10/08/2008

Weight Issues

Living in Singapore, you get to see many people of all shapes and sizes. However, if you walk around, most of the time I see the younger generations are getting thinner than what it used to be. Many young people nowadays are also more educated in the nutrition, goes to the gym more and also looks healthier. Perhaps it is the general acceptance into the society that slimmer is better, more presentable notion that have gotten Singaporeans to be conscious of their efforts to look slim. Other than that of course there are other apparent reasons too. The government has been trying to promote a healthy lifestyle in healthy eating. Many stickers have been printed for food stalls to stick on their store front to encourage Singaporeans to eat more vegetables and request for less oil. If you have been to a food stall, you would have seen these stickers.

Besides that, kids entering school that are above the maximum weight for their height have to go through a health programme call the TAF (Trim and Fit) club. My neighbour's daughter is in this programme. She is about 29 or 30 kg and that is overweight for a kid of 7 years of age. So instead of going for recess time, kids in this group have to do some simple exercise and they are not allowed to eat more than required and drink any soft drinks from the vending machine. I believe that kids starting as young as Primary 1 have been subjected to remarks from their peers and been teased because of being in this TAF programme. They are sometimes teased as FAT (spelled backwards of TAF) club. Sometimes I do worry about how they go about in their life as they grow up in puberty age and start to be aware about how they have been the laughing stock since entering school. Would that bring down, their confidence as well as their lead to inferiority complex? That would be terrible.

In my teenage years, I am one of those who were terribly conscious of weight issues and the search of best diet pills have been an endless task. Till today, whenever I step into a store or go online into health stores, it is natural for me to check and read up on the latest, available and most effective.

1 comments:

Shemah said...

My late grandma was a sucker for anything nutritious.. that's why all these Amway, Shaklee people can really sell her stuff. hahaha..

So naturally, my mom is also a stickler for vitamins and such and we do try to take care of what we eat. However, my post baby weight is still sticking around, though.. and yeah, like you, I tend to check out all the latest, available and most effective ones too. But never had the guts to try! hehe