Talk Story
This global epidemic
has an easy solutionSOUTHWEST Airlines is doing its bit in the war on obesity by charging double fares if passengers can't fit in one seat, evoking a nationwide brouhaha. If they'd asked, I'd have told them to just install a set of "monkey bars" between the jetways and their airplane doors.
Back in basic training at Ft. Leonard Wood, our drill sergeant used to make us traverse a horizontal ladder -- monkey bars, we troops called them -- before every meal. One by one, we'd go hand over hand across the 12-rung ladder and back, swinging our legs to and fro and praying our hands would hold out.
At the time, it was just a routine torture -- another hazing ritual before we could be all that we could be -- but it helped us develop the upper-body strength we'd need to survive basic or, eventually, combat.
While the successful headed inside for chow, Sarge would send those who fell off the bars back to the end of the line. After a few tries, he'd cut them some slack and they'd straggle into the mess hall, shamed by the experience and dreading the next meal and the threat of being "recycled" to start basic over.
TODAY, Singapore automatically enrolls obese military trainees in a 16-week special basic training course, six weeks longer than the normal course. This is a terrific incentive for recruits to get in shape before they sign up for their mandatory military service. So are the fitness tests reservists must annually pass years after completing two years on active duty.
The fat problem is global. Singapore "is the only society I know that has successfully managed the outbreak of the epidemic," says Stephan Roessner, a Swedish obesity expert who is president of the International Association for the Study of Obesity.
"There is no country in the world where obesity is not increasing," Dr. Roessner told the Wall Street Journal. "Even in countries we thought were immune (such as Zimbabwe and Gambia), the epidemic is coming on very fast. The frightening thing is that so far nobody has succeeded to stop it."
Last April, Philip James, chairman of Scotland's International Obesity Task Force, told an international conference here, sponsored by the Hawaii Chapter of the American Heart Association, "We have completely underestimated the nature of the problem. We're looking at a catastrophe to come."
DIABETES -- and the cardiovascular disease, blindness, kidney failure and amputations that often accompany it -- is the epidemic's biggest threat. Experts fear the number of diabetics worldwide could triple in 15 years to 320 million, more than the entire population of the United States.
By Centers for Disease Control standards, the obesity rate in America is 26 percent, twice what it was 20 years ago. The rest of our increasingly sedentary world is munching its way into trouble, too. During the same period, obesity rates in Britain and Australia tripled to 21 percent.
Fatness has quickly become a problem in China and other developing countries, where people are giving up bicycles for motor vehicles and manual labor for heavy equipment, power tools and office jobs. In Africa, being fat is admired as symbolic of prosperity and fertility -- and being HIV-free.
Critics say the U.S. Department of Agriculture's food pyramid, which recommends hunger-inducing, high-carbohydrate grains and fruits over meat and dairy products that contain fat, is partly to blame. Since the pyramid appeared in 1991, the number of obese Americans has increased by 61 percent.
I suspect there's something to that argument, having lost 35 pounds on a low-carbohydrate diet and quickly regained 10 when I went back to a "healthy" diet.
Still, I'm sure hanging monkey bars between our TVs and refrigerators could cure the epidemic almost overnight.
John Flanagan is the Star-Bulletin's contributing editor.
He can be reached at: jflanagan@starbulletin.com.