Hmmm.. This doesn't sound like something I said. You sure? From what I understand the typical Thai diet is extremely varied with a lot of seafood (squid... jerky... blech..), tons of fruits and vegetables, and yes, rice and beans (various). One of the keys I think is that they don't typically sit down to three bit ol' means a day but instead eat little bits throughout the day. Afraid there's not much of a secret here, eat healthy, don't pig out, work real hard.
As far as the typical diet for a Shaolin monk, it depends on the period. At more successful times, it probably would have been quite comparable to the diets of any middle class folk in that region (lot of rice, vegetables, etc) and they may or may not have been vegetarians at any given time (they were allowed to eat red meat by the emperor at one point). In harder times it would have been literally whatever they could get their hands on. There are a few stories in American Shaolin regarding food and the social customs that have grown up around hardship concerning food (The mountainous regions of China have a long, fine history of crippling poverty). One story involves one monk's shame at having eaten rat when he was younger and living at the temple. This apparently was not uncommon for young monks with almost no means of support and I'm sure that it's not isolated to modern times. The diet that would have been recommended by the scholars at Shaolin during one of its high point would likely have been vegetarian, high in proteins from mung and other beans, and balanced according to traditional chinese medicine theory (there are yin and yang foods, flavors, etc and there's a whole art to cooking in support of balance).
