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Asian Feasts -
Recent Changes in Asian Diets
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Asia Weighs Up
Most Asians are now living lives our grandparents wanted. Infant
and maternal mortality rates have fallen significantly in many
countries; life expectancy is higher than it has ever been in
history and poverty and malnutrition rates are gradually
declining (albeit at a rate slower than most policy makers would
like).
With so much good news, why then are health professionals
concerned? Health-wise, economic development has come to Asia as
a double-edged sword. Economic prosperity has reduced the number
of malnourished and hungry people. On the other hand, economic
and technological development, focused mainly in the larger
cities, has attracted people living in the rural countryside to
the urban centres. While city-living provides better educational
and employment opportunities, it also takes away many aspects of
the traditional lifestyle that health professionals now realise
were actually rather healthful, e.g. lots of physical activity
and diets based on less energy-dense foods.
Urban shift
For instance, traditional communities ate more cereals tuber and
grains, usually grown in their own fields. These starchy staples
were supplemented with home-grown vegetables, and the occasional
animal protein treat. A generation ago, our grandparents walked
everywhere, or if slightly wealthier perhaps cycled to work and
leisure activities.
Today’s city-dwellers need to exert considerably less physical
energy in their daily lives, for example the hard toil of
harvesting, drying and storing the rice crop, is replaced by
shopping and carrying a bag of groceries home from the market.
Lengthy meal preparation by the home-based womenfolk of the
house is replaced by women and men working in sedentary jobs,
and relying heavily on street food which is cheap and plentiful
all over Asia. We are also eating more meat, and less
vegetables, than our grandparents.
Studies have suggested that environmental cues to eat (sight,
smell and advertisements for food) play a role in whetting our
appetite, even when we are full. To compound the problem, most
of the foods we gravitate to are high in fats, sugars or refined
carbohydrates. The ready availability of food at reasonable
prices has placed environmental cues that encourage us to eat –
cues that our grandparents were not subject to. For example,
walk along any street in Asia and you would be bombarded by
billboards, restaurants and street food sellers offering
everything from fast-food to snacks and desserts that tempt even
the most strong-willed.
Technology has also given us time-saving appliances that take
aware the ardour of many household chores. What used to take
hours of manual labour is now carried out by washing machines or
vacuum cleaners.
Many of us spend long hours at work to achieve financial
security and meet society’s demand for productivity by working
at sedentary jobs. Unfortunately the long hours at work leave us
with little time for physical activity. Many of us are also too
stressed out at the end of the day to partake in what we
perceive as more work! Instead we plonk our weary bodies in
front of the television as a form of recreation. Our children
huddle before computer screens instead of playing hopscotch or
football, as previous generations might have done.
Greater income also enables us to indulge more in the Asian
tradition of celebration with food. With more disposable income,
we reward ourselves regularly with feasts that might have been
annual events in our grandparents’ time.
While no sector of society started out with an agenda of
increasing overweight and obesity rates, our shifting lifestyles
and diet choices have gradually allowed overweight and obesity
to creep up on us. |
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Weighing in the choices
But all is not lost with the battle of the bulge. Being
overweight need not be an automatic or unavoidable consequence
of modern living. Governments and health professionals are now
aware that obesity is a rising problem in Asia and are working
together with the private sector to address it.
We do know a great deal about what constitutes a healthy diet
and a healthy lifestyle. A healthy diet does not mean total
exclusion of any food group or food type from your diet. Instead
of labelling foods as “good” or “bad,” nutritionists most
commonly advise there is a place for all foods in a healthy
diet, provided some basic diet and lifestyle guidelines are used
in shaping individual choices: the great variety of food in the
urban, modern world actually provides unprecedented
opportunities to achieve a healthy diet with wide variety of
foods. However, this expanded choice available to so many of the
current generations must be balanced by the principle of
“everything in moderation”, to avoid the pitfalls of excess
consumption of specific foods, food groups or nutrients.
Global trade has increased the variety of fruits and vegetables
available in the supermarket aisle. Even traditional wet markets
now stock produce from the four corners of the earth, giving us
a greater selection of healthy greens and fruits to choose from.
Food processing not only brings convenience to the consumer, but
has resulted in the development of new products with health
benefits; for example, products made with whole grains and
therefore high in dietary fibre: Thus today’s consumer may
choose to eat less starch staples such as cassava, brown rice,
yams than grandparents did, but can enjoy substitutes such as
whole wheat bread; whole grain cereals, pasta and breakfast
cereal and maintain a healthy intake of dietary fibre.
Remember also, that food should continue to be recognised
according to traditional values, namely ‘nourishment for the
body and pleasure for the soul’. Studies have indicated that
communities who view food as a source of sustenance and pleasure
have lower levels of overweight, obesity and eating disorders
than societies which placed heavy emphasis on ‘ideal’ body forms
and view food as primarily a source of good or poor health.
Researchers such as Popkin and Gaesser have concluded that a
pre-occupation with food’s role in body weight management may,
paradoxically, actually result in more eating disorder such as
binge eating and failures in achieving healthy weight
management.
Let’s play!
Underpinning all efforts to promote healthy diets is the
exhortation to increase physical activity. In the previous
generation, physical activity was associated with work and was
to be avoided as much as possible. In today’s environment where
the majority of the population are not involved in manual labour,
our mind-set needs to change.
Remember when you were young and running, jumping or biking was
fun? That’s how we should view physical activity – as a means to
play and have fun. Physical activity need not entail vigorous,
breathless exercising. In fact, it could be incorporated into
entertainment, as in dance or sports, into household chores –
washing cars, gardening, or as plain play – as in throwing a
Frisbee in the park or playing catch with your kids.
Getting into physical activity as play not only invigorates your
body, it also energises your mind. And what better way to engage
the younger generation, then to get involved in doing what they
love best!
For those of us who are now in a healthy weight, increasing our
physical activity by even the smallest bit has also been shown
to pay huge dividends.
Bottom-line, while economic development and urbanisation may
seem to have negative effects on our waist-line, it is not a
battle lost. We have better choices and better information on
how to achieve our ideal weight and to stay healthier, despite
environmental conditions against them.
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