Obesity reaches pandemic proportions in Sri Lanka

Over recent years newspapers have been reporting on overweight Sri Lankans. The news is that about 33% of Sri Lankan adults are significantly overweight (- before the financial crash). Any casual glance will confirm this. The fact is that slim, sylph-like, nubile young Sri Lankan youth, the flower of Sri Lanka, gradually “fill out” over later years.

- Priyantha Hettige

There is the basic natural strengthening of general physique, a maturing, but this comes with a disfiguring cladding which can only be described as: shapely legs become sausage shaped and unrecognisable, faces become fat and flaccid, and paunches become pronounced as the nation’s youth relishes feeding on sweets and carbohydrates.

Because of the “Sinhala Only” policy important books such as Professor John Ludkin’s best-selling book: “Sugar, Pure White and Deadly” is a book unknown in Sri Lanka. (See this important clip on You Tube) See “Sugar Toxicity” by Dr Eric Berg. See professor of paediatrics, Robert Lustig’s clip “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” for a wide range of good advice.

These books by eminent professors all go unread in Sri Lanka with deadly consequences. We are bathed in ignorance and no-one notices or cares!

Visit any bus station and you will see large ladies struggling to clamber into the waiting bus. Often these are eminent ladies from the highest stations in life, who struggle to board a bus. My temptation to assist is strong but where to find a firm surface, to apply a helpful lift? Then you see them gasping with relief as they enter and sit down occupying one or more seats. The medical profession can read these symptoms easily: Metabolic Syndrome — the first step to serious illness and disablement.

These ladies must yearn for the happier days of youthful agility. The important point to make is that by being overweight, called obesity, accumulated fat is not easily burned off from the human figure. In fact, to lose weight is exceedingly difficult, which explains why so many people feel trapped, unable to escape their condition.