Southeast Asian diets: a water world away from the standard American diet

Southeast Asia is a water world where diets revolve around water-intensive foods: fish and rice.

Southeast Asians eat a diet that is about as different from the typical US diet as it gets. Cambodians for example get 70% of their protein intake from fish--dried, pickled, farmed, fresh out of the water, etc. Meanwhile, on the map below, in the US we get less than 10% of our protein from fish.





Also, Southeast Asians get 60% of their overall food intake from one food: rice.

It is fascinating to me to think about the difference in diets around the world and also their relation to human physical differences. How have foods affected the way humans evolved in Asia vs. Europe vs. Africa because of foods they ate over thousands of years?

Rice paddy landscapes are one of the most eye-popping in Geography.

Meanwhile, many US citizens eat only an occasional can of tuna and get most carbs from bread and sugars--both refined carbs--is the primary source of carbs.

This page from GeoCurrents shows interesting maps of global beef and fish consumption.
http://www.geocurrents.info/cultural-geography/culinary-geography/global-geography-of-meat-and-fish-consumption

GeoCurrents
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