The trouble with the human race is that if you tell them no, they want to do it more. Tell a child that fast food is junk food and he curls a lip in contempt and shrugs. Maybe junk to you but its pure good taste to me.
Unfortunately, hyped advertising and indulgent parents make a terrible conspiracy against health. The ‘let them’ attitude has led to the UAE having one of the highest rates of child obesity and despite the writing on the ketchup, no one seems to care.
The endless queues in front of Hardees, KFC, MC Donalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Taco Bell and the other lesser known international and local fast food giants at food courts have become the most common sight in the UAE and are testimony to the casual way we are treating what is not only a medical problem but a huge financial burden on the government and the healthcare system.
Besides what is the great pleasure in having overweight, undernourished, unhealthy children?
Statistics are often switch offs and we tend to regard them as mere numbers. But if we can read the truth in those numbers it would wake us up to reality. Stark reality.
A 2006 study published in the journal Obesity Reviews interviewed over 4,000 children in the UAE between the ages of 5 and 17 years and found that 35% were above a healthy weight range. According to an HSBC Bank International report released in May 2010, more than one-third of expat parents felt that their children’s consumption of junk has doubled since they moved to the UAE and is still rising.
But it is not an expat problem alone. In fact, local children tend to be less energetic and have reduced their physical exercises dramatically, thereby making the impact of fast foods that much worse.
While it is heartening that the government has taken a note of this and has started work in this direction nothing can be achieved unless parents bring fast food into the realm of an occasional treat rather than a daily diet. Ironically, the one happy development is that the manufacturers of such foods have themselves taken up the cause of a healthier options rather than only fried items and now have them on offer.
Harsh as this might sound it is the lazy parent who is the most to blame. It is easier, more convenient, often cheaper to pick up French Fries, some doughy sandwich or hamburger and leave it for the children rather than cook them a balanced meal.
The new lifestyle and the demands on adult time has contributed to this ‘eat on the run’ habit.
Now and then you do get some awareness and some major initiative is launched. The one that caught my eye is between the Sheikha Salama bint Hamadan al-Nahyan Foundation and the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, ht which will see leading nutritionists and sports physiologists work with schools to improve the health and well-being of children.
http://business.maktoob.com/20090000444934/UAE_Laureus_to_tackle_%20%20obesity_among_kids/Article.htm%203E
In 2009 too, UAE banned all junk food from its schools, to check on obesity and diabetes - the two worst ailments among students. But parents believe that the enforcement has been weak. Also many dieticians opine that the politics of feeding children at school, regulating foods that can be sold or served and managing the food and beverage companies who want the disposable income of UAE students will require stringent guidelines and well planned school nutrition policies. And UAE needs to really work on this.
Caroline Kanaan, a nutritionist at the Advanced Nutrition Centre in Dubai Healthcare City, says, bad eating habits are being passed on to kids by their parents. It’s very much part of the culture here – ordering junk food all the time for delivery, lack of time to cook at home. And if both the parents are working, then the situation is only worse.
Then this little boy next doors. He is five-years old and he refused to go to school, just because he wasn’t given an assurance that he would be taken to his favourite fast food giant for dinner or like the eight-year-old who has memorised the phone numbers of all her favourite fast food giants that she is now a mobile directory of all the fast food joints.
Parents are you listening?
McDonaldization of Arab world
The new KFC Supreme commercial
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