Why Get Hungry Again After Chinese

Dear Cecil:

I've heard it ofttimes said and experienced it myself on diverse continents (including Asia): you enjoy a terrific Chinese, or Thai, or Malay dinner, just to experience hungry again a short while after. Is this our imagination playing a trick on the states appreciators of Chinese cuisine? Or is it a western counterpart to the fact that many Asians don't tolerate milk?

Erwin Kuhn, Federal republic of germany

Illustration by Slug Signorino

Cecil replies:

Nosotros had a helluva fourth dimension with this 1, Erwin. The trouble wasn't just coming up with an answer. Information technology was figuring out the question, which nosotros've gotten in different forms over the years.

Possibilities:

1. Why, afterward eating Chinese food, exercise you soon feel hungry again?

2. Practice y'all, in fact, after eating Chinese food, soon feel hungry again?

3. People used to say that after eating Chinese nutrient one presently feels hungry over again. At present they don't. What changed?

All we were able to constitute initially was that, long ago (at least), people did in fact say the Maxim, every bit I'll refer to information technology, and that this wasn't some mass hallucination. My assistant Una found the following fragment from a dramatic piece published in the literary mag Golden Book in 1934:

julie (in a apartment tone): Yes, but the trouble with that Chinese food is, no matter how much you eat y'all feel hungry an hr later. Have yous ever noticed that?

ham (the Orientalist): It'southward the rice.

The hands satisfied volition say, "And then in that location you have it — it'southward the rice," and move on. Those of subtler bent volition inquire more closely. This Julie — why is she speaking in a flat tone? Has she been drugged? Has Ham, the glib Orientalist, put something in her lo mein? I take no thought, and if we waste matter any more time on such flighty inquiries we'll soon run out of cavalcade. However, having eaten considerable quantities of the impugned starch without later on experiencing premature hungriness, I experience confident in maxim: it's not but the rice.

What, then, is it? I'1000 working on that. Some preliminary observations:

• I don't personally feel hungry before long later eating Chinese food, nor do I hear the Saying much these days. I therefore incline to the view that while the Maxim may have been true years ago, it'due south not truthful at present.
• Dissimilar foods are digested at different rates. One mensurate of digestion speed is the glycemic index (GI), which measures how quickly and how high your claret sugar levels rise afterward eating. This has led some to wonder if there'due south a connection between GI and subjective feelings of satiety, or fullness, after a meal. Answer: no. The GI correlates with satiety for some foods just not others, and correlation varies depending on how the food was candy and the fat and protein levels of the meal overall.
• Taking a different tack, other researchers (Holt et al, 1995) have adult a satiety index, or SI. Testing satiety typically involves eating a specified calorie amount of various foods and rating how you lot feel over the next 2 hours on a scale from "extremely hungry" to "extremely full." The ratings are then converted to a numerical score past comparison them to ratings for white bread, whose SI score is fixed at 100. From this we learn that two major components of Chinese cuisine — white rice and white pasta noodles — have much lower SI values (138 and 119 respectively) than the starch that was once a mainstay of American food (I won't call it cuisine), namely the potato. The humble tuber has an SI of 323, by far the highest of any food tested.

Hither nosotros glimpse an explanation. I tin't speak to German dining trends, but prior to 1980 or and so, potatoes in various forms (generally mashed, just besides baked, fried, scalloped, au gratin, and then on) were a standard feature of the American dinner menu. Since then, in my casual observation, they've become less prevalent, and potato stats bear this out.

Then when people said the Proverb 50 years ago, they may but accept been comparing Chinese food to the meat-and-potatoes fare to which they were accustomed. In other words, it's not that Chinese nutrient left you lot feeling hungry afterwards an 60 minutes, merely that the standard American diet left you feeling exceptionally full. As American cooking became less spud-dependent, the difference in satiety potential betwixt Chinese and U.Due south. food probable diminished.

Other factors may also have been at piece of work. For example, eating a salad before the primary class — mutual in Western-style restaurants but less then at Chinese places — increases a diner'south feeling of fullness, whereas high-fat soups, like the old-schoolhouse egg drop and hot-and-sour varieties, accept but minimal impact on satiety. Another element in the decline of the Proverb may be the increased popularity of spicy Hunan and Szechuan cuisine compared to the bland Cantonese that once dominated Chinese menus — the capsaicin in hot peppers is known to reduce hunger.

We oasis't notwithstanding tested whatsoever of the above — afterward their recent adventure with alcoholic cupcakes, Una and Fierra are on a diet. For now, even so, I don't arraign the rice; I blame the spuds.

Cecil Adams

Ship questions to Cecil via cecil@straightdope.com.

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Source: https://www.straightdope.com/21344047/why-do-you-soon-feel-hungry-again-after-eating-chinese-food-or-do-you

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