I was a skinny girl when I first came to the United States twenty two years ago. But after several months of eating American food, I gained 25 pounds.

For two years, I fought to lose the weight. I read at least a dozen weight-loss books; I tried diet patches, fat reducing creams, diet pills, diet tea, Slim-Fast, and everything that was on commercials at the time. The expensive diet patches and fat-reducing creams showed no results even though I applied them religiously. The diet tea gave me diarrhea for a few days, and I lost a couple of pounds. Then it lost its power, and my stomach didn't react anymore. Consequently, I gained back the weight, most of which was probably water anyway. Slim-Fast was just like any regular milk for me. I would stay full for an hour, and then be hungry again. It could not substitute for a regular meal. Diet pills were a scary experience. They made my heart beat so fast, I thought it was going to explode. I also followed the directions in the many diet books I bought, but the result was always yo-yo weight loss; I would lose 5 pounds, then gain back 7 pounds. It was very discouraging.

I began to reflect back on when I was growing up in Asia. I was a skinny girl with a big appetite. Meals would last for an hour and I usually ate two to three plates of food in addition to mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks and also supper. I then began to realize that American food was the culprit.

My two girlfriends who are also from my country are good cooks. They cook and eat traditional food all the time. I always thought they had "skinny genes."

Whenever we went to the mall, they had fun trying on clothes. However, I could not find anything that looked good on me. Frustrated, I always ended up going to a bookstore to look for a new diet book to help me lose weight.

After I reduced my intake of American food and prepared my food the traditional way, I lost the 25 pounds without hunger or deprivation.

When I went back to my country, I feasted every day on favorite foods that I cannot find in the United States. I ate at least three big meals and two to four snacks every day. I never gained weight at all.

Even throughout my pregnancy and my good life in a typical upper middle class family in Indonesia, I stayed slim. This was in spite of the fact that I was a stay-at-home mom with two live-in maids who did everything from taking care of the baby to shopping and cooking for my family.

I have traveled to Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. These are developed countries in Asia where the standard of living is almost equal to the people in the United States. However, the people there are noticeably slimmer than the average American.

Since I love to eat, I observed and asked people lots of questions about their dietary habits. Their answers confirmed what I already suspected. The people who maintained their traditional diet stayed slim while the people who adopted western dietary habits gained extra weight.

I researched more on this subject by reading weight loss books and articles and taking nutrition classes. All the good diets supported by the most respectable experts pointed to a diet similar to the Asian diet.

There is an extensive study done by Prof. T. Collin Campbell of Cornell University where he compared the calories intake of the least active group of Chinese with average American & he found that those inactive Chinese actually consume 30% more calories but they weight 20% less than the average American. How is this possible? One of the reasons is the fact that Asian diet is rich in resistant starch.

In the past, it was thought that all starch in food is digested and absorbed by the human body. However, current research has discovered that a significant portion of starch cannot be digested and will be expelled from our body. This portion of starch is called resistant starch.

This means the stomach will not digest this portion of starchy food, which will come out of the body as waste. What the stomach cannot digest, the stomach cannot absorb. So when we eat starchy food that contains resistant starch, we get a reduction of the calories!

In addition to that, a recent study at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center led by Dr. Higgins, published in the October 2004 issue of Nutrition and Metabolism, found that the presence of 5.4% resistant starch in a meal increased the burning of fat in the body by 23%. And this increase is sustained throughout the day even if only one meal contains resistant starch.

There are several other reasons why Asian foods prevent obesity but one of them is definitely because Asian foods are rich in resistant starches.