What even is a "triglyceride"?

Is it okay if I just eat and enjoy, and concentrate on more important things?

When did Americans develop so many food fetishes?

well BOTU, you could do something crazy like reading the linked post...

I don't care about triglycerides. I don't even care about quadglycerides.

I don't know what is a transfat, or why they are good or bad. Fish oil, salt, rice, grapefruit--why do people talk about these items? I don't know.

I know fat people are always on a diet. I know a fat lady who has not eaten sugar in years. I have been on dates with women who talked endlessly about what they ate, the health ramifications thereof. Usually, they are vegetarians. Kale was in for a while, but now it is out.

In Asia, rice and salt were huge in traditional diets, and almost no one was fat. People in Italy in general are not fat, but they eat pasta.

My conclusion: Aside from cigarettes, and drinking way too much, the rest does not matter that much. Plus, exercise every day.

"People in Italy in general are not fat, but they eat pasta"

I think you're pretty wrong about that! Isn't there an obesity increase in Italy?

Anyways, you are right about Asians, nobody has quite given me a response on why they are so skinny. I've been to Asia several times too. Noodles are the best!

"Anyways, you are right about Asians, nobody has quite given me a response on why they are so skinny. "

To begin with, a starch-rich diet gives you that corn-fed look, whether you are a human on a rice diet or a cow in a feedlot. You can tell in their face if a human is on a rice-beased, potato-based, corn-based diet. Yes there are corn-fed-looking Asians. They may not be Wal-Mart muffin tops, but they carry a lot of fat.

"The Asians and Italians have traditionally eaten far less sugar than others (even their deserts are less sweet). Also, they are not fat phobic, which means they are not always hungry, as fat is satiating."

Some Asian cuisines use a little sugar in just about everything to round and blend the flavors - Shanghai and Vietnamese cusines are espcially known for this. But the big and crucial difference is portion control and also the many-small-meals habit. In Thailand especially people rarely eat very mcuh at any one sitting because it's too damend hot to have much of an appetite at any one time. But they eat constantly; there's fresh food available everywhere.

Asian countries generally don't have the whole "fat acceptance" culture going on either, do they? So even they're consuming lots of noodles, there's portion control. Versus here, when Piggy Peggy is shoveling down her second fat free coffee cake and washing it down with her fat-free chai latte, her friends (and Oprah) are telling her that Prince Charming should accept her for who she is, not what she looks like, and she's not fat, she's just curvy (even though she's 5'3" and weighs 230).