Another Go at the Obesity Issue
Should we be taking longer lunches? Perhaps if you think the correlations on this graph hold.
Is it because I’m an Anglophone living in Mexico that I tend to side with the skeptics among the commentators?
Should we be taking longer lunches? Perhaps if you think the correlations on this graph hold.
Is it because I’m an Anglophone living in Mexico that I tend to side with the skeptics among the commentators?
Well, it’s been known for some time that chewing one’s food slowly, since it supposedly takes about 20 minutes for the satiety sensor to kick in, helps a lot in keeping one from overeating. Don’t know if that has any effect on these stats, but as we all know, stats can be tweaked to mean just about anything. Or nearly so.
Very interesting, no matter what. Thanks for posting.
Interesting graph.
I’m surprised that Mexicans spend less time eating than Brits. I have been at many a long Mexican lunch, especially at weekends, and there seems to be a stronger tradition here within extended families of ‘la conviviencia’, that is eating and talking together.
I find it very surprising too. Almuerzos can also be long. So I am not sure I have much confidence in the data used.
greeks spend a long time round the dinner table when eating with company, eating, drinking and talking, and they’re still overweight.
although greeks are becoming more sedentary by the day, their intake of corn syrup is much lower than the average american’s (NZ, Australia and UK included) which is probably why they arent as obese as what the article you point us to claims americans are.
is mexico influenced a lot by american eating habits?
I heard a talk about this from one of Mexico’s most distinguished nutritionists and he just cited the usual reasons: less exercise, more foods rich in fat and sugar. His point was that you have a huge division here between people who are still badly malnourished in remote rural regions, overwhelmingly in the south, and people who are overweight in the main urban centers.
I left this interesting graph on my monitor in the background all day. Coming back to it each time brought up a new puzzle. It can not be that they mean by ‘eating’ that one is chewing&swallowing. It must be more what the French would call “at table”. My daughter’s 7-course wedding dinner started well before noon and ended after 5. Granted, as a celebration, that was an extreme. An ordinary dinner would have had only three courses and lasted a couple of hours but no one ever leaves the table feeling stuffed. (Am. – over full)
Patterns emerge. The New World, specifically the English speaking world seems to have the highest incidences of elevated MBI. Canada splits the worlds but it is half French. Countries representing Asia have the lowest percentage of elevated BMI. Why is Mexico so much higher than Spain? It would be interesting to compare the rest of Latin America.