Talk:Obesity in the Pacific

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A fact from Obesity in the Pacific appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 27 August 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know
- ... that the seven most obese nations in the world are all located in the Pacific?
A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/August.

Wikipedia

% per se is no statement

I think I have succeeded in finding out that the column headed by % gives the percentage of "of citizens aged 15 and over have an unhealthy weight" as it is called in the introduction. But it really hurts, having such a criminally meaningless column head. Seattle Jörg (talk) 11:37, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I've (hopefully) improved all three of the table's headings. Maedin\^talk 11:46, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

yeah, looks better now. Seattle Jörg (talk) 08:28, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

in the genes?

I've heard Polynesians have a gene that helps them store fat better than most other people, and that this might be an adaptation to long sea voyages on which their ancestors would have had to go for days without food. Any truth in this?--MacRusgail (talk) 15:01, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know. But there's much less obesity on Fiji, where the racial stock is largely different, with a large percentage of Asian origins among the population.

Starch

There seems to be an assumption everywhere that the problem is partly down to tinned meats: has this been researched? The introduction of western refined commodities such as white bread and sugar is part of the problem, I expect, given the pre-existing taste of the people; but it seems to me that the underlying problem is staring everyone in the face, but they are not seeing it--the Pacific island diet is heavily starch and fruit based. Such foods as yams, breadfruit, cassava, taro, poi, coconut, bananas (there are many more) represent a frighteningly high-carb cuisine, surely. There's no mention of this underlying diet in the article--rich people in Tonga, for example, have always tended to obesity. Maybe to mention these staples in this article would be original research, as it might imply they were the reason for South Seas obesity--but so much starch and sugar does strike me as dangerous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.8.186.123 (talk) 19:38, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]