Why is Belgium so Skinny?

Options
124678

Replies

  • ElkeKNJ
    ElkeKNJ Posts: 207 Member
    Options
    I am a Belgian! We are not skinny, half of us is overweight, but we are not aware of it! At least that is what the newspapers are saying this week, but rescue is on the way!
    I guess we are getting bigger as we are slowly adopting the SAD diet. The SBD is a bread meal in the morning and the evening, and 1 hot meal at lunch, normally boiled potatoes, veggies, a piece of meat or fish, and coffeeshop, water or beer as staple drinks. Fries once a week, and pasta once a week. Salad in stead of a hot meal when it is warm outside. That is how me and my husband, and mist of our friends were brought up. It is true that you do not see a lot of obese people, but half of the people I know become overweight in their late twenties, early thirties. In my case, yes, my activity level dropped as my family grew. I used to cycle everywhere, now I take the car....
  • ElkeKNJ
    ElkeKNJ Posts: 207 Member
    Options
    O, and may I add, at a BMI of 26, my environment considers me to be quite overweight, and I am being advised by relatives to slim down! I am also calling out my overweight brother myself, so perhaps we have less social tolerance for overweight people. Every woman I know starts going on an off diets from their mid twenties, thus never becoming too big. There is more tolerance for a man's beer belly than for an overweight woman.
  • ElkeKNJ
    ElkeKNJ Posts: 207 Member
    Options
    Edit: not coffeeshop, coffee as a drink. coffeeshop has an entirely different meaning in Dutch....
  • zyxst
    zyxst Posts: 9,134 Member
    Options
    Maybe it's the sprouts that do it.
  • greco16
    greco16 Posts: 465 Member
    Options
    zyxst wrote: »
    Maybe it's the sprouts that do it.

    lol!
  • weavingtheweb
    weavingtheweb Posts: 135 Member
    Options
    ElkeKNJ wrote: »
    Edit: not coffeeshop, coffee as a drink. coffeeshop has an entirely different meaning in Dutch....

    Lol, I used to own a coffeeshop, one where we actually served coffee, I always need to explain that when I tell someone.

    And yes for me it was also lack of activity that got me here. I started a really sedentary job 9 years ago, 15 km from where I live. Couldn't do that on my previous bike. Weight just kept creeping up in the past years. Now I do have good bike again and started using it to commute to work.

    I turn two corners and I have one long bike road right to the front door of my office, love it!
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
    Options
    usmcmp wrote: »
    jgnatca wrote: »
    @Mr_Knight , these grams do indeed also include consumption of liquids.

    Where are you getting that they eat 12,000 calories worth of carbs per day? Show us a link.

    I provided a link to my source.
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
    Options
    christinev297 wrote: »
    What I'm kinda getting out of this is Belgium et al focuses more on Calories Out than Calories In... If a lot of the population bikes everywhere this would explain why their obesity rates aren't as high as those of us who drive everywhere. This is obviously a very simplistic view....

    jg can you explain what you mean by 3000g... 3000g of what? Does 3000g equal 3000 calories??

    I am using data from the WHO which has classified national diets in "clusters" based on national consumption of foodstuffs. So it's not analysis of individual diets but more like a GDP score for food rather than money.

  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
    Options
    For happiness ratings I might use the HDI index. Belgium does nominally outrank Saudi Arabia. The Netherlands does even better, and they are in the same diet cluster as Belguim.

    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDI_index
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
    Options
    Obesity is a puzzle that is being investigated at many levels. There are rat studies, twin studies, longitudinal studies, and so on. I am looking at international data, following where my nose leads, to come up with more questions.
  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 25,039 Member
    Options
    christinev297 wrote: »
    Hehe @Machka9 I don't think I've encountered a chicken parmy yet, that wasn't hanging off the side of the plate! :bigsmile:

    Yeah, me neither. The last town we lived had 30 different parma flavours, and a contest where participants were supposed to eat one each day for a month.

    I didn't even start the contest ... I just couldn't. Too much food!!! :lol:

  • Machka9
    Machka9 Posts: 25,039 Member
    Options
    jgnatca wrote: »
    usmcmp wrote: »
    jgnatca wrote: »
    @Mr_Knight , these grams do indeed also include consumption of liquids.

    Where are you getting that they eat 12,000 calories worth of carbs per day? Show us a link.

    I provided a link to my source.

    Where?




  • Acg67
    Acg67 Posts: 12,142 Member
    Options
    jgnatca wrote: »
    Obesity is a puzzle that is being investigated at many levels. There are rat studies, twin studies, longitudinal studies, and so on. I am looking at international data, following where my nose leads, to come up with more questions.

    LOL, your very premise is incorrect, just because a country has a "low" rate obesity, that does not equal a country being skinny. In fact if you actually tried to dig a tad deeper, ~45% of the country is classified as overweight which seems to indicate it is not a skinny country. But that would involve actually thinking and doing a little more research
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
    Options
    Frick. I know I posted this already. Here is my source. And I am talking grams because that is the unit of measure in the data.

    http://www.who.int/nutrition/landscape_analysis/nlis_gem_food/en/
  • Acg67
    Acg67 Posts: 12,142 Member
    Options
    looking at the GEMs data the difference between G10 countries and G11 in terms of consumption is easily located

    16 160 Water 14.5, 925.0

    research? lol, critical thinking? lol
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
    Options
    Comparing this data to the obesity map yielded surprises. A country with the highest consumption also has a very low obesity rate. Why?

    Why is obesity in Saudi Arabia so high when their food consumption is relatively low?

    What other characteristics make these countries stand out? Daily physical activity is one, though that is anecdotal. Living in a fairly stable, healthy, educated community is another.

    The U.S. obesity epidemic is uneven. Looking at a U.S. county obesity map makes this clear. Places like New England and California do not have the same obesity problem. What distinguishes the fat states/counties from the skinny ones? Poverty is one.

    I just don't think we can blame obesity on the poor though, as if they are too ignorant or incapable of putting a reasonable diet together.

    You may laugh but I have seen comments where the relatively prosperous lament that the poor can't access the wealth of food at a Whole Foods for instance.
  • zyxst
    zyxst Posts: 9,134 Member
    Options
    jgnatca wrote: »
    Frick. I know I posted this already. Here is my source. And I am talking grams because that is the unit of measure in the data.

    http://www.who.int/nutrition/landscape_analysis/nlis_gem_food/en/
    So can someone explain why WHO is using grams or what they mean by using grams?
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
    Options
    Another advantage that a happy, stable community has is time. Leisure to fine tune their diets, time to plan, time to cook.
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
    edited May 2015
    Options
    @zyxst, the WHO is collecting this information from consumption of foodstuffs. It would be a practical measure.
  • andrikosDE
    andrikosDE Posts: 383 Member
    Options
    As someone who has lived in the US and EU among other places, the differences are pretty stark in ways many have mentioned here on this thread.

    People in the climate-wise cooler part of EU are very active, drive less, bike more, hike_run_bike_walk_swim during the weekends etc.
    Of course all this will add up over a lifetime of an active lifestyle over a sedentary one.
    The benefits are numerous and obvious.

    You keep harping on the "happiness" of the Arabic people and their "low" food consumption vs. their obesity...
    Have you been there? The sizzling weather prevents you, most of the time, from any physical activity whatsoever unless you want to end up as a greasy stain on the asphalt.
    Of course CICO applies there too. Why would it not?
    Plus their wealth affords them to eat with all the excess of the EU/USA population without adding any exercise.
    All these are generalizations, as we are speaking about entire nations/people after all.

Categories