everything in moderation is the key, along with a proportionate amount of exercise.

I have friends who exercise every day and eat mountains of food, as i did when i was a student, and are as thin as a rake.

My level of exercise has decreased, so my food intake has also.

Many Chinese i know eat the **** food like KFC, but then do no exercise. 

Rather than eat moderately, they then starve themselves, which is not healthy. so it is a binge/purge cycle. Incredibly unhealthy for the long term.

I have also seen fat Chinese - mainly boys. You can guess what their exercise routine is 

You're talking about two different nutrients: carbohydrates (rice, potato, pasta, bread, most product made with flour, all sugars) and fat (oils, meat, diary, olives).

Being fat/heavy doesn't necessary mean you eat too much, either CH or fat, or both.

It depends, how your body process the food you intake. In other words, some people can get fat just by the 'look at the pork for too long'..., and some people can eat three (3) 250g of chocolate, drink small amount of coffee (espresso size) daily with 2 full spoons of sugar, being mother 3 times, and still stay skinny (174cm/50kg).

She's my close relative.

I found out who ate chocolates, I brought for my nieces, and gave them to my sister for hold.

A week later, I saw kids, and none replied with 'Thank you!', what they always do.

I started 'discussion' with sentence: 'Thank you for the chocolate M.(me)!'

Kids replied: 'What chocolate?'

The thing never reached the kids, or probably not even left the kitchen area, because their mother munched almost 1kg of chocolate in less than a week. Talking about 'addiction' here!

OK, a lot of exercise will help to burn all extra CH and fat, which body can't process faster. Long walks or jogging, abandoning taxis and using stairs instead elevator will help too.

I read an article yesterday, which claims that there is no difference between walking or jogging, while one try to burn fat and CH.

Both exercises are equal. Consistency is very important. 'Add-it' 'light exercise daily, not only once a week or month'.

It's a question of what they're eating and how much they're eating it.  How many of them are cooking their own meals with fresh food, and how many are walking down to the snack street and getting deep fried chicken, tofu or some kind of boiled meat covered in that sweet sauce?  I see people eating these junk snack foods all the time.  

Chinese people have been eating rice for a long time, and their bodies seem to have adjusted to that kind of diet. In general Eastern Asians have fast metabolisms.  

There's a tipping point for everybody though.  Eating too many deep fried foods will easily load you up over your daily calorie intake.

Most milk here is full cream meaning its also loaded with fat.

I've met lots of Chinese that enjoy eating the fatty parts of meats as well, and that indeed is a lot of calories, as well as a recipe for a heartattack.

And finally, Chinese people have more money to eat all of these things, and they aren't laboring in fields like they did in the past.  In short, there's more eating, unhealthier eating, and less exercise.   You can't really blame a single food group for this. 

Would also like to add here, beer has a lot more calories than Bai Jiu does.  There are a lot of guys outside with typical looking beer bellies.

If you were to compare a bowl of rice and a bowl of butter, the butter would have the most calories so I suppose you could say that butter makes you fatter.

But nobody would eat a bowl of butter, and most people would eat a bowl of rice so that line of thought doesn't really work if you want to think about how to lose weight.

Just think about calories going in to your body (food) vs calories going out of your body (exercise). If calories in is bigger than calories out, you will most likely gain weight.

The friends I have who have successfully lost weight all did it in a sensible way. They ate healthy, were very aware of how many calories they were putting in their bodies when they ate, and they exercised.

I'm not a nutritionist and glutinous rice is on my shitlist but I am sure that a diet comprising rice at most of every meals has awful consequences on one's health on the long term. As for butter you don't eat it everyday, you rarely or never cook with butter, you don't eat full plates or bowls of butter, and there are low fat butters.

It's just a matter of the calorie intake vs. how many calories you burn. 

The BIG difference between getting your calories from fat or from carbohydrates is what the body needs to do to metabolize them. 

AND. It is not about getting fat. As others write. If you eat equal amounts (in weight) of butter and rice, then the calories in butter is much much higher. But if you eat a stable diet of rice, then the carbohydrates, which essentially is sugars, will increase your risk of diabetes more than if you eat a fatty diet. There is a reason why India and China have huge numbers of diabetics, and most Chinese with diebetes are not grotesquely overweight. 

Anyway. More time spent moving and less time spent being concerned about weight is my recommendation for living longer. 

A bowel of rice and a bowel of butter. I would say butter.

They're totally different food groups and not really comparable

I think what you should really be looking at is how much meat the average Chinese person consumes.

Americans eat the most meat per person per year  than anywhere else in the world.

Chinese eat about half the amount of meat the average American eats per person per year, but they are slowly catching up.

40 years ago (ie Mao time still) the average Chinese person was eating about 110g of meat per year...i think your average fat obese chinese kid would think thats insane by todays standards.

I watched this BBC Horizon 'should we eat meat? ' last night. I think consuming meat plays an important role in adding to our waist lines.

But not all veggies are skinny! Man Ive seen some seriously FAT hindus!

100g of rice typically includes almost 0g of fat and 130 calories (sometimes more, brown rice has about 170)

100g of butter typically includes 81g of fat and 717 calories.

But when was the last time you ate 100g of butter?  Not really comparable. Even when used in baking, you don't eat the final product all in one go. 100g of butter is enough for a whole cake.  Rice on the other hand, you might eat 200g or more in one serving, giving you far more calories than the butter in a slice of cake. You'll also see many bodybuilding programs telling you to eat rice because of its high calorie count and because it's easy to inject in large quantities.  

both are good for health and have there benefits, but if you obese and over weight try to avoid them both or reduce having them 

but in general both will make you fat, if you are having boiled white rice it would not give a an mg of fat but butter will give you fats. 

I feel much better and going slowly slimmer since i have cut the rice intake into minimum, as only for lunch, and very few occasions on evening. other I eat home made bread with butter with bacon, fresh tomatoes and so on, or pastas and that kind of stuff.  

In my country we say, that rice is "hungry" food. you may eat a lot, yet feel hungry very soon, or eat much more of the side dishes. and that's the problem why I gained more than 20kg while I ate 2-3 bowls of rice and 3-5 different oil-soaked veggies or meat dishes during one session

I am taking track back to "western food" and feel much better physicaly and psychicaly too. Most of the time, the chinese food make me angry ))

i think butter makes people more fat... not sure why.. just a feeling

Best to just eat hot water soup, I can send you Mrs Douglas recipe.

Rice is by far worse. Sugar and carbs are what make people fat. If you want to lose weight, stick to meat,fat, and to a lesser extent vegetables. When Americans used butter and lard for cooking as opposed to vegetable oils they were a lot healthier. When they switched to all this low fat nonsense, heart disease and obesity skyrocketed.