Are the obesity rates in countries with diets high in rice consumption (e.g. Japan) especially high? Or is it usually offset by something (so in Japan's case: fish consumption)?
Living in Tokyo, an obese person really sticks out. You just almost never see them. You do see some fat teenagers though, since they are abandoning the traditional diet.
Japan is in love with fat in all its forms (fatty marbled beef, fatty tuna, fatty pork) and there is almost no culture of sun-screen usage, but they also are much better at producing melanin than europeans, making for pretty effective natural protection.
They also have one of (if not the) largest populations of centenarians on earth.
