Print

The China Study Finding Number Two

It?s not just about how much you eat, it?s what you eat. The least active people in rural China consumed 30% more calories per pound of body weight, and yet had a 20% lower body mass index than average Americans.

Amazingly, it appears that for keeping yourself slim, what you eat is as important as how much you eat. Researchers discovered quite a paradox in China. People in China consumed significantly more calories, per pound of body weight, than people in the United States, and yet they had a far lower body mass index (a measure of body size that takes into account both height and weight).

Most of the people in rural China lived a traditional lifestyle, meaning that they were outside all day farming or doing other kinds of manual labor. Their level of physical activity was far, far higher than the normal American, so that they necessarily had to consume more calories. But researchers corrected for this as much as possible. Researchers compared the least active part of the Chinese population, the office workers, to the average American, and still found that the Chinese consumed 30% more calories (per pound of body weight), and yet had 20% lower body mass index than average Americans.

This can still be largely explained by the fact that many office workers in China, at the time of the survey, were more active than the average American. They rode bicycles everywhere. But there are likely to be additional explanations. Laboratory experiments have shown that a diet lower in animal protein tends to encourage slower, more controlled weight gain. One reason for this is that calories from a nutrient-rich diet are likely to be burned off as body heat, rather than deposited as body fat. This is a process known as thermogenesis. In addition, a nutrient-rich diet can actually energize you to voluntarily exercise more. These surprising principles have been found to be true in laboratory studies and are supported by the China-Oxford-Cornell Diet and Health Project and other human studies.

In short, to maintain a healthy weight, what you eat might be an even more important consideration than how much you eat.