Lifestyle diseases out of control

From being among the healthiest humans anywhere in the world when the western world discovered the islands not so long ago, people of Pacific islands origin find themselves at the very bottom of the heap when it comes to health related statistics in today’s times.

This alarming decline in their general health has taken place in the space of not more than a couple of generations. As things stand today, if one goes by the statistics, the situation is already out of control with little being done to reverse this disturbing trend.

Pacific islanders are today among the worst sufferers of lifestyle diseases, something that was largely alien to them more than a couple of generations ago. The reasons for this concerning state of affairs are not far to seek and though these are several, they should not be viewed in isolation—the present situation is because of a combination of factors. Historically, when the world was a far less connected place, isolated populations were self-sufficient.

They grew their own food, were perfectly adapted to their environment, lived in harmony with their ecosystems and free of the compulsions of unbridled consumption of consumer goods. Having evolved over hundreds of years, communities had a struck an equilibrium with their natural surroundings.

This way of life entailed hard physical labour, making the ideas such as the modern pursuit of fitness a part of everyday life. It also resulted in people partaking of food they grew with their own efforts, using little or no artificial chemical input.

Their wild catch was then free of pollutants, additives and preservatives—a far cry from what is available today. As the world became more and more connected and commerce began to flow into the islands, people were exposed to a range of ills that today have become the bugbear of their lives.

For one, early Westerners brought diseases which were unknown to islanders and to which they had little or no resistance at all. Unfortunately, this trend has continued on to modern times where tourists and foreigners continue to bring new ailments into the islands, whether they are communicable diseases or those of the more insidious non-communicable variety.

Globalisation has led to the dumping of low quality, cheap foods on to the poorer, more disadvantaged nations like those of the Pacific islands region. After nearly two decades of having dumped fat-laden meat of poor quality, islands administrations have now begun putting restrictions on such imports.

Looking at the health statistics of their citizens, one wonders whether these measures are too little too late at this stage.

Migrations in large numbers have caused able-bodied young people to live and work in distant countries leaving larger populations of the elderly and the very young back in the islands. This has left these countries bereft of able hands for tasks like growing food.

The gap here has been happily lapped up by the suppliers of cheap, highly processed imported foods that are laden with excessive amounts of sugar and fat.

The deleterious effects of excessively high sugar and fat are too well known, being responsible for lifestyle diseases like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and obesity. But what is even more alarming is the effects of such diets that an increasingly larger numbers of Pacific islanders depend on.

A detailed study of such highly sugarladen foods of the type available cheaply in supermarkets and fast food restaurants in an Australian university has raised alarm that a diet full of saturated fat and sugar could instigate immediate effect on the brain’s cognitive ability and cause memory loss. Long-term spatial memory loss has been conclusively linked to diets chock-a-block with starch and sugar.

This is a severe warning to Pacific islanders who are known to be high consumers of such highly processed, excessively sugar and fat-laden foods.

The interesting part of the study—covered in more detail elsewhere in this issue—is that it has a Pacific islands focus, connecting many of the findings to the situation many Pacific islanders find themselves in, no matter where they live, whether in the islands, New Zealand or Australia. It sets out clearly what foods are suitable to Pacific islanders’ diets and what are not.

This is important to be taken note of because under the processes of globalisation, it is only prices and markets that dictate food consumption in poorer countries rather than their suitability to the consuming public.

It is no overstatement to say that the situation is alarming. It has been known for some length of time now that Pacific Islanders are among the most obese people on the planet, with occurrences of the ailment reaching levels of as much as 80 percent of the population in some countries.

This has led to run away incidences of diseases like diabetes, hypertension and heart malfunction—and that too in a situation where the countries have neither the infrastructure nor the human capacity to deal with the problem.

Because of the complex nature of the problem and the multiple reasons responsible for it, any action that seeks to counter the situation would need to be a multi-pronged one. Education, infrastructure, capacity building and encouraging people to go back to basics— their traditional diets to which they are genetically attuned has all to be undertaken on a war footing. While that would certainly need funding, which could possibly be obtained, it is impossible to obtain any funding for political will.

That, which is always in short supply, needs to be provided by the region’s leaders. Other initiatives will then follow relatively easily.

All, however, is not lost. As the study points out, some countries are doing more than others in combatting obesity and ushering in a climate of convincing people to go back to natural foods. One of these is Vanuatu. Fiji too has had a programme for some time now.

Other countries, particularly in Polynesia, where the incidence of obesity and lifestyle ailments is highest in the Pacific, need to take things up immediately and decisively.

On the education and awareness front, it is good to note that a new magazine dedicated to Pacific islanders’ health has been launched in New Zealand, which hopefully will be accessed online throughout the Pacific.