Sunday Duo: The Top Two from the Wellness-verse this week are:
Here are the two “Bests” of what I’ve read/watched/heard this week in the field of wellness, to help you stop surviving and start thriving.
I filter, so you don’t have to. Need help applying this info? Drop me a line!
1. “Malnutrition Hits the Obese As Well As the Underfed”.
When a society has both undernourishment and obesity, it’s called the double burden of malnutrition.
A recent series of papers published in the Lancet, and covered this week by New York Times reporter Allison Aubrey, explores this burden in low- and middle-income countries. “More than 1 in 3 low- and middle-income countries are affected by both undernutrition and obesity,” the study finds.
What this shows all of us, is that “all forms of malnutrition have a common denominator: food systems that fail to provide all people with healthy, safe, affordable, and sustainable diets,” the Times quoted Francesco Branca as saying. Branca is the Director of the Department of Nutrition for Health and Human Development at the World Health Organization.
This is true whether you’re in the US or in Indonesia. Even a high-income adult in the US can be undernourished and obese, if consuming a “SAD” (Standard American Diet). Indeed, one cause for the growing burden in these countries, according to the authors, is “the availability of cheap ultra-processed food and beverages.”
2. Weight Gain: Eating Too Much, Not Exercising Too Little?
US and UK researchers compared hunter-gathering children in the Amazon to US children, who are comparably more sedentary. They found that, surprisingly, despite the differences in physical activity between the two groups, the children’s bodies burn about the same amount of calories per day.
They do differ, though, in how the calories are used. This, and other findings in the study, support a popular refrain you’ve likely heard (but maybe not believed): “You can’t out-train a bad diet.”
More specifically, the study shows that to curb childhood obesity, interventions should be primarily focused on dietary changes, not limited to physical activity.
“Don’t dig your grave with your own knife and fork.”
– English Proverb