It's the sugar stupid!

[MikePollard]

Heart disease and diabetes go hand in hand and both are rising exponentially (leaving out medication and surgical intervention).

Have a look at this:

nytimes.com/2013/06/05/worl...

To suggest that poor people in the third world have been so seduced by McDonalds that they are abandoning their traditional diet is a little far fetched I'd suggest. What they do have in common with the fabulously wealthy, such as the oil rich gulf states, is access to very cheap sugary, carbonated drinks. Twenty odd years ago I was the Rift Valley in Kenya (hang gliding) - even then the vast amount of carbonated drink available in little shacks in the remote parts of the valley was remarkable - and that was well before I had any interest in diet whatsoever.

Not convinced?

Read Yudkin's 'Pure White and Deadly':

amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss...

His prescience is both startling and depressing.

[MikePollard]

Further to my post I Googled:

soft drink consumption in vietnam

euromonitor.com/soft-drinks...

foodnavigator-asia.com/Mark...

[patch14]

It gives those in Burma the choice! There is a novelty value in having Coca Cola in such a recently "open" country. I am sure they are intelligent enough to know that too much of anything is bad for you. After all, we haven't exactly followed our own guidelines have we! We know what is bad for us but we don't follow our own advice! I am sure that those in Burma are just pleased to know that the outside world is there for them!

[MikePollard in reply to patch14]

Are you serious?

No they are not intelligent; any more than we are with our enlightened government advice.

...'just pleased to know that the outside world is there for them'!...? When they are ignorant and that ignorance has left them bewildered and the 'enhanced' western diet led them to looking at an amputation stump? They are no more informed or pleased than the Coke generation in the US, Europe and the Middle East suffering appalling dietary disease.

[patch14 in reply to MikePollard]

I don't wish to use this forum to begin a political debate I was just saying that anything from the outside world, however "bad" it may be to the diet is probably seen by those in Burma as some sort of "light" and "beacon" of freedom for them. After all, no matter what we may think of our own situations in our own countries we have had the freedom of choice and that is priceless.

[stopgo]

Your right and i remember the Paraffin Coca Cola fridges in most of the so called Business centres in the bush. !!!

[Penel]

The Burmese eat a lot of white rice, a refined carbohydrate, which puts you at higher risk of being diabetic anyway ( and of having cataracts). The introduction of sugary drinks is another nail in the coffin, and will increase the diabetes risk.

But I can understand the attraction of having Coke to drink ....

bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e1454

The forward to Yudkins reprint is from Robert Lustig who is also worth reading on the subject of sugar.

policymic.com/articles/6330...

[Hidden in reply to Penel]

Thank you for the link to white rice