health observations

Yesterday I woke up early to support my roommates, Jenna and Joe, in the Santiago half marathon. It was a spectacular event, starting out on the lawn of the presidential palace. The t-shirts were all red, white, and blue depending on which race you were running, and they created the biggest Chilean flag with their shirts. The event was so full of Chilean pride, every two seconds someone would start a chant of C.H.I.L.E. CHI CHI CHI LE LE LE VIVA CHILE!! They were all amped up, commenting on how they as a country had banded together since the earthquake, and they were going to sobrevivir and come out stronger than ever. There were more than 20,000 participants, and first place prize was $20,000! For the men, the first place winner was from Kenya, the 2nd and 3rd were from Nigeria. It was really funny reading the marthon handbook, for the tips for before the marathon it said something like ´´instead of eating candy and sugar before the race, you should eat pasta´´... something very necessary to include in Chile.

Jenna and I have been talking and thinking a lot about nutrition in this country. For the past 2 years, since taking my nutrition course and of course since reading The China Study, I see the world with new eyes and I really notice people´s eating habits.. Being a vegan in this country is unheard of, and Chileans have a hard time understanding what a vegetarian is (they´ll hand you a plate and say- Oh! but it just has a little bit of meat in it¨).

The health myths and information and habits here can be somewhat shocking to me. For example, one day I was in the kitchen with my host mom eating grapes, and she said ´´Yes, I love grapes, but the bad thing is that they are very fattening´´ and then proceeded to make a sandwich with ham and cheese on white bread.. Or another time she served me some cactus fruit and said the same thing, ´´it´s delicious, but be careful because it will make you fat´´. I didn´t even know how to begin dispelling that rumor for her.. Living with the host family was a constant back and forth of me having to explain why I didn´t want any soda, why I preferred wheat bread, that yes I was satisfied eating a salad and fruit for dinner, why I was ok with eating the skin of the fruit, etc, and at times it made me feel like I was the weird one for my eating habits. I´m constantly having to explain myself. But I understand where they are coming from, because I used to view vegans/vegetarians with the same incredulousness. Jenna´s host mom used to serve her breakfasts that consisted of 4 pieces of white toast, 10 cookies, and eggs. Everything that they cook that has the potential to be healthy is then cooked in oil, covered with butter and salt. The recipe to make quinoa here recommends adding a cup of milk, eggs, and cream.

Looking at the menus here and then looking around at what people are eating is stunning. As I wrote earlier, the common dishes here are just a heart attack waiting to happen. The plate with fries, fried eggs, and beef... the footlong hotdogs with a cup of mayonaise... the constant cookies...white bread, white rice, white pasta... It´s also interesting to look at people´s grocery carts, full of this stuff that is just horrible for your health (same as when I worked at the Fiesta market in Austin). They need George standing at the beginning of the checkout line to take out everything in the cart that is unhealthy, which would basically empty out their carts.

So while i´m feeling disturbed at people´s eating habits, I realize that underneath the habits is a wider societal problem which I think is common in Latin America (and the US). It is a privilege for us at home to be able to afford whole wheat bread, organic fruits and veggies, etc. We pick health over cost, because we have been educated to know that food can be thought of as an investment in our health, what we eat is what we are and how we feel, and that eating well now will save us thousands in healthcare costs later.

Here, the focus is on cost over health, so since white bread and white rice are cheaper than integral, they will pick the cheapest option. Granted, our health/nutritional information growing up in the states recommends lots of meat and dairy, at least now there is more of a focus on unprocessed fruits, veggies, and whole grain over white. But I´m not sure what the health information here could be (¨it is recommended that a balanced meal of sausage, mayonaise, and potatoes be the base of every diet´´...). Plus it has to do with the eating habits that your parents show you, and there seems to be such a link from the Machista attitude here to be Meat=manly, that any radical ideas about being a vegetarian (especially for a boy) would be immediately dismissed.

I was noticing how they can eat all of these things, yet everyone seems to be pretty thin... how could that be? So, I looked online and found this article http://http://www.bcn.cl/carpeta_temas_profundidad/obesidad-infantil-en-chile

which confirmed my suspicions, that although they may look thin, that does not mean healthy.

Childhood obesity rates are growing quickly here, where 21.1% of children are overweight. The article says this is due to the 3 recess periods during class, where kids and their parents are used to eating packets of cookies, fried food, etc (comida chatarra= home style cooking), and that during these snack times children eat more than half of their needed calories for the day (through sugary cookies and grease). The article recommends adressing this through education for the parents and the children.

The statistics for adults are also poor, where 60% of the population is overweight; 40% have high cholesterol; 88.8% of Chilean are sedentary, and this jumps to 97% of uneducated men; cancer rates are rising, and half of these cases can be blamed on diet. Goals set in 2000 to lower childhood obesity have not been met, and the health ministers are pushing for stricter measures.

So, how do you change the eating habits of an entire population and try to convince them that a plate of veggies is equally delicious as a hot dog? How do you overcome the meat=manly sentiment? How do you get simple health information to the public so that they will no longer think of fruits as fattening?

This is a problem that all Westernized/Developed/Developing countries are facing right now. As people´s disposable income is increasing, they are adopting the Western diet because it symbolizes afluence. And, as they adopt the Western diet, the health statistics for the country become increasingly poor, with a rise in heart attacks, cancer, diabetes, etc. With the rise in these diseases, the healthcare costs rise, and the country is losing valuable money taking care of these preventable diseases.

Well, obviously the answer in the US would be to put an end to lobbying, so that the dairy, pharmaceutical and meat lobbies would cease to have such great influence on our country´s health policies, nutritional standards, educational material, etc. We would end the subsidies that support the meat and dairy industries so that the true cost of meat would be reflected. Our ´´food pyramid´´ would be focused on whole foods and whole grains...

I have been so inspired by people like Colin Campbell (author of the China Study), Rip Esselstyn (author of The Engine 2 Diet), and John Mackey´s new employee health incentive program for Whole Foods... and it feels like the movement is gaining strength, but if places like the United States still have a long way to go, how can poorer countries around the world preserve their health? Ideally, the countries would start implementing better nutrition programs now, and focus on preventative education in the first place. But then comes the problem that legislation does not equal implementation and does not carry more weight than people´s culture and customs.

Ahhhh, just some obvservations I had. I don´t know what the solution is here, but i´ll keep pondering