Overweight Thais

[Guest kjun12]

Have you noticed that many Thai men are getting fatter? Especially very young male children? I started coming to Thailand about 10 years ago and at that time was impressed with how few Thai people were overweight. Now, there are many who are plain fat. Young male children seem to be on the rise in a serious way. Wonder if is all the fast food or do parents not understand the problems this can cause. This is not a good omen for this country.

[Bob]

I sure have and have been making that comment for 3 or 4 years now. It's my guess that it's the change of diet doing it. A decade or more ago, one normally didn't see that all many Thais at the burger joints (McDonalds or Burger King) or the donut shops but they're the main customers for the last few years. Unfortunately, we're seeing more and more of those chubby kids who I call the "little buddhas."

 

I'm guessing that the increasing obesity isn't all that much of a concern as yet to the Thais and I believe they've historically equated "fatness" with a person who's well off or special. You've never seen a skinny Buddha statue, have you?

 

Another thing I've noticed is the Thais are getting taller and taller. I'm only 6'1" but, other than seeing the very tall Thai national volleyball team at the airport 5 or 6 years ago, I rarely saw a Thai as tall or taller than me. But the last year or two, I see a whole lot of them, mostly on the west end of Chiangmai (university area). Fairly commonplace now.

[Guest fountainhall]

I too have noticed this trend developing over the last decade and more, but not only in boys. I will often go to Starbucks on Soi Convent which is just down the road from the Convent girls' school. Just walking along the Soi after school hours, you can see a great many girls who are overweight, and a number who are definitely obese. At the same time, many pack that Starbucks and order only drinks with a gazillion calories.

 

Not so long ago, I was there when a father came in with his overweight daughter and a fractionally slimmer school friend. Yet again it was high calorie content drinks plus sweet sugary cakes for the girls - but an Evian water for Papa. They then came to sit close to me. For 30 minutes, no-one talked to each other. The father was on his cell phone the entire time, paying absolutely no attention to the girls. The girls, too, after consuming their calories spent their time texting and playing games. I frankly cannot imagine ever going out with family/friends and saying not one word for an entire half-hour!

 

Not only is increasing wealth in the cities resulting in a generation of future heart attack and stroke victims, it seems too many kids lack any understanding of normal social interaction between people. And this is, to my mind, very definitely a problem arising from lack of proper parental care and supervision, a trait increasingly found - sadly - in rapidly developing economies.

 

And just today we are told that existing tables regarding obesity and its affect on health may be vasty underestimating the risks.

 

Experts say the health hazards of obesity may have been grossly underestimated because we are not measuring the condition adequately.

 

Risk calculations have focused on severity of weight gain alone and not how long it persists.

 

Latest research suggests every additional decade of being obese more than doubles death risk.

 

The researchers told the International Journal of Epidemiology a new measure is needed - the "obese-year".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14614209

[Guest]

Increasing obesity has long been an issue in many European countries and the US.

I suspect it is an issue in many Asian countries too. Perhaps this is linked to adoption of elements of Western diet, but maybe not entirely so. I notice Chinese and Indian food often contains more cooking oil than one might expect. Also middle aged Indian women are frequently overweight, despite being very loyal to their native cooking.

 

More importantly, what are countries doing about this? I'm not aware of any effective government campaigns which managed to reverse the trend, certainly nothing that's remotely near as successful as the anti-smoking campaigns.

The health risks from obesity are real -heart attacks & diabetes for example.

Perhaps some European countries have less of a problem than others.

 

Now if I were making the decisions, I'd want to restrict the opening of McDonalds type stores, tax unhealthy food, add tobacco style warnings to unhealthy food and run a health campaign lasting for several decades (& indefinitely, if it worked).

[Rogie]

And just today we are told that existing tables regarding obesity and its affect on health may be vasty underestimating the risks.

Increasing obesity has long been an issue in many European countries and the US.

I suspect it is an issue in many Asian countries too. Perhaps this is linked to adoption of elements of Western diet, but maybe not entirely so.

 

Until recently, I would have sworn obesity was a simple yes or no. You have it or you don't. Yardsticks such as the Body Mass index are easy to understand. If you are unlucky enough to be obese the various risk factors are fairly well-known nowadays.

 

Until a couple of days ago that is. Anyone familiar with the Barker Theory? I'd never heard of it but it featured in a science programme I watched on British TV.

 

In 1995, the British Medical Journal named this the

[Guest kjun12]

Interesting information Rogie.

[Guest fountainhall]

Interesting indeed, and one of which I know just a little as my sister is a doctor and in charge of community health in one of Britain's largest cities.

 

To return to another point Rogie highlighted and the thread topic -

 

The burden of chronic disease is rising. Everyone has family and friends who are affected. The costs for health care are becoming insupportable.

Some people, I understand, are genetically disposed towards obesity. For them, all non-surgical attempts to help them lose weight are likely to fail, I assume. Of the others, most they are making lifestyle choices, conscious or otherwise. Lack of parental control, lack of discipline, lack of self-esteem - these and more are reasons frequently cited. Yet the long-term effect on healthcare costs is horrendous. Many insurance companies now give reduced premiums to those who do not smoke and have never smoked. Surely the time has come to hit most of those who are obese in the same way - in their pockets.

 

There was the case a few years back when a grossly obese American lady sued an airline who wanted to charge her for two seats in coach. If you are that size, then sorry lady, I think you should pay a helluva lot more. Why should other passengers be forced to sit at an angle just because they are unfortunate enough to have you sitting next to them (and that’s before we discuss body odour issues!)?

 

As an aside, there was a newspaper story many years ago about the American soprano Jessye Norman. Apart from being one of the world's truly great divas of the age, Ms. Norman was, shall be say, big. The story told of her missing a flight connection at London's Heathrow and thus missing a recital. Some wag suggested she had got stuck in the doorway on exiting the first plane - and could not be extricated in time! A friend told me that she always booked 2 first class seats on a plane, the reason being that she could not get the table into position in front of her. Her meals were therefore served at the adjoining seat!

 

There was also a programme on television not so long ago in the popular Air Crash Investigation series. This focused on a small prop-driven commuter jet that crashed moments after take-off killing all on board. It was discovered that one of the reasons was the plane was overweight. And the reason for that? Airlines had been using average weight tables drawn up by the government many years earlier. When the investigators checked with the doctors of those on board, it was discovered that they weighed on average considerably more than supposed 'average' limit. As a result, US airline average passenger weight tables were rapidly adjusted upwards.

 

Six months ago, my doctor told me that for my age and height, I was 12 kgs overweight. I still find that difficult to believe, but so far I have done little to remedy the situation. Perhaps if I had to pay more for health insurance, I might already be a few kgs lighter!

[ChristianPFC]

I read a while ago that there are more overweight people in developed countries than there are people who suffer from hunger in poor countries.

[Guest fountainhall]

The statstics are really quite frightening. Until 1980, fewer than one in ten people in industrialised nations like the USA were obese. As of this time last year, an OECD Report showed that in almost half the developed countries, one out of every two people is overweight or obsese. The US had 30% classified as

[bkkguy]

Fast food is often cited as one of the main ingredients leading to obesity. So I am amazed every time I enter Bumrungrad Hospital that the first food outlet I see is McDonalds!

 

if you were a company (not necessarily a hospital, but a company) that made most of its profits from treating obesity, diabeties, heart disease, etc, what food outlets would you allow in highly visible locations in your lobby? Mamma's low fat low sugar veggie stir-fry franchise or McDonalds?

 

bkkguy

[Guest fountainhall]

News Item. David is going home to Italy!

 

 

After a two year loan to the United States, Michelangelo's David is being returned to Italy.

 

 

His Proud Sponsors were:

 

[Guest thaiworthy]

Starbucks Coffee makes you fat?

 

Also, if you smoke pot, it will act as an appetite stimulant, and indirectly make you eat more and get fat, if you can't resist the urge. Even boredom can lead you to eat when you're not really hungry.

 

Gays in the US have a more polite and palatable name for big people. I never liked it. They call themselves "bears," and younger guys who liked the bears are called "cubs." I don't know how they came up with those labels, but it's even now become a sub-culture in gay society. There are even hook-up websites. Not surprisingly, there are usually a lot more "bears" than "cubs." Mebbe the usage was derived from the fact that bears are big? Bears are also very hairy, so why don't hairy people call themselves bears, too?

 

Real bears don't eat at McDonald's. Real men don't call themselves "bears." All sounds horribly confusing. There's really nothing wrong with any of the restaurants, actually-- it's what you order from the menu and how much of it you eat when it becomes a problem. Moderation in all things. I think that's what Buddha preaches. But Buddha got very, very thin.

 

Unfortunately there's no Jenny Craig in Thailand. Mebbe the problem will need to reach epidemic proportions before there is one. Also, have you ever read the labels on Weight Watchers products? They contain refined sugar! Even too much white rice is not a good thing since it's loaded with carbs.

 

It always helps to read the ingredients, but Thailand does not have the Truth in Labeling laws or Nutrition Facts labels on their processed products like the US. I guess it hasn't been a problem, until now. In time, I think things will change-- eventually.

 

Education needs to start before anything else. You need to eat. You don't need to smoke. So I don't see how a warning label is going to help. There's a different set of mechanisms at work in the digestion of food than there is for smoke in the lungs, so I don't think it's accurate to make that comparison.

[Guest]

Starbucks Coffee makes you fat?

 

Not if you drink it black, as nature intended.

Add sugar, cream & cakes, there there are some calories to count.

[Rogie]

You need to eat.

Yup, we sure do . . . but you can go to extremes!

 

I have a friend about my age I haven't seen for a few years but last time we met he was slim as always, so I expect he's no different now. We chatted on the phone a few days ago and he'd just returned from 3 months in LOS, where he was mostly based in Korat. He's a vegetarian and he raved about the meals he could get for 25 baht. I'm not sure I could exist on 25 baht meals, but that's why I'm so certain he's still thin as a rake.

 

Not if you drink it black, as nature intended.Add sugar, cream & cakes, there there are some calories to count.

Going naked in public could be argued as being 'as nature intended'.

 

How about walking into a branch of Starbuck's buck-naked and ordering black coffee? That'll learn 'em.

 

Actually, my suspicions'd be aroused if I saw a guy (dressed all in black - fully clothed, I was only joking) come in and just order a black coffee, no sugar, no cream, no cakes, nuthin' else. I'd imagine myself in one of those film noir with only me to save the world from imminent disaster, with the black coffee-drinking guy the villain. B)

[Guest thaiworthy]

What I meant was I don't associate Starbucks with the likes of McDonalds, who surely have a more deserved reputation.

 

I forgot to mention that advertising certainly plays a role. I'll never forget the Mars candy commercial where a young man states, "Snickers help me stay satisfied by giving my stomach something to do until dinnertime." That pretty much says it all about how we think sometimes. We are trained subliminally to believe that the suggestion coming from the box dictates how we should behave. After all, the heart is always busy, why not the rest of our internal organs, too?

 

Speaking of the Snicker's bar, On February 4, 2007, during Super Bowl XLI, Snickers commercials aired which resulted in complaints by gay and lesbian groups against the maker of the candy bar, Masterfoods USA. The commercial showed a pair of auto mechanics accidentally touching lips while sharing a Snickers bar. Realizing that they "accidentally kissed", they, in three of the four versions, "do something manly" (mostly in the form of injury, including tearing out chest hair, striking each other with a very large pipe wrench, and drinking motor oil and windshield washer fluid). In the fourth version, a third mechanic shows up and asks if there is "room for three in this Love Boat."

 

Snickers Commercial

 

As for your post Rogie, if someone actually saw ME buck-naked in Starbucks, they would become so nauseous they'd never be able to eat again! Now there's a great weight-loss plan with natural behavior modification. Or is that Unnatural? It certainly isn't subliminal!

[Guest]

Actually, my suspicions'd be aroused if I saw a guy (dressed all in black - fully clothed, I was only joking) come in and just order a black coffee, no sugar, no cream, no cakes, nuthin' else.

In all probability, I must have done that.....

At least 50% of the time, my black coffee isn't accompanied by a cake & there are a lot of black clothes in the wardrobe. There won't be any Hollywood directors hunting me down though.

 

As for nude, well it could be an interesting format for a Sunnee morning coffee bar.

[Guest xiandarkthorne]

Actually, if you looked at the calorie count for a single serving of MacDonalds burgers, with a drink and even a bag of fries, it isn't all that high. If I remember right, it amounts to about one-third of the USDA recommended caloric intake only - which should be about right for ONE meal.

 

The problem,, of course, is that not only does one serving fail to really satiate most people to the point of feeling full, so they order more than the recommended serving portion. on top of that, a good part of the caloric intake from a MacDonald's meal (same for most American-style fast foods) comes from oil - which has more than twice the caloric content of either protein or carbohydrates.

 

And there again, we run into another problem. Stupid people give carbohydrates a bad name and make a big deal out of avoiding it without realizing that one gram of carbohydrate and one gram of protein have exactly the same amount of calories. Such people don't even realize that they actually need carbohydrates to function. Cutting down on carbohydrates for a long time isn't sound nutrition - it's downright dangerous as it leads to a condition called ketosis (one symptom is bad breath).

 

Since you only need about 2,500-3,500 calories per day (depending on your age and how active you are) the simple fact is that if you order and eat just one MacDonald's burger (even the most high-caloric one) and a medium-sized bag of french fries with a soft drink as one of your regular meals, you are not likely to get fat UNLESS you spend so little time moving about that your body burns much, much less.

 

Have a look at the following links to see what I mean -

 

http://calorielab.com/restaurants/mcdonalds/1

 

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20060505/how-many-calories-should-i-eat-today

 

The simple conclusion is that it isn't MacDonald's or any one meal or food which makes people fat - it's how much of anything and/or everything they stuff into their faces - and how little they exercise - that does.

[Guest thaiworthy]

Xian, how's your McDonald's stock doing? 555 (Just kidding.)

 

Actually, you are totally correct about carbs. I love carbs, but I can't lose weight by eating much of them. I probably need to be more active, like you said.

 

With that in mind, look at this food pyramid. Look where the carbs are! It bears out just exactly what you have been saying. I wonder what the nutritional values are in a slice of Kokopelli's pizza! What's that donut doing there at the very bottom right of the pyramid? Aren't those the infamous empty calories we've been told about? Also, aren't the bag of (tortilla) chips at the top of the pyramid essentially the same as the taco shell shown at the bottom left? Both are fried. Hmmm . . .

 

[Guest xiandarkthorne]

I wish I did have MacD stock. They're like a guaranteed and extra royal blue chip on the Malaysian stock market nowadays.

 

I'd have thought that with so much information available and tv reality shows like The Biggest Loser being so popular (they're into their umpteeenth season now), people would know that there's no such thing as a magic bullet for weight loss (or getting rich) - and stop blaming any one particular food or food group for their own laziness. Even oil is an essential part of the daily diet and the human body can't assimilate certain vitamins without it.

 

I truly believe the number of people who genuinely cannot lose weight because of medical problems is nowhere near the number that claim to be so. I've been fighting my own flab for years and never once believed that God and my parents made me to be fat.

 

I believe in accepting full responsibility for everything I put in my mouth

[Rogie]

There won't be any Hollywood directors hunting me down though.

Talking of film noir, it must be about time for a Third Man remake - have you considered taking up the zither?

 

What's that donut doing there at the very bottom right of the pyramid? Aren't those the infamous empty calories we've been told about?

Looks to me the food pyramid's a bit of a tease - you can't persuade me it's 'safe' to eat up to 11 donuts a day!

 

I believe in accepting full responsibility for everything I put in my mouth.

You sucker

[Guest thaiworthy]

. . . there's no such thing as a magic bullet for weight loss . . .

Actually Xian, there IS a magic bullet for weight loss. And here it is:

 

I have several of these and it is the greatest invention since the wheel. It works like a blender, but is much easier to use and clean. I use it every day. I lost over 100 lbs with this gadget when I made protein drinks with this:

 

 

They have many flavors and they are all delicious and zero-carb.

 

Sorry for the commercial, but this is very appropriate to the topic.

[Guest xiandarkthorne]

Thanks for the tip. I haven't seen it in Malaysia yet, however. Unfortunately, a zero-carb diet will see me fainting all over the place like some overheated Victorian grande dame. I have low blood sugar and need the carbs.

[Guest snapshot]

Have you noticed that many Thai men are getting fatter?

Having dated a few young Thai guys, I don't think there's any special reason there might be more overweight ones now than in the past. You have a Western-food diet (high glycemic index) combined with a sedentary lifestyle. Fairly easy for some of them to become a bit overweight if they're not watching their diet/exercise.

 

Having said that, I see a LOT more disgustingly overweight farangs than Thais. Don't know why as it ain't that hard to keep a good body.

[bkkguy]

Having said that, I see a LOT more disgustingly overweight farangs than Thais.

 

I resemble that remark!

 

Don't know why as it ain't that hard to keep a good body.

 

 

as a typical fat ugly old falung I find the good bodies that keep me hard aren't hard to keep - just expensive!

 

bkkguy

[fedssocr]

I think it depends on where you go. If you judge by Bangkok it is likely a very skewed view since there are so many middle class and upper class Thais there. I would bet you don't see a lot of fat kids in the poorer areas on the country. But combine high fat, high sugar fast food products with sedentary lifestyle spent playing video games, etc and you get fat kids. And I think the notion mentioned about that Thais equate being overweight with being wealthy is likely a part of people not worrying about it.

 

I would argue against the notion of chubby Buddhas meaning anything though. That is a Chinese thing. Thai and SE Asian Buddhas are almost always very svelte.