Obesity Was Rising as Ghana Embraced Fast Food. Then Came KFC.
Ghana, a coastal African country of more than 28 million still etched with pockets of extreme poverty, has enjoyed unprecedented national prosperity in the last decade, buoyed by offshore oil. Though the economy slowed abruptly not long ago, it is rebounding and the signs of new fortune are evident: millions moving to cities for jobs, shopping malls popping up and fast food roaring in to greet people hungry for a contemporary lifestyle.
Chief among the corporate players is KFC, and its parent company, YUM!, which have muscled northward from South Africa — where KFC has about 850 outlets and a powerful brand name — throughout sub-Saharan Africa: to Angola, Tanzania, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana and beyond. The company brings the flavors that have made it popular in the West, seasoned with an intangible: the symbolic association of fast food with rich nations.
But KFC's expansion here comes as obesity and related health problems have been surging. Public health officials see fried chicken, french fries and pizza as spurring and intensifying a global obesity epidemic that has hit hard in Ghana — one of 73 countries where obesity has at least doubled since 1980. In that period, Ghana's obesity rates have surged more than 650 percent, from less than 2 percent of the population to 13.6 percent, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent research center at the University of Washington.
The U.S. had a 13% obesity rate in 1962. The CDC estimated that 36.5-37.7% of U.S. adults aged 20+ were obese in 2014 (17% of children/teenagers aged 2-19).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @02:19PM (1 child)
I've seen the science to the sugar problem, and it checks out. Additionally, fats are something the body requires. I've yet to see a skinny person who drinks diet soda and chows down on fat-free whatever. My natural preferences don't include a lot of carbs, anyway. I've also been becoming a skinny person over the past year.
I've been wondering if there's something more going on. I'm thinking that people have forgotten how important it is to feel satiated. I'm thinking beyond the Puritan framework that says that satiation makes you fat. I believe the opposite: satiation makes you thin. However, and I've watched this with my roommate, who is in the third or fourth year now of a herculean struggle to lose weight without much success, I think we need to start approaching this problem as an addiction problem.
Sugary foods are addictive, plain and simple. Even diet sodas with zero calories are bad choices because they feed the sugar addiction. While I don't believe that the science is entirely there with zero calorie sweeteners, some findings should give one pause. Yet, they are most probably "healthy" in the sense that a healthy person can consume these substances without harm.
The reason I think an addiction framework is especially important is because somebody who is overweight needs to rethink their relation to foods. The body requires food; it's fuel that makes the body go. Food should also be satisfying to eat when the body requires more fuel, but one should not desire more fuel because it causes a satisfying feeling in the body. The body will always be satisfied with more food, and it can store as much as it needs to in the reserve fuel tank called body fat.
Losing weight is draining the reserve fuel tank, and reframing the question of meals in the light of "what kind of fuel and how much fuel will my body require for my average day?" Also one should recognize that the body has a delay. Starving today will not make one thinner tomorrow. Overeating today will not make one fatter tomorrow. Simply focus on providing the body its nutritional needs, nothing more, nothing less.
Because it is an addiction, the body, especially at first, will demand more and more. The body will raise those signals that say "I'm literally starving! If we do not eat, death comes within days!" Those may be ignored with sufficient mindfulness and keeping the mind's focus on the present moment (even if there is nothing else engaging in the present moment--quiet meditation helps here, focusing the mind on awareness of all the little sounds and smells that it normally filters from perception). However, also because it is an addiction, this will pass with time as the body adjusts to a more appropriate amount of food for one's level of activity.
Additionally, people often forget that the body must expend more energy to maintain muscle than other tissues, excepting the mind. Most jobs do not involve manual labor, but the body requires some form of exercise to be healthy. I think we need to somehow encourage a culture of regular weight training, not with the goal of being buff, but with the goal of regularly lifting modest weight to keep the body fit. This should be an activity one undertakes regularly for one's own health after discarding more vain reasons.
I am not a fan of cardio, and I've read some things that indicate that cardio can even be counterproductive to somebody hopeful of shedding body fat because it tends to activate the body's "I'm literally starving and will die in a matter of days!" alarm. One anecdote I read was about a cardio club who did cardio for three hours together every Saturday morning. Nobody lost any weight, because they all headed to IHOP afterwards, and their bodies instructed them to wolf down enough calories to replace the energy they had just released on treadmills and bikes!
Overall, counting calories is a good idea while overcoming food addiction. However, I've never been a big fan of "calories in! calories out!" because it does not immediately lead to anything productive other than arbitrary diet restriction, which can quickly blow up in one's face if one begins malnourishing oneself chasing the "calories in!" side or overexerting oneself chasing the "calories out!" side. There has to be a more positive and productive way that works with many more people than shouting about calories in and out does.
Having a healthy, strong body is its own reward. Unlike all those other things that asshole say are "for your own good" that don't really bring one any improvement, a healthy body is simply better and more comfortable to live in.
I guess this post went on long, but I just wanted to mention my biggest pet peeve of all. Every time I see a magazine or advertisement for a clinic with some bold claim like "lose 20 lbs in 1 week!" I always figure they must be advertising some way of initiating spontaneous human combustion, because I do not know how else the body can release that much energy (3500 kcal/lb) in such a short amount of time without bursting into flames. Feel the burn I guess!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @08:28AM
https://doi.org/10.1001%2Fjama.1933.02740440032009 [doi.org] "In low, or therapeutic, doses, the metabolism may be increased 50 per cent or more over considerable periods of time without unpleasant symptoms or toxicity."