Posted on 02/11/2008 6:54:44 PM PST by blam
Spam at heart of South Pacific obesity crisis
By Nick Squires In Sydney
Last Updated: 12:32pm GMT 11/02/2008
It was lampooned by Monty Python and spurned by British shoppers, but Spam is fuelling a "raging epidemic" of diabetes, strokes and heart disease among the previously lithe inhabitants of the South Pacific.
Another of Britain's colonial culinary legacies - corned beef - is also being blamed for a rise in obesity-related illnesses in countries once known for muscled warriors and slim-hipped maidens.
Many islanders drive to the local shop to buy tins of spam
Countries across the region - many of them former British territories, from Tonga to Tuvalu - are struggling to deal with a health crisis caused by poor diet and not enough exercise.
Where once islanders ate fish, vegetables and coconuts, burning off excess calories by casting nets from canoes and farming small plots of land, now they eat tinned, processed food and drive to the nearest shop.
Once confined to the South Pacific's somnolent capitals, the problem of obesity has now spread to outlying islands.
"Even if you go into a store in a remote village you'll find shelves of Spam and corned beef," said Dr Jan Pryor, the director of research at the Fiji School of Medicine.
"In the past it was unusual for anyone to have a stroke under 50, now people are having strokes in their twenties and thirties. You see it every day."
Figures from the World Health Organisation show that Pacific island nations make up eight of the world's 10 most obese countries.
"What we have in this country is a raging epidemic. We have 6,000 to 8,000 cases of diabetes out of a population of 53,000 people," said Carl Hacker, the director of economic policy and planning in the Marshall Islands.
"What is unfolding here is a physical disaster and a fiscal disaster."
The single-island nation of Nauru, which faces economic disaster in the wake of its Australian-run refugee detention centre closing down last week, heads the list with 94.5 per cent of people older than 15 defined as obese.
Similar problems are repeated across the South Pacific.
"When I was a child, there was less imported food, we would eat local food, which was high carbohydrate, low sugar and high fibre," said Dr Malokai Ake, the chief medical officer for public health in Tonga.
"We would walk or ride on a horse to work in the plantations and spend a lot of time fishing, swimming or diving.
"The amount of calories people have every day now, we used to only have on feast days."
Researchers have suggested Pacific Islanders have a genetic disposition to obesity. They say their metabolism has learned to cope over thousands of years with times of plenty and periods of famine by quickly storing surplus calories as body fat.
Tonga's late king, Taufa'ahau Tupou IV, who died in 2006, was once renowned as the world's heaviest monarch, weighing in at 440lbs.
He tried to persuade his subjects to lose weight by taking up - in his seventies - regular bicycle rides up and down the runway of the country's international airport.
But education has not been enough to curb the growth of obesity, largely because of economics.
It is cheaper to buy "mutton flaps" - belly cuts from sheep which are high in saturated fat - from New Zealand and Australia, or "turkey tails" from the US, than fresh local fish.
Some countries have tried banning the most unhealthy imports.
Fiji banned the importation of mutton flaps in 2000 and Samoa banned imports of turkey tails in 2007.
You might want to check the expiration date on those cans. :-)
In case the last picture wasn't enough... Yeah, I know the rules. :-)
if that is not the scariest site since mulletsgalore.com i don’t know what is. just horrible.
They excel in Sumo!
In Hawaii some of the locals don’t eat until they are full, they eat until their arms get tired.
Wikipedia, for what that’s worth, says there’s even a halal version of spam. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(food)
They better not mess with our cases of spam or they’ll have a fight on their hands. And that goes for our cases of tuna as well. lolol
“I always thought spam and treet were about the same thing.”
Treet tastes better.
No wonder I have a cholesterol problem.
KV started a wierd/gross food collection many years ago.
Yep spam is in it and friend brought him Middle Eastern version of Spam back from their trip.
I need to get him a bottle of fish heads for his collection and a few other oddities from the Asian food store.
She won because she’s the only thin one.
Spam has been around for HOW long, and now all of the sudden out of the blue its “causing obesity”?
Sounds crazy to me.. lol
Ha! Very funny... (not)
You should’ve seen how pretty the others were.
Reminds me of the line Billy Bob Thornton said, “That potted meat is nothin’ but lips and pe**ers.” When I go to the islands I won’t have to worry about flab hangin’ over my swimtrunks — I’ll be one of the locals!
How do you know it tastes like human flesh?
“I remember Nikita Krhuschev (I have no idea how to spell that name) said he would have starved to death during WWII if it had not been for Spam.”
...that’s how Spam got started in our family...she and I ate it while my Dad was overseas in the Pacific....I’ve got a couple of fresh cans tucked away in the pantry right now along with a sack of silver dollars and an AK-47....you never know.
"Enjoy a relaxing Micro-SPAM-Abrasion Facial in our brand new SPAM Spa!"
I kid you not...it's there.
Love it. You forgot the mayonnaise though.
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