Android Obesity

CEBU, Philippines - Android obesity, that phenomenon where you have big tummy or big waistline and you’re not pregnant, is especially high among Filipino women. 

When you tend to eat what feasts your eyes, your eyes will feast on you. When you see advertisements on television and print ads showing a buffet of pork meat, gallons of ice cream or the crackling of chicken skin, nobody tells you that after you’ve eaten all these, your trunk or your tummy or your abdomen will grow fat. So fat that you’ll have a difficult time trimming it down, so fat that the fat becomes so stubborn you would need a tummy tuck or liposuction and the costs you spend for aesthetic surgery is ten times more than the cholesterol-laden lunch that you had. No fastfood chain or restaurant would tell you that after you have gobbled up all the saturated fatty food, your arteries could harden and the time you spend at the hospital is more than when you had an indulgent dinner.

Indulgence – such a little, little word that may sound seemingly innocent but treacherously deadly. In a 2004 study made by the National Nutrition Council of the Philippines, it was found that an estimated 90 percent of Filipinos is afflicted with non-communicable diseases. To put it simply, non-communicable diseases or lifestyle diseases are diseases associated with how one lives. Not like H1NI or AIDS or dengue or SARS, non-communicable diseases don’t infect or contaminate. These diseases are born out of a person’s own doing.

Four major lifestyle-related non-communicable diseases that have been the leading causes of death among Filipinos are cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes mellitus and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. It was found out that 8 out of 10 among Filipinos have heart disease and 6 out of 10 Filipinos have vascular system diseases which means they are high blood.

Your computer, your waistline.

The National Nutrition Council study also found out that the overweight and obese among Filipinos of the 40 to 59 years age group is increasing particularly pointing out that android obesity is especially high among adult females. Android obesity is fat localized around the abdomen, shoulders, face, arms, neck and chest. These are usually the places of the body where the fat goes when it’s just too much. The Nutrition Council reported that increased waistlines are attributed to increased consumption of animal-based food and decline in fruit and vegetable consumption.

The council study blamed increased urbanization in the adoption of westernized diet, trade liberalization that is making local fruits and vegetables relatively more expensive, and frequency of eating outside the home especially in fastfood or take out meals are among the causes of changes in the Filipino diet.

This fastfood lifestyle is also the culprit for increased waistlines because employees tend to stay on their computers more rather than take a walk for lunch or find time to cook. The other thing is sensory bombardment of indulgence through media advertisements tend to promote perverted dietary practices. For instance, in one advertisement there was chunk of cake that fell on the floor and the impish girl said “it’s only one minute” and ate the fallen piece. Had this been done when the H1N1 was raging, that ad would have been a disgrace. Or an ad on a food additive showing all pork-based menu is like giving viewers a knife to stab themselves with. Thing is, food advertisements promote food that compromise nutrition.

Nutrition continuum.

National Nutrition Council regional coordinator Letlet Mission underscored that nutrition is more than eating a fruit and vegetable diet. It means a complete lifestyle change where nutrition must be viewed in a continuum of diet and physical activity.

She said, “because nutrition is the process of absorbing nutrients, there must be exercise or physical activity so that the body becomes efficient in processing food. Nutrition cannot be without physical activity and physical activity without nutrition. Because nutrition is the science of food, it must be seen as related to aging because the food or kind of food that one eats affects the generation or degeneration of the body and its functions. Because nutrition is food or nourishing substances of food, it must be a way of life and not just a way of feeding because what keeps man alive is what he feeds in his body.”

Mission deplored that many Visayans have limited or if not, distorted ways of making nutrition a lifestyle. She said that while the Nutrition Council can explain the benefits of abiding with the food pyramid diet, it becomes useless when people continue to eat at fastfood chains or restaurants where saturated fats are used for frying. Or adopt fad diets that can give quick-fix approach to weight loss but not have nothing to nourish the body.

“Until a physician tells a patient that he has heart disease or hypertension, only then do people think about nutrition. Indulgence pays a high price and that price is always disease and death,” she cautioned.

Your obesity and disease could be your own doing. Exercise and seek professional nutrition counseling. It’s cheaper, fun and sweeter than a lifestyle of taking the pill, going through the knife and you don’t have to be an android.