Obesity in Malaysia

Malaysia was a different country 50 years ago. Its people were thin and tall. They were fit and could manage a lot of manual work from morning till dark. Today's population is different. Many are fat or obese, and cannot manage to perform manual work for the whole day. They tire fast and eat more, and rest longer. They prefer a sedantary lifestyle as opposed to a laborious one. They don't want to sweat at all and prefer air-conditioned rooms.

In the old days, diabetes was a small problem and only a few suffered its complications. Today, many Malaysians, young and old, have this unfortunate disease. A cause of concern is the way we eat and stuff ourselves. We eat to the fullest and drink the sweetest or milkiest (eg air katheera, air bandung, milkshakes, banana shake with chinchau, etc). We always want the best for out tummies and nothing for our brains or in our brains. This is the root of evil and a certain cause for obesity, and diabetes naturally follows suit. Can we stop becoming fat and steer away from diabetes? Yes, but believe me, it is quite hard to do.

Nobody can say no to food when one is hungry. Nobody can say no to water when one is thirsty. We cannot say no to a lot of things today. Everything that appears in front of our two round eyes is appetizing to the nth degree. We must have what we see. We must eat what we see. We must have food of our choice. Our bodies have not learned to say no or to stop eating. We have not trained our bodies to say no or to stop munching. We let out wants and desires guide our lives and so we eat to live and live to eat endlessly and carelessly. We stuff ourselves with extra unneeded food. We transform ourselves from our human form to a wastebin. With a waistbin mentality, we eat and eat and eat till something comes out at the other end. We no longer use our brain to reason why we must stop eating before we are full. Feeling full is no longer a red traffic light. We choose to beat the red traffic light. The STOP sign means nothing to us and is just an icon with no attached meaning.

Today, almost all of us undeniably prefer this waistbin mentality and thus open ourselves to excessive eating, in trying to fulfill all our cravings. With supermarket shelves always well-stocked, it is easy to stick to frozen food. It is easy to serve frozen food, we only need to re-heat and then eat till we are full. We can keep eating and not worry about our frozen foodstock running low or running out. With this strategic supply-demand working in our favour, we can sit back and eat, and enjoy life to the fullest while we can. We become obese in our very own homes from our own doing. Ask your hands and mouths.

This happy life cannot go on forever. With good food 24/7, there is an open invitation to obesity, which must come hand-in-hand with diabetes. We actually don't really have a choice once we hit obesity. The choice is doubly not there when we hit diabetes. There is however one unavoidable choice after diabetes and this is death! The central dogma for us wrt eating today is: Eat excessively --> Obesity --> Diabetes --> Death. Notice that the arrows are irreversible.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12164473