I'm just posting this because it's interesting
There are a couple of serious issues at least.
I think diabetes may be at the top of the list.
There really doesn't seem to be much a public education campaign going on.
Read and weep....
Fat in Thailand: Thai-a-betes epidemic
<H1 class=title align=center>Fat in Thailand: Thai-a-betes epidemic
A richer Thailand, and a cultural love of sugar, sparks a health problem.
</H1>A participant in the Jumbo Queen beauty contest gets ready to go onto the stage in Ayutthaya, Dec. 19, 2009. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters)
BANGKOK, Thailand — Oil slicked Jay Muay’s wok, big as a satellite dish, spitting grease at a queue of hungry customers. First came scallions and tofu, sprinkled from above. Then eggs, beat into a canary-yellow goop.
The street stall chef’s hands flew into double-time: with her left, she joggled the wok; with her right, she flicked in a few fat-bodied shrimp. Lastly, Jay Muay reached for her not-so-secret ingredient: processed sugar.
She poured from a jug — one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three — until her pad thai was sweeter than summer-camp Kool Aid.
“It’s almost impossible to add too much sugar,” said Waiwong Wittayakun, Jay Muay’s husband and co-owner of their forever-busy pad thai stall in Bangkok’s On Nut market. “Thai people, we like it sweet. Just look at that queue!”
Thai cuisine is globally lauded as sophisticated, spiritual and even nutritious. What many Thai food fans don’t realize, however, is that there’s often gratuitous amounts of cheap, processed sugar hiding behind the spice.
The country’s sweetness addiction, experts say, is partly responsible for one of it’s fastest growing diseases: diabetes. Nearly one in 10 Thais now suffer from the disease, a rate even worse than America’s one in 12.
“Traditionally, our food is supposed to have a balance of sugar,” said Napaporn Sowattanangoon, a diabetes specialist with Thailand’s Mahidol University. “You’re supposed to taste sweetness balanced with spice, sourness and other flavors. Now, cooks just go overboard with sugar. It’s like they don’t even care about the dangers.”
Like U.S. doctors, Thai physicians blame the diabetes epidemic on more-sedentary lifestyles and the rise of industrially produced junk food. The nation’s most prevalent store is 7-11, which offers squid-flavored potato chips, starchy pork buns and sugar-loaded energy drinks around the clock.
Worse yet, Napaporn said, are Thai grade schools that serve processed meals. “The kids turn into adults who are addicted to sweet food. And they get fat because no one plays in the fields anymore.”
Developing countries such as Thailand, India and China are seeing the most new diabetes cases globally, according to InterAsia, a research cooperative between U.S., Chinese and Thai universities. As newfound prosperity spares more Asians from physical labor, it’s also driving them to more desk jobs and microwavable food.
Two-third of diabetics, according to InterAsia estimates, now live in the developing world. And in Thailand, according to estimates, half of all diabetics are oblivious to their disease.
The disease translates from Thai as “sweet urine disease” and, in rural provinces, it’s traditionally self-diagnosed when villagers notice ants gathering around their outdoor toilet.
“I suspected I was diabetic, as many black ants swarmed around my urine,” said one Thai patient evaluated for a 2009 Mahidol University study of cultural influences on diabetes treatment. “One time, I slightly dipped my finger in my own urine and tasted it. It would be sweet if I had drank it.”
Treatment in Thailand is further complicated by spiritual beliefs. Some diabetic Thais, Napaporn says, blame the illness on misdeeds from past lives, such as undernourishing livestock. Other patients she’s evaluated recite their Buddhist acceptance of illness and death, expressing little desire to change their love of sweet foods.
She poured from a jug — one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three — until her pad thai was sweeter than summer-camp Kool Aid.
Never heard that exression before.
Sweet.
Going to cost a fortune down the road.Nearly one in 10 Thais now suffer from the disease,
Pharmaceutical companies probably aren't going to mind.
Really though..it's almost damn tragic.
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
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Yup, and add the fact that 15% (9 million) of Thai people have Hep B, and one is looking at very expensive palliative care not to mention preventative medicine and education.
The most effective medicine for Hep B is from America and even with discounts is 10,000 baht per month. It is effectively out of reach for the average Thai.
Fortunately, Hep B vaccine is now widely administered to newborns.
Frederick Douglass: Find out just what any people will quietly submit to
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice
and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these
will continue till they are resisted with either
words or blows, or with both.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn;
“Don’t believe them, don’t fear them, don’t ask
anything of them.”
Thanks THX.
That was one of the others I was trying to think of.
Good to hear .Fortunately, Hep B vaccine is now widely administered to newborns.
I cringe everytime the "sugar wagon" parks in school grounds and all the students get a half hour break to suck the stuff up.
the GF used to have heaps of suger in her hot choc in the mornings, then she went on a health kick and only had one but she had a spy wine cooler everyday 'cos she'd read that a glass of wine is good for your health
..and she thinks I'M the unhealthy one even though she's tired after walking more than 100mtrs.
Thai food is indeed trash. And rice is what, 80% water? Everything is too dirty, too sweet, too raw or too spicy. It's basically peasant's food. And, MEDICAL CARE SUCKS.
Whoa man, are you okay? Are you serious or taking the piss? Geez, I order what I want and It's generally pretty healthy. As to healthcare; just like in the states, it's as good as you can afford. The difference here is; I can afford the best. And that's a fact!Originally Posted by jonny danger
Hope you feel better soon...
I don't know about as good as you can afford. But every time I show my Thai medical work to a professional in the USA he/she says the same thing .. it looks like a veterinarian did it. And that's what it is, aka battlefield emergency hack. Sure you can pay Western fees and get good care .. anywhere in the world. I'd like to know the guy standing over me with a scalpel scored better than a 5.9 in med school.
Dude, it isn't Thailand. Everyone wants to think we are ranking on Thailand. That is everyone who has never been anywhere else. It's the World. Remember, the place where 70% of its inhabitants have never made a phone call?
Lying in the street with 20 people trying to stand me up (with a broken leg) until I was placed into the back of a pickup and driven 80 Kilometers on a dirt road to an emergency room that was closed for the night. Thailand is a dangerous fukin place. Don't ever kid yourself. And so is Pakistan, India, Mexico, et.al..
Well, that sounds pretty bad and lucky (someone to drive you to the hospital) at the same time.
Well, that's hard to argue, so I won't; but, as you know; no gut's, no glory.
You just never know when it's going to strike. You could be walking through a field barefoot late at night and BOOM you've stepped on an over-ripe chile.
If it's one of mine, it might take yer foot off.
...I wonder how you would know that? My experience with street food is: w-a-a-a-y too much salt, grossly overfried in what appears to be diesel, stiff with pesticides, nearly mummified with sugar, and generally fit only for tourists and office workers who don't know any better...I'm sure we can all point to our favorite mammy wagons as a cut above the rest, just as we point to somebody's shriveled uncle who has survived cigarettes for decades and can still breathe...
...majestically enthroned amid the vulgar herd...
These things are all true.
And I agree with you jonny about the level of medical care. Just based on my own experience of course.
My experience is also that if you want to eat well here, you basically give all the street stalls and most restaurants a miss.
Get to the market early and shop for what appear to be fresh vegetable and fruit.
Never cook the items without a good thorough washing.
So true Tom.My experience with street food is: w-a-a-a-y too much salt, grossly overfried in what appears to be diesel, stiff with pesticides, nearly mummified with sugar, and generally fit only for tourists and office workers who don't know any better...
The fucking oil is re-heated every day.
Absolute poison is what it is.
And Russ, some of those food stalls in BKK stationed right over stinky sewer vents. You have to ask yourself, who could sit there and eat? What kind of person? As if biology was a myth.
2 times I have had surgery in Thailand after accidents, and both times I went back to the UK to get it looked at again.
The first time I had metal plates put inside my leg. When I got back to the UK the doctor nearly spat out his stethascope when we saw the x-ray. In itself the plate was fine, just it fell almost 2 inches short of covering the fracture.
The 2nd time I had a broken elbow, which the doctor here just wanted to put in a cast after looking at x-rays. In the UK they felt they should do a scan, not just an x-ray, as elbows are complicated joints. It turned out that there were several smaller fractures and even bits of completey disjoined bones which would need removing. He did all the work, but more metal plates in, and all was fine. If, however, it was left in a cast he doubted I would be able to bend or straighten that arm within a few months.
It always makes me laugh when I hear people saying how healthy thai food is!
When on holiday they say they eat so much better than at home, makes me wonder what craap do they eat at home?
To much oil, salt and sugar in most cooked thai food.
Before they have a diabetes problem they will have an obesity problem, in some places they already have.
Spose the old culture of fat = wealthy still plays out.
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