• Breaking News

    Tuesday, September 2, 2014

    Chips before pawpaw: Cook Islanders lose taste for healthy, local food

    Tourism boom spreading obesity across the islands but South Pacific state being encouraged to see value of a traditional diet

    Heather Tupou is tying up bean plants while she waits for her 15-year-old grandson, Stanley, to return from school. Behind her, a kite surfer emerges from the neighbouring beach resort and floats across an emerald lagoon. When I was a kid, says Tupou, a farmer on the Cook Islands, we ate mostly fresh fish and tomatoes, pawpaw, and taro. But nowadays, kids would take chips before taro most days. Stanley comes walking across the field. Lean and over six feet tall, he is fit and healthy, unlike many of his fellow students.


    A recent ministry of health school survey here found that 24% of girls and 34% of boys are obese. I know lots of people who prefer takeaways rather than cooking anything. I think thats why theres a lot of diabetes and all that, Tupou adds. Food on the islands is making many of the islanders sick.


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    Source Network Front | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1lFYO2U

    http://ift.tt/eA8V8J

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