Robert Paterson's Weblog

Why are we so fat in rural settings - Part 3 - Because so many of us are "First Nations"

Prince Edward Island, where I live, has a very high obesity rate. So do many rural parts of America and of cource the rest of Atlantic Canada. 

We have looked at why there is an physical environmental difference between cities and the rural and we have looked at the social environment where our friends influence how we look. 

But why is the rate of obesity and related illness SO MUCH worse in certain types of rural settings? Now we are going to look at who we are as people.

The issue here is in our ancestral heritage. Those of us who live in rural Canada and the rural US tend to come from a heritage that is only recently exposed to agriculture. 

PEI and Atlantic Canada are settled mainly by Scots Irish. So is the large Appalachian region of the US. It is mainly here in Canada and there in thje US that obesity and related poor health is the worst. Why?

The answer is that we are Gaels. 

Gaels, are the Hunter Gatherers of Europe who got pushed to the edge of the continent by the new farmers.

Look at the thin sliver on the far left of Scotland and Ireland. That is the edge. We were pushed here like so many other Hunter Gatherers have been pushed to the edge where the land is marginal and not suitable for farming. 

That is the edge - where the land is the poorest - where life is really tough and so are the people. It is where we come from and here is why this is important when we ask abut why so many of us are so fat today.

For the answer is this. We are the people in Europe with the least exposure to agricultural food. We are the least adapted. We are the most at risk of all Europeans to an adverse reaction to the agricultural diet.

For this diet is new when we look at evolutionary time lines. We have ALL come from a Hunter Gatherer past that extends back for millions of years. 

We mainly ate meat, fish and plants. We never ate grains, dairy or beans. Imagine milking a wild auroch!

The maximum time that any human group has had to adapt to agriculture - what I call the "Modern Diet" would likely be 6,000 years ago. Here is new evidence on when agriculture began in England. In Evolutionary terms this is yesterday. Some Europeans have made a partial adaptation - but even this is lost by middle age.

The key point to bear in mind is that we are designed to be healthy and fit - PROVIDED - we live the plan that evolution has worked out with us.

As with all hunter gatherers, we did very well on our ancestral diet.

This engraving is of a Mi'Maq made in the 1800th century. This is what most adults would have looked like before they adopted our diet and way of life. 

Here is a 60 year old Kitavan Chief who has never been exposed to our diet - see the similarity in body? Kitavans have no diseases of modern civilization. 

 

Here is the late great singer Israel Kamakawi'ole just before his death. He is an example of the kind of reaction a recent hunter gatherer can have to the modern diet. He shares the same kind of Pacific hunter gatherer heritage to the Kitavan. 

The closer you are to a hunter gatherer past - the more vulnerable you are to reacting badly to the modern diet. This recent exposure to the modern diet is a powerful force in why so many in the First Nations community have such a risk of Type 2 Diabetes and related illness and why the Gaels run them a close second.

So what to do?

So if you are of First Nations or Inuit heritage with maybe 150 years maximum exposure - the western diet of mainly grains, dairy and so sugar is toxic. It is also why alcohol is such a problem as is sugar - for they affect the brain in the same way. They are the same.

If you are a Gael - you are next on the list of at risk. Note the importance of sugar and alcohol in our way of life too. We are very attracted to it.

When I say Modern Diet - I mean bread/grains, dairy and legumes. The Industrial Diet is a separate category and is even more a disaster for us.

If we were to go back to eating a diet that was comprised of the traditional foods - mainly real meat and real fish and seasonal plants and fruit, we would be the ancestral groups most likely to "heal". Even better, we stand a chance of doing what the Kitavan Chief has done. Plateau our aging in mid life.

Here is Dr Michael Rose on this great opportunity for us. Thesis 52

The irony is that while we are the most at risk - we have the best chance of reacting well to a shift back to the traditional diet.

Me 2 years ago - pre diabetic and a typical middle aged Gael on the modern diet.

It has taken me 6 months only to undergo a radical change for the better. For when I say "We" I am  Gael too from Ayr. I started to feel better after 3 months. I think in 5 years I will have got myself back to a metabolism of my heritage. 

This then is a huge health opportunity. The First Nations and the Gaels are really suffering. Medicine has not arrested our decline. But by going home to who we are can heal us.

But there is a huge BUT. A BUT that I will deal with in my next post.

The BUT is this. We Gaels and First Nations' Peoples have lost confidence in our culture and our tribes. We don't fit into the Industrial World. WE think and others think that this makes us failures. We don't want 9 - 5. We don't want to make work the centre of who we are. We hate regimen. We hate offices - we want to be outside. 

We were were never farmers and so never were serfs or slaves. We lived according to the time of nature not the clock. But of course farmers were ideally suited to becoming indistrial serfs - no change at all in how they lived. 

We will explore this tommorrow. We will ask - "who is the greater fool?" - We will look at how the web and a new economy might enable us to bring back a hunter gatherer way of life in a modern context.

We will look at our tribal values and traditions - respect for our elders and for women - our love of music and the dance - our love of art - our love for our children - our deep respect for nature and sense of connection to it - our eternal view of time and see these as the values that all men and women need if our species is to survive what our industrial culture has done to us and the planet.

By Going Home we might give our kids a chance.

What Canadians are really like - Part 4 - We are warriors

 

What Canadians are really like - Part 3 - We are great musicians

 

What Canadians are really like - Part 2 - We are funny

Canada Day Series - What Canadians are really like - Part 1 - Not Lumberjacks

 

Why are we so fat in rural settings - Part 2 - Because our friends are fat

For reasons that we are exploring in this series, there are environmental reasons why people who live in rural settings tend to be more overweight than those living in urban settings. But there are social environmental factors as well. And I think it helps to see theses for they represent powerful barriers to change.

Imagine that this is you and your family for a moment.

Now imagine that this is you. Your are their sister and you have lost all this weight.

Would you be popular? Would you fit in? Would you be welcomed?

Probably not. I am myself getting push back from some of my friends who now think I am too skinny and who "worry" that I may be verging on anorexia!

Our need as social primates to belong is a powerful force in shaping conformity. If people in your circle are fat - then it is likely that you will become fat and stay fat too. (Article in the Washington Post)

Obesity appears to spread from one person to another like a virus or a fad, researchers reported yesterday in a first-of-its-kind study that helps explain -- and could help fight -- one of the nation's biggest public health problems.

The study, involving more than 12,000 people tracked over 32 years, found that social networks play a surprisingly powerful role in determining an individual's chances of gaining weight, transmitting an increased risk of becoming obese from wives to husbands, from brothers to brothers and from friends to friends.

The researchers found that when one spouse became obese, the other was 37 percent more likely to do so in the next two to four years, compared with other couples. If a man became obese, his brother's risk rose by 40 percent.

The risk climbed even more sharply among friends -- between 57 and 171 percent, depending on whether they considered each other mutual friends. Moreover, friends affected friends' risk even when they lived far apart, and the influence cascaded through three degrees of separation before petering out, the researchers found.

Why is this?

I think it is because, we are intensly social and tribal. If you work in finance, you wear the suit and use the "voice". If you wore that suit and used that voice at Tim's on PEI, you would not fit in. I have an English Toffee Nosed Accent - very hard to lose - I will never really fit in to my PEI home. Accents are also an important tribal marker. All good politicians have to sound like the people. 

In Paris a 140lb woman would be considered overweight. Not only is Paris a City with physical environments that help increase activity and eating habits that reduce sugar consumption, but Paris has a powerful social environment that punishes the over weight. If you were a 140lb woman on PEI you would be considered trim - assuming you were 5.8 - but after a few months in Paris, you would be working hard to get to 125. You would feel out of place.

So this social power is no small thing in why so many of us are over weight in rural settings like PEI.

Being heavy has become our normal. This social power not only lets us off the hook and reduces our concern personally but actively encourages us to fit in.It also makes losing the weight very hard - socially.

The new thin you is felt as an attack on your friends and family. 

So - What to do?

I think first of all let's acknowledge this power and reality. Knowing this is another reason to stop this pointless yelling at each other to "Eat Sensibly and Take More Exercise" This has not worked and cannot work.

We have to explore all the powerful reasons why most of us in rural settings are over weight. 

That is what I am trying to do here.

What the social part of the equation shows us that we cannot take charge of our weight alone. Our families and friends will work to sabotage this. We have to find a place in a new community that will support us.

This is why organizations such as UFIT work so well. Maybe UFIT's most valuable asset is not the workout but the social environment that the workout takes place in. Here is a post that explains this power.

Ideally we have to be accepted to begin a big change. We have to be with people we trust. These may often NOT be our friends and family. We then have to do a lot of new things a lot in their company. We are in effect creating new habits. Then after 2 years or so - not a short time. We will become a new person.

I doubt that any serious attempt to reduce obesity in rural settings will suceed if we don't add in a support piece.

Your don't believe me? See for yourself.(Disclosure I have advised UFIT)

 

Why are we so fat in rural settings? A practical guide to changing this - Part 1

Here is the lead in the Guardian - PEI's paper of record.

Obesity rates in Prince Edward Island are among the highest in the country. Overall, about 62 per cent of Canadians weigh more than they should. The obesity rates vary from a low of five per cent in Richmond, B.C. to 32 per cent in Kings County, P.E.I. and nearly 36 per cent in the Mamawetan/Keewatin/Athabaska region in Saskatchewan. The rates were below the national average in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Clearly there seems to be a greater percentage of Canadians in rural areas plagued with excessive weight. What are the reasons for this? Is it because of less access to fitness and recreation programs?

We all know that we should be less fat as a group but other than exhort each other to eat better and take more exercise, we are lost. And anyway who knows that Eat Better and Take more Exercise means anyway. It's not advice that works.

So I am going to play around here this week with a few ideas and insights that may help us do better.

Rural/Urban - Today I will explore with you "What are the Urban/Rural Factors Really?" - We will find that the difference has nothing to do with exercise programs or recreation. Later I will talk about:

Social Norms - How having fat friends makes us fat

Ancestral Heritage - How where your family come from has a huge affect. Why if you are First Nations or Scots and Irish (Much of PEI) you are more at risk.

Social Status and Control - If you work and live in a major city, like Toronto, New York, Paris and London you get status from that and if you live in a rural setting you lose status.

So today why people who live in Cities tend to be thinner than those of us who live in rural settings?

What do you notice about these 2 pictures? First a Paris setting.

Now New York

 

Walking in the street is part of life in big cities. The irony is that the car plays much less of a role. So the entire design of life is to make it easy to get what you need on foot.

A huge component of why people are thinner in these cities is not that they are all in the gym - but that they are more active. It is activity not exercise that is a major factor. 

In a later post we will explore explore the issue of social norms too - In New York, a 130 pound woman is over weight. On PEI she is thin. We will also explore status. In New York you have a cache that in Alberton you may not.

Now what about this typical rural setting?

In rural America and Canada, we drive everywhere. You cannot walk if you wanted to because most streets have poor or no sidewalks. Our entire life is centred around the car. We sit all day. Again even if you did go to the gym - you do not have enough activity designed into your life.

Do gyms and programs matter much. They sure cost a lot. Now what about these kids?

Pick up basket ball is a feature of New York life. The costs are low and the habit is there. As is the social density.

And now these ones?

 

The New York or London kid goes back and forth to school using public transport and walking. We bus all out kids door to door.  Once we are home, we have to drive our kids to a game or a gym. There tends to be very little cheap common space. I think hockey - does every small town need a big rink? What abiut outdoor rinks? We could use our imagination and do better? Do the kids have to come back from school at 2.30 anyway?

Most parents are not home. Why not make the afternoon at school into the opportunity? Also get the homework done there and then and end the conflict at home.

What about this store?

In big cities the zoning encourages the small and the local. People walk to their shops. In rural settings we have done the opposite. All the local stores are gone now.

What we have left is this!

And what about this choice of food? In urban centres there is much better food on offer. It's ironic but true.

versus this one - This is the Aisle of Choice in rural culture.

What about getting around like this - the bike is becoming the vehicle of choice in many cities. Adoption is made easier by aggressive bike programs - bike rentals, bike lanes

 

Versus this?

Bike are just starting to make sense of use in Town - But with a good plan, we could do so much more. Gas prices are not going down over time.

So being fat in rural Canada and the US is a matter of the environment and not that we in rural settings are all lazy bums.

It does not help to sit back and feel helpless - we can look at how we might design back activity and food choice. 

More tomorrow. Here is a neat article too

Workers of the world disperse - Place is becoming much less important

“I work at … ” This small talk preamble is rapidly becoming out of date. For many, it has long been replaced by “I work for…” or even “I am a….”

“At” just isn’t really part of the conversation anymore. About a third of the global labour force work wherever they are — not just in a particular building, or several.

There is an unprecedented shift going on — one that was only a nascent promise during the late-1990s Internet boom — and is finally coming to fruition thanks to the pervasive adoption of mobile technology.

More than one billion people qualified as remote workers by the end of last year and, according to the International Data Corp.’s Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2009-2013 Forecast, the global workforce will be more than one-third (35%) mobile by 2013. The mushrooming adoption of smartphones, tablets and other mobile computing devices for business uses has blurred the line between what does and does not qualify as what some call “telework.”

And as mobile technology quickly evolves, it is also broadening the scope of jobs capable of being accomplished via telework. Typically, people feel their jobs are too complicated and relationship-oriented to be done remotely, but some of the most highly skilled, hands-on work is being at least partly done with a BlackBerry or an iPad.

“We have seen two different remote neurosurgeon jobs [posted],” recalls Sarah Sutton Fell, the owner of flexjobs.com, an online job search company that itself has no physical office space.

She said one of the postings was by a Nevada hospital looking for a neurosurgeon who would only need to fly in for the actual surgeries. The rest of the job, the posting said, could be done digitally.

“One that my husband loved was a virtual golf instructor where you upload a video of your golf swing and your golf instructor from afar would give you tips and pointers,” Mrs. Fell said on the phone from her home office.

Businesses can be run from anywhere, recruit from anywhere and perhaps most important, can serve a customer base unrestricted by geographic limitations.

via business.financialpost.com

This is an eye opening article.

My Great Grand Father walked as a boy from Centreville On to Montreal to get a job in a factory. There was no work on the farm, he had 8 siblings. Work was in town.

For the next 150 years most followed him. You had to live where the work was. When I had a real job, we moved 8 times. I had to go where the work was.

But now! More and more we are able to live where we want and to work remotely. Not just for a few advanced employers like IBM who want this kind of work force. But even simple work, like teaching music can now happen on Skype. I like the bit in the piece about the Golf pro - or the surgeon who just flies in to to the op. I can see a time not too far in the future when even the operation will be done remotely. If you can fly a drone, you can do brain surgery.

Who would have thought in 1850 that only 5% of the nation would now live in the country? I wonder where my grand kids will live? I bet a lot in rural settings or in settings that make sense for them as people. Where they will not have to move away from friends and family as we did.

An Election in the Fall on PEI - Time to talk about Local Food seriously

Farmageddon - Movie Trailer from Kristin Canty on Vimeo.

 

Big Food uses food safety regulation and their cosy relationhsip with regulators to drive the small and Real Food people off the farm. We see this here on PEI where in Public we promote "Eat Local" but where in practice we punish local producers and put them out of business. All in the so called interest of Food Safety.

So, there is an election coming here on PEI. Time I think for Politicians to think deep and hard. 

Do you stand for local resiliency?  Do you really want people to get more healthy and are you aware of how industrial food is a major part of the problem.

The reality is this. Our current food system depends on cheap oil. How much longer will this be available? Our health is strongly linked to what we eat. How much longer can we deny this and what are the costs to us if we do?

If you back big food - are you looking after the interests of Islanders?

This fall gives us all a good time to get the truth on the table. Time for all good politicians to rally to the support of their people and not to support the few who prosper by the status quo.

The stakes are life and death for PEI - for in 20 years without a vibrant local food system where will we be?

Laki and Global Revolution?

None of these catastrophes came entirely out of the blue. To the contrary, geologic history tells us that we’ve actually gotten off lucky. In 1783, the Laki volcano in Iceland erupted so violently that it killed perhaps a quarter of the country’s population. That volcano put enough ash into the sky to change the weather in the entire Northern Hemisphere, causing crop failures and famines across Europe, India, Japan, Egypt and North America that pushed the total death toll to 6 million. It took almost a decade for the weather to recover.

via bloomberg.com

I wonder if the recent eruption of Laki has caused us to have no summer so far? One of the effects of the decade of poor weather in the 1780's was the French Revolution - a squeezed people and rising food costs are a volatile mixture!