Genes aside, you are what you eat

8 Feb 2010
To keep obesity at bay, exercise discipline at the dinner table
By John McBeth, Senior Writer

FOR the life of me, I can't understand the attraction of The Biggest Loser, the Hallmark reality television show where grossly fat people compete to see how much weight they can lose - and then probably put it all back on later.

That's because I can't help thinking to myself how such young, able-bodied people could have become so overweight in the first place if they had eaten properly, played sport or even got off the couch occasionally.

The programme makes no real effort to explain that. Instead, we are treated to the spectacle of competitors with unbelievable rolls of fat sweating and straining to take off a few pounds each week.

I assume they were all given a prior medical check. But is it really good for people carrying that much weight to exert themselves in such a manner? Shouldn't they be doing some fast walking first?

'It must be morbid fascination, but I just like watching all those fat people,' says one of my friends, a slimly-built teacher and physical education instructor. 'Maybe it makes me feel better that I'm not as fat as that.'

Obviously, genes play a big role in determining a person's susceptibility to weight gain - but only up to a point, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), whose figures on obesity are still less than comprehensive.

But with an estimated 300 million people worldwide now defined as clinically obese, WHO points the main finger of blame at 'energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods with high levels of sugar and saturated fats'.

The Biggest Loser Asia is the biggest eye-opener. The 16 initial contestants weighed in at a staggering 2,307kg, or an average of 144kg. Their average age was 30, with the youngest being 19 and the oldest 41.

What my teacher friend notices is that the Asians in the programme lack the work ethic of their American counterparts and tend to be the biggest whiners. The need to speak English means the contestants are relatively well educated and that in turn suggests a more privileged upbringing and all that that entails in Asia.

Many also have a broad American accent, which probably partly explains why they have a weight problem in the first place. There is also that thing in Asia about fat children being some sort of status symbol.

But the point is, only a few decades ago, one would have hardly seen a fat person in a region where skinny reigned supreme. What changed it all was economic growth - and with it, the explosion of American fast-food restaurants.

The only such outlet in Bangkok I can remember in the early 1970s was a small Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) joint on downtown Silom Road, with a big cut-out of Colonel Sanders standing on the potholed footpath outside.

It wasn't very popular with the Thais. In fact, back in those days rice was king and most Thais wouldn't even look at Western food. Why would they, when they have arguably the world's best cuisine?

Fast forward to 2003 and there are now 281 KFC outlets in Thailand - plus another 650 or more across Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. Then add the 750 McDonald's and 370 Pizza Hut outlets that have sprouted in the same four countries.

The year 2003 was also when the Thai Public Health Ministry disclosed that 33.8 per cent of Thai females and 31.5 per cent of males were obese - a remarkable 50 per cent increase in only five years.

Perhaps more troubling was a second study, based on a weight-to-height ratio, showing that obesity among five- to 12-year-old Thai children rose from 12.2 per cent to 16 per cent in just two years.

For all the fast-food temptations, Asians are still a lot thinner than their Western counterparts. More than 60 per cent of Americans, for example, are either overweight or obese, including 20 per cent of teenagers.

On one recent Biggest Loser show, a 212lb (96kg) American woman, tensely preparing to mount the scales, said she was worried that eating out with her friends on just one evening had undone her recent weight loss.

Why? Didn't she look at what she was eating? Hasn't anyone heard of a little discipline at the dinner table?

Most of us eat fast food occasionally. I hate to say it, but every six months or so, I get the urge for a KFC fix myself. But in my experience, the whole issue for children revolves around decent parenting.

I had to eat everything on my plate before I was allowed to leave the table. As a result, there is not a single vegetable I don't like - even those that I used to hate. In fact I'm sure I eat more vegetables than most so-called vegetarians. That is the result of the decent parenting my generation received.

But how many times have I sat down with a lot of my younger friends and watched their children simply refuse to look at anything grown in a garden. They don't know what they're missing.

Of course, we won't be discussing beer drinking in this column.

thane.cawdor@gmail.com

So what are the reasons for obesity to take place according to this article?