Economists talking about FAT issues

A very interesting article about FAT from FT

Important points:

• Obesity is not only developed countries concern. It’s spreading fast among developing countries. Worldwide, an estimated 1.6 bn adults are now overweight, with 400m of them obese.
• Most scientists agree on the cause of obesity. While human being’ physical activity has declined significantly since their hunter-gatherer ancestors, their consumption of energy-dense food has remained stable or increased.
• Social trends have led to the breakdown of well-prepared, regular and healthy family meals. In their place is industry-backed “hyper-eating” through the day, with a combination of aggressive marketing, widespread availability of low-cost, super-sized portions of “ultra-processed foods” containing ever more tempting but unhealthy combination of fat and sugar.
• Progress in tackling obesity has been extremely limited. While weight loss has become a huge industry, there is little evidence that most diets and supplements work in the long-term. A medical prof says: “it’s depressing to me as a scientist but the results of anti-obesity drugs are not very impressive and we have little to offer patients.”

As I read this article… I feel that as much as we (bloggers) take as granted some healthy habits,  our food and exercise choices, the rest of the population (or the majority) still make poor life style choices. Do they want to be that way? Definitely not. Do they have choices? Yes, but it’s a hard one to choose to be healthy. With today’s marketing success, temptation surrounding food is everywhere, a poor lifestyle is easy, cheap and fast.

If I had the chance, I’d do the following experiment: Count number of food commercials on TV at premium time and correlate that number with the percentage of population that is overweight in that country/city/area, the correlation is going to be pretty high!

I wonder if there is a way out, but it’s definitely not an easy one. What do you think? What would you do about obesity if you were the president of a country?

******

Chinese food continues. I made black chicken soup

ingredients: half black chicken (you can find it in asian stores)

hydrated black fungus and shiitake mushrooms

ginger

It took 6 hours to cook the chicken  (i like it very tender). At the end add bok choy and salt.

served with rice. 🙂