Friday, January 11, 2008

FAST FOOD IN THE PHILIPPINES

I listened to two mothers talking about their children, and they went on about their children being hyperactive - "super-kulit" is the term they used. Before this, they had talked about how picky their children are about food: one child didn't eat lunch at school and the mother had to give the kid Ensure in the morning and at night, and another child just ate fast food. I asked if fast food may have something to do with the hyperactivity and they both said yes.

We talked about how we didn't have fast food when we were growing up. Our snacks consisted of fruit and well, yes, sweets, but we didn't have Jollibee and McDonald and those stalls that sell assorted fried snacks.

I have noticed that there are a number of younger people who are heftier. When I was young and even now in provinces, people were/are generally more slender, sometimes too thin. I've always assumed that diet had something to do with this, in the same way I assume that the fast food diet is affecting the people in the cities where there's a proliferation of such food.

It would be interesting to see if there's an increase in diet-related health problems ever since the addition of fast food to the Filipino diet.

No comments: