My Indian friend had a quadruple bypass at 64 yo. Strict vegetarian mind you. East Indians in the USA are known for high incidence of diabetes and heart problems. There has to be a genetic component but their diet changes when they come here. Portions are bigger and sugar gets added to everything. Which reminds me, gelato in Italy is not as sweet as our local ice cream. Fruit preserves/jellies also are not as sweet as Smuckers.
I completely agree. Very few Italian sweets are as sweet as those people eat in the U.S. and even than in Britain. Then, Italians don't, or at least didn't eat as many sweets period. The only sweet I can remember eating every day growing up was my mother's anicini, which we dunked in caffe/latte, and in addition to being dry precisely for such dunking, they were barely sweet at all. I still bake my own biscotti, and I don't even like to bake, but the American made ones are much too sweet for me.
I also don't find German and Austrian desserts as sweet as American desserts either. A lot of what I know about baking comes from my friend of Bavarian ancestry. The ratio of fat to sugar, the two elements which make things taste good, along with salt,
, is much higher in German recipes than in American ones. She gave me a lot of her translated recipes, and if I run across some German dessert that sounds good and I really want to try it for a party, I get the German recipe and have her translate it.
I only need to go to the German store for the vanilla sugar and a few other things.
I don't know where this craving for really sweet desserts and drinks comes from. I can't stand them.
Oh, I think that's why Americans have gotten even fatter after the production and sale of all these "low-fat" food items. To maintain taste, they just upped the sugar.
Diet, is, as you say, important, as well as genetics. Growing up I never saw a fat child in Italy, but I saw chubby Italian American kids here, and chubby East Asian kids too. One of my young girl cousins spent a month with a member of my family who had teen-age kids, and naturally was always going out with them and their American friends. I don't know how many kilos she put on, but it was enough that her father told me he's not letting her go to school here.
It's the reverse for me. Six weeks in Italy and I can lose up to ten pounds, yet it seems like I'm always eating.