Education and awareness. I live in Southeast Asia, where the difference in physical morphology between generations is most striking: from the early 1990s onward a ‘new middle class’ began to generate cash as never before and in response supermarkets and a processed food industry sprung up (most notably what has morphed into a gigantic dairy empire — an ominous sign).
Indian mothers are notorious for stuffing their boys to the extent that rolls of fat and floppy man-boobs adorn 8-year-olds. You can tell them that their sons will likely die of a heart attack or diabetes before their 40th birthday but it washes right over them. There is an epidemic of overweight kids in Japan, already suffering health problems. The average Filipino teenager has huge cavities or missing teeth from a high-sugar diet (and poor dental hygiene).
Walk through any modern supermarket in a third-world country and 90% of the stuff on shelves is loaded with sugar, high-fructose corn syrup or other sweeteners. Governments by and large ignore this: as long as hygienic standards are met, nutritional ones simply ape whatever is popular in the west.
When I completed my last job in Japan (late 1980s) the most outrageous sign of degeneration in a classic diet of protein, fiber, and vitamins — in modest portions — was ‘fan-han’: a mother bribes her child into eating his steamed white rice (‘go-han’) by allowing him to spice it up with a bottle of Fanta. I wish I was kidding.
A recent visit to California was as eye-opening as I’d come to expect: 19-year-old males who could barely pass through a doorway (mostly black, alas). A ‘new normal’ of gigantic servings: when my pal Paul took me to a taquería in San Francisco we placed orders for what I expected to be a modest plate of nachos (for me) and a plate of meat and vegetables (Paul’s). What was served was a heaped platter that led me to ask ‘Where’s the rest of the family?’ He had to take half of it home for the next day. I made myself finish off the starch, spice & grease because leaving food uneaten is immoral.
It’s a combination of seduction, unethical business practice and ignorance. Eateries serve huge portions to ‘look good’ and also so they can charge more for them (raw materials are cheap, so why not serve fatter portions?) Parents do not encourage their children to eat only what will keep up their energy level, and not over-stuff (or gorge on snacks between meals). Who tells their kids they should leave the table a little hungry any more?
And doctors. And nutritionists. As one keen YouTube lecturer put it, bewailing the sponsorship of a convention on healthy eating by a cattlemen’s association, ‘The health industry doesn’t concern itself with food and the food industry doesn’t concern itself with health.’
