Credit: Illustration by Slug Signorino

I've heard it often said and experienced it myself on various continents (including Asia): you lot bask a terrific Chinese, or Thai, or Malay dinner, but to feel hungry again a short while subsequently. Is this our imagination playing a play a trick on on us appreciators of Chinese cuisine? Or is it a western counterpart to the fact that many Asians don't tolerate milk? —Erwin

We had a helluva time with this one, Erwin. The trouble wasn't just coming up with an answer. It was figuring out the question, which we've gotten in different forms over the years. Possibilities:

one.) Why, later eating Chinese food, practise you soon feel hungry again?

ii.) Do you, in fact, after eating Chinese nutrient, soon feel hungry again?

3.) People used to say that after eating Chinese food one soon feels hungry again. Now they don't. What changed?

All we were able to plant initially was that, long ago (at least), people did in fact say the Saying, as I'll refer to it, and that this wasn't some mass hallucination. My assistant Una found the following fragment from a dramatic piece published in the literary magazine Gold Book in 1934:

JULIE (in a flat tone): Yes, but the trouble with that Chinese food is, no matter how much you eat you feel hungry an hr later on. Take yous ever noticed that?

HAM (the Orientalist): Information technology'southward the rice.

The easily satisfied will say, "So there you take information technology—it's the rice," and movement on. Those of subtler bent volition inquire more closely. Having eaten considerable quantities of the impugned starch without subsequently experiencing premature hungriness, I feel confident in saying: information technology's not just the rice.

What, and then, is information technology?

• I don't personally feel hungry soon after eating Chinese food, nor do I hear the Saying much these days. I'1000 therefore inclined to the view that while the Saying may have been true years ago, information technology's non true at present.

• Dissimilar foods are digested at different rates. One measure of digestion speed is the glycemic index (GI), which measures how quickly and how high your blood sugar levels rise after eating. This has led some to wonder if there'south a connection between GI and subjective feelings of satiety, or fullness, after a repast. Respond: no. The GI correlates with satiety for some foods but not others, and correlation varies depending on how the food was processed and the fat and protein levels of the meal overall.

• Taking a different tack, other researchers accept adult a satiety index, or SI. Testing satiety typically involves eating a specified calorie amount of diverse foods and rating how you feel over the next two hours on a scale from "extremely hungry" to "extremely full." The ratings are then converted to a numerical score past comparing them to ratings for white breadstuff, whose SI score is fixed at 100. From this we larn that 2 major components of Chinese cuisine—white rice and white pasta noodles—take much lower SI values (138 and 119 respectively) than the starch that was one time a mainstay of American nutrient (I won't call it cuisine), namely the irish potato. The apprehensive tuber has an SI of 323, past far the highest of any food tested.

Here we glimpse an explanation. I can't speak to German dining trends, only prior to 1980 or then, potatoes in diverse forms (mostly mashed, only too baked, fried, scalloped, au gratin, and then on) were a standard characteristic of the American dinner menu. Since then, in my casual observation, they've get less prevalent, and potato stats bear this out.

So when people said the Saying 50 years ago, they may merely have been comparison Chinese food to the meat-and-potatoes fare to which they were accustomed. In other words, it's non that Chinese nutrient left yous feeling hungry after an hour, but that the standard American diet left you feeling exceptionally full. Every bit American cooking became less tater-dependent, the difference in satiety potential between Chinese and U.S. food likely macerated.

Other factors may as well accept been at piece of work. Eating a salad before the principal course—common in Western-way restaurants merely less so at Chinese places—increases a diner'due south feeling of fullness, whereas high-fatty soups, like egg drop and hot and sour, have but minimal impact on satiety. Another element in the turn down of the Saying may exist the increased popularity of spicy Hunan and Szechuan cuisine compared to the banal Cantonese that one time dominated menus—the capsaicin in hot peppers is known to reduce hunger.

We oasis't yet tested any of the to a higher place—later on their recent adventure with alcoholic cupcakes, Una and Fierra are on a diet. For now, however, I don't arraign the rice; I blame the spuds. —Cecil Adams

Is there something yous demand to get straight? Take it upwards with Cecil at straightdope.com.