Asian food

From a visit to three Asian countries, one thing is clear: the Asian diet is now more westernized. The traditional Asian food-eaten three times a day-is rice. But now there are also meals of wheat products, such as toast for breakfast & milk products.
Asian supermarkets now have a long list of Western foods such as breads, cakes & biscuits, snack foods, tinned goods & fizzy soft-drinks, pasta (wheat noodles), breakfast cereals, butter, cheese, lamb & beef.
But most striking is the large number of milk products. Milk products traditionally aren't part of an Asian diet-many Asians actually allergic to milk. But there are now ads on TV for milk, according to the ads, is 'modern', middle class & healthy. At a supermarket in Ampang Park, Kuala Lumpur, there is a shelf, four meter long, for milk in tins.
In one Bangkok supermarket there are more than a dozen different brands of milk drinks, from strawberry to pineapple flavour. In a typical supermarket in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand (population 1.2 million), there is fresh milk & flavoured long-life milk in mini cartons. There are also fruit yoghurts in pineapple, orange & lychee flavours.Unfortunately, there are now more Western diet-related diseases.