Cecil conducted exhausted research why some people are hungry soon after eating Chinese food. Unfortunately, he missed one of the obvious explanations - it’s not the rice, not the potatoes, it’s the chop sticks!
Are you seriously proposing that the exertion involved in using chopsticks is sufficient to noticeably offset caloric intake?
Powers &8^]
Not a mod, but anyone can do this: it’s typically a really good idea to include the link to the article in question. Et Voila: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2956/why-do-you-soon-feel-hungry-again-after-eating-chinese-food
Anyway, I was about to just write your idea off, but there might be something to it. It’s predicated on two ideas: If you eat less, you become hungry again sooner. If you eat slowly, you feel full after eating less food.
Add that to the idea that not everyone is as competent with chopsticks as they are with Western flatware, and you get a chain of consequences: Eat with chopsticks -> eat more slowly (because of fumbling, dropping food, picking up less at a “mouthful”, etc.) -> eat less -> become hungry fairly soon afterward.
I don’t have any personal experience with this: I’m Japanese-American, and could use chopsticks before I could use a steak knife. But if all the assumptions I’ve identified are valid, it’s a distinct possibility.
Actually, it’s an interesting possibility (IMO), and the difference between chop stick use and Western utensil use on food consumption was explored by Cecil and myself. Unfortunately, the hypothesis was rejected by Cecil due to not having enough factual backing. A hypothesis I pushed involving most people’s exposure to Chinese food being in the form of “all I can shove in my gob buffets” was also rejected by Cecil as not having enough factual backing. I did research on Cecil’s behalf at the medical library here and actually found one interesting research paper on it, but it just wasn’t enough evidence overall.
I used to also hear the saying in the distant past, but not any more. 40-50 years ago in the US, where I grew up anyway, almost everyone’s idea of Chinese food was chow mein. It was full of vegetables, mostly celery, and light on meat. It was not very filling. At lunch today I had a $5 lunch from the carryout Chinese restaurant nearby - egg foo young. Yeah, I know - about as Chinese as chow mein, but it has a pound of eggs plus vegetables, and a pound of fried rice. I won’t be hungry until about 8 tonight, nor would I be with almost anything else on the menu.
My experiences with Chinese food only go back about 45 years, but I think you are correct. The dishes I experienced then were smaller, with less rice, and less starch thickened sauce. More recently, I’ve had the same kind of experiences you describe. The amount of meat hasn’t jumped that much except with chicken. With beef and shrimp, their seems to be less meat now. I have some evidence to indicate the price of ingredients is a factor there.
What happens when you combine Chinese and German cuisine?
30 minutes later you are hungry for power.
I wondered how much the changed social climate has to do with the Saying coming up less often recently? I’ve read it on American sites, in US TV series and being referenced in english-language fiction, but always older things (or if joked about in newer stuff). I thought it was because making fun of/ being disparaging about foreign cusine was acceptable in the 50s and 60s, but not today.
Would the changed acceptance, along with the changed eating habits, also lead to less people using the Saying?
I always figured that the problem wasn’t the rice, but the lack of rice: Many Americans, when eating Chinese food, will eat the meat-and-veggies part, but leave most of the rice. If you eat the rice, too, then it’s plenty filling.
I don’t think that the fact that rice/noodles are less satiating than potatoes can be the answer, because there’s also a saying that the trouble with Italian food is, you eat it, and three days later you’re hungry again. The difference there is that when most Americans eat Italian food, they do actually eat the noodles.
I thought the exclamation point indicated that I was facetious, as surely every proficient chopstick user I have encountered has eaten as much and as fast as I. But I was nonetheless delighted to see others give serious consideration to my proposal.
I think the sad truth is that commonly available Chinese food used to be a WHOLE lot more nutritious than it is now, which is why it didn’t used to be as “filling.” If you eat a ton of oil, breading, and God-only-knows-what-went-into-it sweet and sour sauce, it’s going to be pretty filling, and it’s so hard to avoid that now. Every single thing seems to be cooked with about 8,000 pounds of oil. I really wish there were other options for cheap, takeout Chinese food, but I have yet to find them, and apparently that didn’t used to be true.
In all of these deliberations, one thing has been overlooked so far. The lowly FORTUNE COOKIE.
To hold it in one’s hand, to fondle, consider and then break it … to contemplate the whiteness of its paper message before reading the deep philosophical meaning. The astonished realization of its import to one’s previously meaningless existence. The exuberance of recognizing its healing message, the joyous acceptance in physical exhortatious respondence and stunned appreciation of its transformatory healing significance!
All that can hardly be underestimated.
And yet! In the same vein as Mao-Tse and Tchiang-kai centuries ago agreed on, and many new ice cream parlors in Shanghai now pronouce: the Fortune Cookie is NOT, nor will it ever be, just a paper inclusion! NO! It is the quintessential expression of our new age, the predicatory signage of things to come.
Or, to be straight about it: the emptiness that follows a Chinese or Thai meal. the longing that remains.
Back in the 50s when the expression was current, my family ate at Chinese restaurants but none of us used chopsticks.
I’m surprised nobody had brought up the explanation I always heard. That the saying is really based in a cultural reaction to current events at the time (about 50-60 years ago). Namely, that there was a lot of famine in China at the time (where the saying “there are people starving in China” comes from - said when someone wouldn’t finish their plate of food). A similar one I heard when I wouldn’t finish my food later was “there are starving people in Africa” due to the Ethiopian famine that gained widespread attention in the mid-80’s.
What I’ve heard is that the saying comes from that current event at the time. That Chinese food must not be very nutritious if people in China are starving. So if you eat Chinese food, you’ll be hungry an hour later. I, myself, and nobody I know has ever experienced this (and my Mother’s half of my family is Chinese - my father came over in the 50’s)
-MCG
Chinese food itself has changed over the years. I remember in college when I saw the first mainland Chinese students come over to the U.S. They ate a ton of rice with each meal. The actual dish itself (Chicken with snow peas or whatever) was more or less a flavoring you put over the rice. And, their’d be a lot more vegetables and very little meat.
I can imagine Chinese restaurants first opening up in the U.S. using the same cuisine used in China. However, the Americans would eat mainly the dish they ordered, and then take a bit of rice as a side dish. The main dish would be small with very little meat in it. Thus, they’d simply didn’t eat all that much food at the restaurant. No wonder they were hungry a few hours later.
Now, when you order a meal at a Chinese restaurant, you’re given a large plate stuffed with meat, fat, and a heavy sauce with just a side dish of rice. No more complaints about hunger a few hours later.
I remember the Chinese students complaining about the meals at the Chinese restaurants in the U.S. The portions were so large, the dishes were too heavy, and there was just not enough rice. I suspect that at least in the cities in China, the meals have become more Americanized and more calorie ladened.
What about the use of MSG providing a richness to the food so that you think you’re satiated without filling up?
Entirely cultural.
I have Korean and Japanese family that say the exact same thing about Western foods, African friends who say the same thing about Indian foods, Europeans who don’t feel like they’ve eaten anything after a full Ethiopian meal, etc.
Usually its the ones that are less exposed to other cultures and foods.
As for the chopstick thing, in chopstick culture cuisine, the idea is that the food comes to the table prepared to eat, in bite sized morsels - aka, it’s crude to have a knife at the table. If you can’t eat it/pick it up with your chopsticks, use a spoon.
Actually, many cultures have taboos about having knives on the table. A knife is a weapon of violence and war, and a meal should be a peaceful affair. You might as well set the table with a dessert gun to the left of the soup mace.
In fact, it is actually surprising that the Europeans never adopted the custom of not using a knife at the table.
At this Chinese restaurant in Vancouver recently, I noticed the owners in the back using knives and forks, while all the rest of us were using chopsticks. It was weird, like we were stuck in the past or something, or we were tourists.
Another place I know, lovely place, bills its fare as “Indian style Chinese cuisine”, as the owners are from Calcutta, and over the generations have included such items as bhajia and pakoras, roti etc.
Strictly knife and fork (with chopsticks available on request). Interestingly, they serve no pork. Also interestingly enough, they speak German and Swedish as well as Hindi and Mandarin, having taken this show on the road over who knows how many generations. One time when the waiter came by to ask how everything was, I couldn’t resist saying “nicht gut”, which cracked him right up, fortunately.
Or, maybe Europeans just mastered the art of not assuming any tool that could be used as a weapon, would be?
Powers &8^]