Spam at heart of South Pacific obesity crisis

[Demi]

The Telegraph
London, UK
11 February, 2008


Spam at heart of South Pacific obesity crisis

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.

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.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/11/wspam111.xml

[Songwriter]

I'd like to know what else they eat. The article is meaningless without that, isn't it. I'd bet it's loaded with cheap carbs.

[Rheneas]

Another of Britain's colonial culinary legacies - corned beef - is also being blamed

I just checked the label on the corned beef I'm having for tea, 0.5g carb per 100g product, 24.8g protein and 13.5g fat. Can't see any problem with that at all.

Spam on the other hand....bleuch!!

[pbowers]

well, i'm convinced. it's the spam and mutton flaps. i'm sure when these people get educated about the dangers of fat like us thin americans they'll be much better off.

[moggsy]

well, i'm convinced. it's the spam and mutton flaps. i'm sure when these people get educated about the dangers of fat like us thin americans they'll be much better off.

:D

Sorry if I am a bit ignorant, but what are mutton flaps anyway? Mutton chops? Or like some fast food made out of mutton (sort of like pork rinds)?

[Wifezilla]

Gary Taubes covered the population of Tokelau atols in his book "Good Calories Bad Calories". Their traditional diet of fish and coconut was replaced by meat AND REFINED FLOUR AND SUGAR. Of course they got fat and now have heart disease and type 2 diabetes like everyone else.

But it isn't the spam or the corned beef that is causing the problem. Once again some clueless twit defends carbohydrates while trashing perfectly good meat. Idiot.

[Wifezilla]

I missed this the first time through....

"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.

Hey MORON! If it is HIGH CARB it is HIGH SUGAR!

[KvonM]

I missed this the first time through....

"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.

Hey MORON! If it is HIGH CARB it is HIGH SUGAR!
i thought that too at first, but i think he's talking about local produce... stuff like breadfruit or yams that would be high in fiber and have less of an impact on blood sugar than processed foods.

my mom spent 3 years in american samoa. one of the things she noticed was that in south pacific culture, being overweight was a desireable trait. it showed wealth and prosperity. she said the locals told a story about how in WW2, the military flooded the two islands (western and american samoa) with cases and cases of canned pea soup. it absolutely flooded the market, and it didn't take long for the local population to become absolutely SICK of it. it took years to finally get rid of all of it. the samoan phrase "ooma lava" (and i'm probably spelling it ALL wrong but forgive me, i'm going phonetically here) means "all gone". the phrase "ooma lava pea-soupo" came to mean "it's all gone, it's REALLY all gone, and we're DAMN GLAD!"

my reaction to that article is "hey MORON! don't blame the SPAM! blame the ignorant westerners who SHOVED IT DOWN THEIR THROATS!" :D

[Dodger]

I'm sure that the residents are eating lots of flours and sugars.

[KvonM]

I'm sure that the residents are eating lots of flours and sugars.
now they are, yes. before europeans "discovered" those islands (and someone explain to me how the hell you can "discover" someone else's back yard?), there wasn't any wheat to make into flour.

[tebesco]

An anthropologist friend of mine lived in the Solomon Islands for a couple of years and said that while she was there, most people ate swamp cabbage (http://www.fool45.com/philippines/what-is-swamp-cabbage/) cooked in canned coconut milk, adding either spam or fresh fish.

We were both in the throes of high fat delusion and were convinced she'd done herself permanent damage with the coconut milk. She couldn't figure out how she'd managed to lose 50 pounds eating that way or why she regained it all when she came home and started eating "healthy" food again. :lol:

[pdp27]

When Weston Price travelled around he found the Pacific Islanders to be some of the most healthy, robust, and beautiful people. The pictures he took of them are amazing.

It's sad what they have become because of western influences. Ironically, the western cure for their problems is as bad as the cause.

[Wifezilla]

stuff like breadfruit or yams that would be high in fiber and have less of an impact on blood sugar than processed foods.

Items that don't have a high impact on blood sugar can still have a high impact on insulin levels. That's why the whole glycemic load thing is so confusing and can be misleading. At least in my body, Carbs is carbs. Doesn't seem to matter if it is low GI or not.

my reaction to that article is "hey MORON! don't blame the SPAM! blame the ignorant westerners who SHOVED IT DOWN THEIR THROATS!"

LOL...yuppers!

Ironically, the western cure for their problems is as bad as the cause. Sad but true.

[Azlocarb]

Spam fried in lard....yummmmmm.

[lené]

"Spam fried in lard....yummmmmm."

Heh, that's basically what I made for supper last night. Well, I used bacon grease (we save it and use it to pop corn.) Spam and veggies... we don't eat it often, but I grew up with it, and every once in a blue moon, I just crave it.

[kneebrace]

Quote:
stuff like breadfruit or yams that would be high in fiber and have less of an impact on blood sugar than processed foods.


Items that don't have a high impact on blood sugar can still have a high impact on insulin levels. That's why the whole glycemic load thing is so confusing and can be misleading. At least in my body, Carbs is carbs. Doesn't seem to matter if it is low GI or not.


Fair enough. But I'm just curious why you think the traditional diet of a lot of yams and breadfruit (high in fibre, but definitely high in carbs as well) was so healthy then? I've always been a bit confused by Weston Price's finding that the healthiest traditional diet he ever observed was the African Dinkas' which includes grain as one of their staples. I want to stress that I'm not pushing grain. I personally never eat it. But the low carb mantra of 'all carbs are bad carbs' does seem to be a bit innaccurate in the reality.

Perhaps refined carbs are what causes insulin resistance, but if you never eat refined carbs you're unlikely to develop it, and unprocessed carbs are perfectly healthy. What do you think?

Stuart

[rightnow]

Or maybe it's that the quantity of carbs you are capable of eating, either via delivery of the food or just through availability, has something to do with it.

Carrots have carbs but how many people go diabetic on carrots? Not many.

Breadish-foods have carbs and you can easily eat enough of them in bread, bagels, muffins, tortillas, pasta, even without specific extra sugar, to eventually wreck your metabolism.

Add a lot of sugar and it's dietary doom.

I personally don't know that eating a mango or eating a cup of rice is going to genuinely hurt the average person--but if the quantity of the mangos and rice was high and consistent enough, I bet it would.

I think half the problem with evaluating food is that there is the food itself, then there is the food it is eaten with, and then there is the quantity of the food eaten. As if that isn't enough, then there is the individual human, and how much and what type of food that human spent the previous 10-50 years eating. It's no wonder it's a complicated subject.

PJ

[moggsy]

I still want to know what mutton flaps are. :( I googled it, and just came up with stuff about this story. In the Google images were mostly saddles.

I don't know what they are, but I think I like them...

ETA: NVM, I think I found them deep in Google:

http://www.samoaobserver.ws/local/LNPages/0108/0808ln003.htm

Plus it was in the story...dur... I still think I like them though.

[kneebrace]

I personally don't know that eating a mango or eating a cup of rice is going to genuinely hurt the average person--but if the quantity of the mangos and rice was high and consistent enough, I bet it would.

I think half the problem with evaluating food is that there is the food itself, then there is the food it is eaten with, and then there is the quantity of the food eaten. As if that isn't enough, then there is the individual human, and how much and what type of food that human spent the previous 10-50 years eating. It's no wonder it's a complicated subject.

PJ

True. And I suppose if you've already got insulin resistance, really restricting any carbohydrate is pretty important to any hope of restoring some degree of insulin sensitivity. And even once restored, the former insulin resister is going to be much more likely to revert to inuslin insensitivity even if only 'unprocessed carbs' are consumed. Which maybe why liberal consumption of unprocessed, so called 'good carbs' is perfectly healthy for a traditional culture not raised on processed food, but a recipe for ongoing metabolic problems if you were.

Stuart

[kwikdriver]

The question is what is "high carb." My guess is they weren't getting 400 grams of carb a day from breadfruit and yams, but that's probably what they are getting now from flours and sugars. Plus, the way people eat flour and sugars (mixed with fat in pastries and so on) makes it easy to consume an enormous amount of calories. To get 400 grams of carb from yams you'd have to eat 10 cups of the stuff, and that doesn't leave room for much else. With SAD, you can get half that with a bag of chips and a Big Gulp, and then go and eat dinner and pile on even more. That doctor has probably never thought things through -- his worldview has been shaped by conventional wisdom, and he just figured they had to be eating a high carb diet because a high carb diet is good, and things back in his day were so much better than they are now.

[2bthinner!]

I bet there's always potato chips in those stores too. ;)

[Wifezilla]

I'm just curious why you think the traditional diet of a lot of yams and breadfruit (high in fibre, but definitely high in carbs as well) was so healthy then?

Depending on which source you find, Pacific Islanders either ate lots of yams, breadfruit, taro and poi or they ate MOSTLY coconut and fish and ALSO ate yams, breadfruit, etc...

If they were all healthy, trim, and had few (if any) cavities, I am more inclined to believe they were eating mostly coconut and fish and had some sweet taters on the side.

I plan on experimenting with this on myself. (Yum!)

[girlgerms]

My kids were so excited on the holidays because I bought them a tin of spam. They'd never had it before but had been listening to Weird Al's song etc. They washed out and kept the tin even!

[kneebrace]

The question is what is "high carb." My guess is they weren't getting 400 grams of carb a day from breadfruit and yams, but that's probably what they are getting now from flours and sugars. Plus, the way people eat flour and sugars (mixed with fat in pastries and so on) makes it easy to consume an enormous amount of calories. To get 400 grams of carb from yams you'd have to eat 10 cups of the stuff, and that doesn't leave room for much else. With SAD, you can get half that with a bag of chips and a Big Gulp, and then go and eat dinner and pile on even more. That doctor has probably never thought things through -- his worldview has been shaped by conventional wisdom, and he just figured they had to be eating a high carb diet because a high carb diet is good, and things back in his day were so much better than they are now.

True, Kwik, but I suppose if you were eating breadfruit, coconut, yams and some fruit every day, I think getting at least 200g would have been typical. And 200g is hardly low carb. But I agree, not a lot to be said for SAD :) .

Maybe developing insulin resistance is just not that likely with moderate carbs. Pity most of us recovering insulin resisters will probably never get to find out. I'm sure that if you stick with low carb for long enough you can reverse some of the damage, but maybe only some. Which effectively means our chances of optimum health on moderate carb are pretty slim.

Stuart

[kneebrace]

My kids were so excited on the holidays because I bought them a tin of spam. They'd never had it before but had been listening to Weird Al's song etc. They washed out and kept the tin even!

They make the best pen holders gg. The graphics on the tin are so retro. A coat of clear estapol and they're immortal.

Stuart

[Azlocarb]

I had to go to the store today to get some almonds and walked down the isle with the spam and they now offer spam singles, so I bought one. Yummy.

[SylvieK]

I lived on Oahu for several years, and ate lots of plate lunches during that time. Plate lunches are reasonably priced and very popular with locals, and there are lots of great little hole-in-the-wall places to try traditional fare made with ti leaves, taro, etc.

But the thing is, the entrees are always served with "two scoops" -- a scoop of rice and a scoop of macaroni salad!

More details on plate lunches here:

ttp://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-3453894.html

Plus there are tons of bakeries all over the island selling manapua (pastry with savory or sweet fillings), dim sum, and Chinese and Filipino sweets made w/ variations of fried dough. Not to mention shave ice with sweet syrups . . . .

Many native Hawaiians and Samoans are very large people, but there is increased awareness about the accompanying health problems, and diabetes is a great concern. The legendary Hawaiian singer "Iz" died very young due to obesity-related causes.

It's easy to joke about the spam, but it became a staple in Hawaii because it was something that could be stored over the long term. Most coffee shops serve eggs and spam, and you can also get spam in dim sum, sushi, etc.

Anyway, I highly doubt that spam is the cause of increased obesity rates; it seems like an easy target for dietary dictators because it's porky and high-fat.

[Legeon]

But the low carb mantra of 'all carbs are bad carbs' does seem to be a bit innaccurate in the reality.I think so. With isolated peoples getting refined carbs in any form means doing the growing and refining, usually with other people. It's physically and mentally challenging work yet it's a very pleasant way to spend the time, you just don't have many worries. It breeds satisfaction and strong bodies. I think that's an overlooked reason for the health of previous carb eating generations. Today almost nobody raises or hunts their own food, which iMO is like raising a chicken where it can't peck at the dirt like it should. Too stressful and repressive for the chicken.