She was getting ready to chop up a few vegetables--a little bit of this and a little bit of that--and make a dish out of it. "As long as as we eat vegetables, right?" she commented.
I think she was referring to me practically harassing my parents about food versus nutrition. I often remind them, when in India, that they don't need the quantity of rice they typically eat. "Eat way more vegetables and fruits, and rice should practically be a side-dish" I remark if I think it is safe enough to say that without upsetting them. Hey, I am a foreigner in India and, as an academic, I need to worry about cultural sensitivity even on such matters!
As an academic, and a curious one at that, I am increasingly worried about the high levels of rice and other carbohydrate intake in the traditional diet that my parents and millions of other Indians practice. Especially against the backdrop of diabetes; as I noted earlier, diabetes runs in the extended family. At least with my parents, I can make suggestions even to the point of annoying them about it.
When I was young, we kids ate all that rice and ran around, under a blazing hot sun. Now, kids in India don't seem to be all that physically active. Once, the passenger seated next to me in the long flight to India, described the typical schooling and living conditions of kids. It shocked me that there are many schools that do not have playgrounds. I was by no means athletic during my school days, but I have done more than my share of running and playing games, including cricket. And I biked long, long distances as well.
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| Horsing around by the playground during the high school reunion, 2011 |
It doesn't take a medical professional to figure that these are disastrous:
Obesity cases have also burgeoned from 9.2 percent in New Delhi, 3.8 percent in Kerela, and 4.4 percent in Gujurat.Where there is obesity, it is not difficult to find diabetics:
How awful! If only people listened to me, eh! But then my life is dull and boring and I don't blame people for making sure they do everything other than whatever I do ;)
Couldn't the US have exported, instead, the work ethic or entrepreneurship, or ...!
Oh well, at least things are not as bad as they are in Mexico!
2 comments:
Oh yes the fat a$# syndrome thriving in India. Most Indians, especially the women folk are proportionally challenged. Add that to the general unathletic nature of the Indian race, it makes a deadly combination. The Chinese are (mostly) pencil thin. India therefore leads the world by a long way in the fat a$% hall of fame. Not even you lot, who have individually the fattest a$%^# in the planet, can compete with the collective might of the Indian posteriors.
Looks like I touched on a pet peeve of yours .... easy there, buddy ;)
I don't know about the unathletic nature that you refer to .... all my extended family were all big time walkers. But that was all in the Sengottai/Pattamadai/Neyveli environs ... I wonder how you and I would have been if we hadn't been in Neyveli in our youth but in a crowded city ....
But, what bothers me is that when educated, we ought to know better. As I often bug students in my classes, education is not about the letter grade or the diploma at all, and it reflects in these kinds of aspects of life too ... oh well ...
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