their regional cuisine. Or should we even stick to the food we were raised with?

Please note that I am not American, I was raised in a country with an own 1000 years old cuisine, my parents always cooked quite traditional and good and also healthy food. So should I maybe even stick to the cuisine I was raised with? Since this was the type of food I was eating in a daily base, the first 12 - 13 years of my life? ( Until I started to try out more foreign cuisines ).

It's a question that is bothering me since quite a while. I know that you can still eat quite healthy meals switching your diet when it comes to origin and nationality / regionality. But is it really the RIGHT decision?

I would be interested in every type of answer, but would appreciate an answer by someone who is medically,historically and physcially very educated a lot.

Cheers.

[WendyB]

I dont you should stick with the same. I myself like a lot of variety.

As long as you stick within your calories limit it should not make any difference. 

Are you losing?

[Nomad92]

I feel like I am not losing any weight if I am switching all the time.

I feel like I am only using weight if I eat a very healthy version of my countries cuisine.

Maybe I am wrong, but this is what I feel like. Same as you, I do like a lot of variety ( yes this variety can be provided in my countries cuisine ), but I also like oriental food, but switching all the time doesn't always feel like the right thing.

This is why I am asking.

[WendyB]

Are you not losing at all or not losing like you think you should.

A good weight loss is .5 to 2 # per week. You want to lose slow so it stays off

[JohnRi]

Hello,

I vary my diet all the time.  I'm always looking for healthy choices and trying new stuff.  So I really don't think that it matters whay you eat.  It's been my experience that every culture has different spices and seasonings as well as different vegetables and meats for meals.  But the protein, fat content, carbs, and nutrional values are very different. 

Japanese people eat very little read meat, lots of seafood, lots of vegetables, tons of white rice and gallon's of soy sauce. 

Most American eat way to much red meat, loaded with fat and carbs.  American meals have about twice as many calories in a meal than needed.

Every culture is different.  Most European's drink wine with every meal.

So I would look at the number of calories in each meal, and the percentage of protein, fat, and carbs.  It might be that your native culture's diet is low fat, or low in carbs, and your lose weight easier eating a diet like that. 

Since you are not in America, I know the fitbit food database doesn't work too well outside the USA.  So your problem might simply be you are guessing the calories of the meals you are eating, and you are guessing too low. 

I know when I eat out, often the resturant is not in Fitbit's database, or in myfitnesspal.  So I have to choose a generic version.  Which could be off by a large margin.

But I think you can eat almost anything any diet, and lose weight.  Even cooking your own meals, you would have to measure every ingredient to try to come up with calories in the food.  It isn't easy to do sometimes...

[Nomad92]

@JohnRi

I know. 

I am German, and I live in the UK.Germany has a huge cuisine with many different versions of food and preparation. While you eat more fish in the north, you eat more meat in the south. I would not consider German meals healthy in big amounts, but if you eat an average sized meal & choose the healthy German meals, you should be alright.

True. But NOT most europeans drink wine with every meal, this is only the case in Italy,France and maybe Spain. The rest doesn't drink any alcohol with meals at all, because most people work during the day. In Southern Germany it is quite usual to drink beer with your lunch and / or dinner. But this of course, is a matter of taste and choice.

The fitbit database works totally fine to me, since we are also have calorie countings in Europe. The only difficulty would be to see it if you buy fresh vegetables and fresh meat, you can't always know how much calories are in there. But vegetables don't contain much anyway. I mean, I have never counted calories and I don't know anyone in my family who does. 

But please note, that I am not really too focused on losing weight since my weight is quite good and I am physically extremely fit. Yes, I could lose some pounds, but this is a matter of a month or two. This thread is more meant to be about life and what is good for you.

For example I know that many Asians would not eat cheese, so there must be  regional difference between influence of food on the human body.

[JohnRi]

Most asians don't eat a lot of beef or dairy.  You have to have cows to have both, and with limited land, there just isn't a lot of room for herds of cows.

I think every culture tends to eat foods available to the area.

Even in America you get different food from state to state.  When I was in Nebraska back in the 90's I went to Taco Bell and I found Corn in my taco meat.  Later I found corn in chicken soup.  Corn was a major local crop so it was in everything there.

I'm Texas, so we have a million cows, so everything here is BEEF. 

My mother was from Japan, and everything she ate as a child was mostly seafood. 

I never met my German grand father.  He left Germany after World War I and died when I was very young.  But my dad loved sausage and sauerkraut.  I'm sure that was from my Grand Father.

I think every region of the world has food that is local to their area. 

I don't eat nearly the amount of beef I used to eat.  Maybe 25%.  I've added chicken, turkey, and port to my diet.  I've tried to ellminate all processed meats from diet.  I eat tons of vegetables, fresh when I can, frozen when I can't.  Fruit, nuts...  Very little cheese, swiss cheese (lower sodium) when I do. 

Protein roughly 18-20%, fat 25-35%, carbs 45-55%.  I eat mainly American, and some italian.  I don't eat a lot of Japanese for Chinese food.  Although I can eat rice 3 times a day everyday... but I don't.  I love seafood, but I can't cook it worth a **ahem**.  Let's not talk about the fish I tried to grill....

But there are a lot of foods I eat sparing, or avoid just because of the calories, fat, or sodium being very high.  Most Mexican food is too high in sodium, and very high in calories.  So I rarely eat that.

I prefer a 110 mg of meat, and huge portions of vegetables for diner most nights. 

Bottomline it's possible to eat healthy anywhere in the world, if you make the effort to do it.

[Nomad92]

Exactly. But I was more referring to the combination of ingredient rather than stock foods and stock meat.

Well, Sausage and Sauerkraut is hardly eaten in Germany, this might be the case in bavaria, but not the rest of Germany. It's a cliche most American's believe to be true.

Japanese diet is considered one of the healthiest I think, but it's quite hard to get fresh fish you can eat raw, at least where I live. Most of it is not sashimi ready, it wasn't frozen cold enough.

I don't know anything about Mexican food, only that they eat quite a lot of flatbread type of bread, rice, spicey, beans and a lot of stuff with tomatoes. 

My favorite Asian cuisine is Japanese, I love Sushi and Japanese food in general.

Yeah I agree, it is possible to eat healthy in every corner of the world. But I feel like you need to stick to regional food. So if you are let's say raised in Texas and lived and have eaten there your entire life, you should stick to traditional texan food you were raised with. If you were raised in France, stick to French food. I think if a French would move to Texas and totally change his diet to Texan diet, he would suffer dieseases and get ill, same way around.

This might not be the case with some cuisines, for example the mediterranean cuisine in general, I have never met anyone who can't eat it all the time. Most people can deal with mediterranean cuisine very very well ( and there is more involved than just pasta and pizza ).

[Ukase · Accepted solution]

Opinions will vary on this. Some would have you spend a couple hundred dollars for a DNA test to determine what diet would be best for you. 

I think it's nonsense to spend money like that. When you get confused, it's time to get back to basics. , 

What does your body need? Food. 

Okay - what is food? Proteins, fats and carbs - on the macro-level. 

But, you could eat those foods all day long and not get all you need. You have to - at some point, go down to the micro-nutrient level. 

Vitamins A, B6, B12, C, D, E, K, etc. 

Various minerals, fatty acids

All these things combine to make up our diet. When it comes right down to it - rice is a grain with an incomplete protein. Add some black beans and you've got a complete protein.  Other foods could sub for rice or for black beans. In a way, chicken could sub for both, because chicken is a complete protein. 

Ultimately, our bodies are so good at breaking down food and transporting nutrients, I think that if you ate whatever you wanted, (within your caloric budget) you would be just fine, as long as it wasn't the exact same type of food. 

So, eat up, get creative. No reason to deprive yourself of something good, provided you've got the discipline not to over-eat.