Post: #1

Quote:Obesity Could Emerge As Major Challenge In Central Asia, Caucasus

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned that obesity and diet-related illnesses could emerge as major health threats in Central Asia and Caucasus.

A FAO report links the trend to changing diet and lifestyle habits, as well as poverty.

The report warns that as diets shift from cereals toward higher consumption of meat and dairy products, the risk factors behind chronic, non-communicable diseases could rise in parts of the region.

The findings came in a report presented at the FAO regional conference in Baku on April 19-20.

The report also predicts that the percentage of people experiencing hunger in Central Asia and Caucasus will drop from nine to two percent by 2030, and then to one percent by 2050.

http://www.rferl.org/content/obesity_cen...54723.html

I'm wondering to what extent this is true.

Post: #2

This won't affect most men in the region, as they don't live long enough for many of the chronic conditions associated with obesity to appear.

Post: #3

I sense a conspiracy from the grain lobby.

Post: #4

Unless their "shift from cereals toward higher consumption of meat and dairy products" means fried chicken and ice cream I think this is complete bullshit.

Post: #5

No this is very much true. "Cereals" aren't just grains as us in the West know them. Every culture on the globe has a staple "Cereal" whiten their traditional diet. The prices of traditional grains have skyrocketed across the globe. If people remember this essentially what started the riots in Egypt which lead to the downfall of Mubarak. If places do not have subsidies left n place then people start to look at different options and meat strangely enough becomes a cheaper alternative.

Crappy feed is easy to come by the FAO will dump boatloads of crappy corn and soy for populations (to eat or) feed animals. The shrubs which are not fit for human consumption can also feed the animals too. Read the FAO release and you see there concerns are obesity yes, but also the environmental implications of these rural regions turning more and more to animal consumption.

This is just a continuing of the trend exporting Western dietary norms and policies Worldwide.

Post: #6

>exporting Western dietary norms and policies Worldwide.

So Asia should return to a diet of white rice and widespread beriberi disease from a lack of vitamin B1?

Post: #7

(04-24-2012 05:28 PM)Blackhawk Wrote:  >exporting Western dietary norms and policies Worldwide.

So Asia should return to a diet of white rice and widespread beriberi disease from a lack of vitamin B1?

I am sure this change into polishing the rice was not a 'natural' custom. Nobody was around to account for anything prior to this.. do you honestly think a natural population would continue to eat something that would make them sick and die? It would eventually wipe them out or they would adjust. You evolve or die. Nobody knows if a certain strain of rice was introduced or if a subsequent source of thiamine was eradicated from the diet for whatever reason. Nobody knows if a natural instance such as a flood or typhoon fucked over a traditional habitat where a more variety of food was more plentiful.

I say this because I don't fall into the colinal "savior" camp. Most history written of those times painted Westerners as saviors, thus no records exsist of what was the cause... only that colinalists we're the saviors. They observed.. provided their solution.

Lets not forget the American Colonial Britsh almost starved to death from not knowing how to prepare maize for consumption. The Native Americans had to teach them how to prepare the maize with lye. Or the Irish growing the same potato strains that were subject more-so to fungus and it nearly wiping them out.

More investigation is needed. Why has it become more practically and economical for these rural populations to raise grazing animals and feed more-so of protein versus traditional staple cereals? Is it soil?, market issues?, Climate? The FAO does not describe much in their article. But from a friend who has grown up in a area in the DRC where the FAO was present he always told me they would send them shitty corn and grain that was of poor quality and nobody wanted to eat it and they would instead feed it to the goats and chickens, or they would send in cheap grains that would under-cut local farmers, or from having to migrate to a different area dude to war and finding grounds that we're not ideal for agriculture.

A host of different reasons can go wrong. But like I said I stand in that camp that West is more ignorant that not on these types of issues... I've rarely been proven wrong in this front.

To quick to search for solutions I would like to know why things happen before prescribing a solution to fix it. Very much a A-typical western response - observe-solution.