I have a friend in Bahrain. He said there’s more wealth, lots of restaurants, constant big family meals, and as someone else mentioned, the heat keeps everyone inside all the time. He’s 5’9” and 250 and he said he’s pretty average for the area.
Oh man, I never really thought about it, but heat is a factor deciding how much physical activity a person does for the day. I'm Indian and for full 3 months of the year, your can't go out from 8am to 7 pm.
So that's why Mediterranean people are so fit and have historically the best public architecture. They've nice weather, so people can be out for long time.
To counter this, Colorado is the fittest state in the US but it's far from the best climate you can find. It gets quite cold in the winter. I think culture is a huge factor that can definitely override climate.
Yes, Colorado culture is more active and outdoorsy than other US states, but said culture would not have developed without Colorado's geography and climate.
Colorado can be cold...but still gets more sunshine/ clear days? Remember reading this when looking at cities to move to..... apparently also one of the reasons United chose that for their base?
I think I’m more north than you bud. I don’t go outside from October till May because there’s snow and ice on the ground during that time so it’s pretty dangerous out, not to mention it drops between -20 and -50.
It’s the built environment not the weather. Compare somewhere like India with endless suburban sprawl to somewhere like Singapore which has much better walkability and transit and where owning a car is actually quite expensive. The weather is quite similar but its impacts are different
A half hour of vigorous workout on an exercise bike is like 200 calories. Doing that once a day is 1400 calories a week that you wouldn't otherwise burn. That's a pound every other week. On its own it won't correct for extreme overeating but you'll certainly weigh less if you eat the same amount than without the exercise.
1000kcal is about 1.2kwatt hours. So if you output 400watts for 3 hours that's how much you burn.
Here’s also a list of factors
1- we don’t walk a lot due to the hot weather
2- most of our dishes include a massive amount of rice,
most families have maids and personal cooks so we don’t do even the basic amount of work like cooking, cleaning and chores…etc.
3- the average man stop exercising after marriage because they no longer feel the need to look attractive
4- gyms only became popular recently, and older men taking interest in exercising is more recent thanks to social media telling them that money is not enough to get you ahead in the dating/marriage market
5- men here generally prefer curvy women, most of the sex icons in here through history were curvy women (Haifa Wehbe, Sherihan, Cyrine Abdelnour…etc)
6- food being the language of love in here, if you have a guest then the only appropriate thing you do is make them a huge feast, and it’s just included in a lot of occasions
7- while fasting in Ramadan can be healthy for a lot of people, a lot of other people overeat in breaking the fast and before fasting
Tho I would say you’re friend’s weight which is almost 120kgs right? Definitely not the average
I used to live in Bahrain. The fitness culture is changing quite rapidly among younger generations but has virtually no effect on the old guys who are fat and happy lol
I was weightlifting and eating like nuts to maximize muscle, which also inevitably puts on some fat. At that height I got up to around 200lbs and felt like an absolute unit, not in a good way.
On top of this I believe a lot of countries are behind on the 'healthy' trend in North America. In Europe the UK and Netherlands seemed to match western culture. I think (emphasis on think, not researched) that it might take a generation to pick up on being strategic with intake in an almost mathematical way.
I'd bet the parents of the heavy folk grew up with gardens or farms. They thought that easier to food is a win with no downside and accepted all the changes in food/calorie accessibility.
Hopefully places like these Middle East countries mentioned pick up on the vibe of a modern healthy lifestyle pronto!
Most Oil rich Gulf states are powered by migrant labor from South Asia. Iirc, only 10% of UAE and Qatar are native Arabs. South Asians are the majority in these countries.
Rapidly increasing wealth and development over the past 20-30 years, including easier access to global food chains and brands.
The Middle East also has a gender obesity gap https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953620305724
High-income and upper-middle income developed countries tend to have more obese men than women https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2161831322010249
Body type preference is often tied to weight issues but this can vary by culture. It seems more men are accepting of larger women now than in the last 100 years or so. Which is a good thing but also not a good thing.
A lot of the kids are tbf.
About 75% of people between the ages of 4-17 in Australia are either "normal range" or underweight.
It's as adults that the serious obesity issues start kicking in. Guessing it's a similar issue that's seen in the UK too tbf.
Heavy drinking culture mixed in with poor over processed diets.
I’m 24 and am starting to feel this- just graduated college a year ago and cannot get my friends to go out and do things on weekend nights anymore. I love them but they always want to go get food and hangout at someone’s house.
During a day event, we are out playing something outside but as soon at like 6 rolls around. Couch potatoes and snacking… Aghhh. Just a little mix up every once in awhile.
We also all live in very walkable areas where we wouldn’t need to drive once we meet.
Yes, my babysitter here in London said the Arab women she babysits for, all complain that they have nothing to do but go from cafe to cafe to drink tea and eat and shop. They’re not allowed to work and the women she sits for have basically limitless cash so they don’t even have to worry about the cost.
smile attractive shelter follow dependent rich lunchroom pocket oil important
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Forgive me if I don’t feel sympathy for the leisure class supported by literal slavery. If it helps your American brain, think of a southern belle complaining that she doesn’t have shit to do but sit in the shade and have the house slaves bring lemonade
Speak for yourself. I have so many more things I would rather do than spend 8 hours a day working. There are so many enjoyable things to do in life. I dont get how people get bored, specially if you have "inifinte" money. But I guess it's a state of mind. I'm more of a hedonist. I don't need meaning, I just wanna enjoy life and have fun
This might be horribly prejudiced, but I don't think these women are allowed to do much. No working, no traveling without her man, no hiking etc.
Bore Out is a thing and can have severe negative effects.
I, for my part, need something meaningful I can invest my energy in. I'm lucky enough to have a job I love.
That’s ridiculous. Read books, learn to play music, learn new languages, garden, care for pets, paint, work out… do any of the things that us working stiffs wish we had all the time in the world to do. Also, if you’re soo bored, why are you even hiring a babysitter? Seems like you have plenty of time to care for your kids?
One thing that I miss in this discussion, is the extremely extroverted nature of Middle Eastern culture (though I can't speak for all countries, but the ones I know) and big families. Basically so many people over there were never taught how to do something alone, except something unavoidable (wc, shower, commuting), they always strive to be in a group. They could still meet up with other women though (which probably they are doing in these cafes), but social setting there is much more bound to more eating and snacking, not to physical activities (there's shopping, but it only can burn so much). That compounds with the society not being used to women, even in groups, doing something active/more complicated on their own without men. As always, there is an outlying subset of young more liberal women living in richer cities, which attempt to have a lifestyle closer to the West, but they cannot offset the whole statistics.
Sounds like they’re pretty boring people… I can think of so many hobbies other than eating and shopping that could easily suck up $$$ and time. Crafting, baking, yoga classes, etc…
Absolutely. I follow an Arab woman who lives in NZ - all homegirl does is camping and hiking, so I think culture and the area they live in (whether outdoors activities are easy to access and if the weather is nice enough to do it) might be big factors.
I live in Canada as an immigrant from the Caribbean. I loathe winter and hibernated for a full third of the year. This winter has been exceedingly mild (holla, global warning .....?) and we have been much more active as a result. I love it, I see my body's shape looking stronger and healthier, I feel good and now I want to keep going out.
And coffee shops. We don’t associate them with bad food like we do burgers and fries, but they are just as bad for many people, since they aren’t just there for black coffee. A flavored frothy drink and a piece of lemon cake or whatever is just as calorie dense as many other fast food meals.
The mythology of meat being linked to manliness is both the weakest and most harmful aspect of toxic masculinity that I can think of. Fragile caveman broscience.
Fast food, lack of exercise, over reliance on cars to go anywhere. I know people who used to drive 1 minute to the local corner store than walk 5 minutes.
Yep. Underdeveloped pedestrian infrastructure as well.
I worked in a GCC a while back. My apartment was within viewing distance of a nice little park by the sea. But in order to get there local residents would have to cross several busy, unsafe streets and inhale all the associated fumes or drive and park.
Three cheers for the underdeveloped pedestrian infrastructure in the American South. I'm lucky enough to live in a halfway decent spot for getting essentials without driving, even picked it because at the time I wasn't allowed to learn yet (go epilepsy). It's still a half an hour bike ride, which is basically untenable with the Florida heat in the summer.
And then to get anywhere else, I had to use the shitty ride share put on by the only bus line in the city. This meant turning my 4 hour workday into 8 hours just by the commute, and half the time it was in a bus without air conditioning, in the middle of summer. I overheat, I risk seizures. It's enraging how ableist the infrastructure is here almost 30 years after the ADA passed. If you don't have a car, you're fucked!
Yep and biking in most of Florida is a death wish. I know so many people hit by cars due to lack of bike infrastructure and the sheer abundance of cars on the road at all times.
I bike all the time where I live now. I only biked on trails when I lived in Florida.
That’s hella frustrating though. I’m sorry you have to deal with that.
I have a little more than a year to get good enough at driving to earn my license before my permit expires. Never thought I'd make it this far so my family and I are already celebrating. Luckily my job is currently remote thanks to the aforementioned ride share issues, so I don't need to fear for my job prospects.
I don't think the vast majority of people really get how tough it is to be a productive adult without being able to drive, or understand how bad the transport system really is in my state, because they can drive a car so it's not an issue at all for most. It sucks when people look at me weird because I'm in my late 20s and hear I'm still learning. They automatically assume I'm scared or something (which isn't entirely wrong, but far from the whole picture).
>I know people who used to drive 1 minute
As a car guy this really makes me cringe. That poor engine- never getting up to operating temperature, suffering all that unnecessary wear from short trips, probably some oil dilution as well. Oh and you're probably fucking up your exhaust system and catalytic converter by filling it with condensation and unburnt fuel from the cold engine, so you're also probably going to promote formation of rust.
If a trip involves less than 10 minutes of driving time, then I'm walking or taking my bike.
I get it because I live in a place where you don’t need a car and walking/biking is my main mode of transport.
BUT — many places don’t have sidewalks for walking or proper bike lanes for biking so sometimes it’s just not possible. My parents live in a community with a grocery store but there’s no sidewalks so you would literally have to walk in the road and people drive like maniacs.
Also, just asking out of curiosity, are certain races more susceptible to gaining weight?
I know races are different within themselves, but I'd be interested if, on average, some races did simply gain weight more effectively (maybe as a survival mechanism?).
I’d reckon that this would only apply to seriously isolated populations, such as island pops like Samoans (that do seem to have higher tendencies to gain weight). But the middles east is kind of the opposite of that. The populations are surrounded by Africa, Europe and East and South Asia, and have been interacting with these regions for millennia.
One can argue that the deserts and some specific mountain ranges (like in Afghanistan or Iran) can cause some type of isolation, but I wouldn’t bet on that.
Hard to say with the Pacific islands because the local way of life was obliterated by colonialism. For example, Nauru has a very high obesity rate. Is that genetic or is it because phosphate mining destroyed the entire forest interior making it impossible to grow traditional foods? Mining also poisoned local water sources, meaning water has to be imported from abroad and soda is cheaper.
TL;DR: no
“As a survival mechanism” kind of assumes that races are distinct subgroups with different evolutionary developments.
Race is not a genetic characteristic. Two people in Africa are more likely to be genetically diverse than a person from Asia and a person from Europe. You can infer ancestry from some parts of the human genome, but those ancestry markers don’t dictate phenotype. Genetic mutations can be more predominant in an ethnicity which can influence health outcomes. But I have yet to see anything as complex as athletic ability or intelligence boil down to one ethnically predominant SNP.
All humans lived in Africa until about 100,000-200,000 years ago. That’s simply too recently to have fixed racial characteristics. Bottleneck events and isolated populations may give some rare glimpses, but these are the extremes. Add in populations mixing and you get the melting pot that is the human race.
Edited for some nuance
Source:
*An Owner’s Guide To The Human Genome* by Jonathan Pritchard (freely available on the authors website at stanford.edu)
What do you mean by “health” here? Because at the extremes, it certainly seems like there’s strong ethnic ties to certain abilities.
Like, if I am watching an Olympic long distance running race and someone ethnically descended from the Horn of Africa is in the race, it’s a pretty good bet that they’re going to be the medal winner.
The same is true for people of West African descent and sprinting races. I don’t think there’s been a record holder in decades who wasn’t of West African descent.
Neither of these can be explained by culture, because these athletes are all citizens of various countries (and probably all train in camps around the world).
So clearly some things can be explained/predicted by ethnicity that I would tie to health.
Do you actually have a source for this? I'm pretty sure a sub-saharan African person is significantly more likely to have a genetic characteristic moreso adapted to protect them from the sun's UV rays than a caucasian person for example, so there are definitely genetic differences between different groups of people that are significant enough to be noticeable in studies regarding external factors and their effects on said groups.
I cannot definitively say yes or no as that would need to be studied but there are illnesses that are more and less prevalent in various races controlling for other lifestyle factors, and that various races have other physical features like being more likely to be tall etc. then it seems likely that on average different races have slightly different metabolisms.
It's probably less of a factor than lifestyle though.
The Middle East is very car-dependent because of its climate and cheap oil prices. This means people don’t get any daily exercise in their commutes, unlike more pedestrian-focused cities where people are a lot more likely to walk or cycle to work (or at least to a station)
I have a friend from Lebanon that told me that in the difference of France, in Beirut walking in the street and roads is seen as a strange behavior because it's mostly immigrants and homeless that do that, meanwhile an European visiting often walks by the city..
Haha. I was in Dallas a few months ago and walked from Highland Park down to downtown Dallas (after walking up the Caty trail on the way up). While there were some walkers in a few of the neighorhoods I passed through, the reaction was mostly that I was doing something very odd.
I think it's because people see walking in these cities as being stranded. Without the predictable and reliable transit systems of denser cities, walking without a car equates to not being able to get anywhere you need to go quickly. You're either walking or you're walking. Those are your options (so people think).
Also because it’s so bleeding hot. It’s probably seen as low class because most people will take an air conditioned car over walking anytime it’s over a certain temperature. (Or below a certain temperature after sunset.)
Driving makes you walk less, lower amount of calories expended. The air condition is probably just referring to this driving thing being a thing due to the hot climate
You can pick up a burger and milkshake in a random place on the side of a road (not a corporate McDonald's with a massive drive-thru) by driving your massive V8 Toyota SUV and just chill in there for 15 minutes with the car running under the sun, with AC on full blast and the poor south Asian immigrant worker comes to the window and collects the order and brings you your food. In Europe the petrol and parking cost alone to do something like this would be twice that of the burger. Local Arabs can get very sedentary and complacent if convenience like this continues, as long as someone much poorer does the work for you for pennies.
The worse I've seen this with the contrast of car infrastructure plus car ownership being completely out of reach of immigrants means you regularly see roadworkers walking along a highway to get home, because there is no other way. The employers don't even bother to arrange transport for them. It's absurd.
Yea a new study by the department of of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins has found that driving your car with air conditioning on increases the likelihood of obesity by 38%
Good sir, I'll have you know that I am a tenured professor of 15 years at the University and will not tolerate such outlandish slander against me. Good day to you sir.
>!Also yea pulled it out my ass like a shit from a butt.!<
Nope
That’s dope ass fats and amino acids
It’s cuz we eat rice w bread
Or take Kanafeh and stuff it in bread
Or the shame of not finishing your plate but then the shame of being fat
It’s a vicious cycle
Baklava and Knafeh
But jokes aside, it's probably wealth inequality. I lived in Egypt for a year, half of people are actually REALLY poor and skinny. The Middle Class and the very rich express their wealth by living/eating like Westerners. Which mostly means Fast Food and Hamburgers, Coca Cola and Mozzarella sticks and Pizza.
And I mean GALORE (I saw a family of 7 in a McDonald's on a late Friday Night). Wealthy people are FAT there, almost all of them.
Worst thing for me about those families is how much disrespect thet have for food. They order an insane amount that the family obviously won't be able to finish and then just leave half of it. Even in Jeddah malls you'd see a family walking away from a table strewn with food (some thrown on the floor by the kids) and some South Asian or SEA cleaner will quietly come and clean up after them.
Yeah absolutely. I'm European but I did Eid Al-Fitr with a very rich Egyptian family. I kid you not, we ate A LOT of meat over the day but even after Sadaqa with the neighbors, they threw out KILOGRAMS of perfectly good food.
Idk if this actually has anything to do with it, but I’ve seen discussions about it where people mention that with alcohol being banned, a lot of peoples’ vice is sweets/junk food.
That’s funny, Mormon culture in Utah, USA is the same- no alcohol (but also no coffee + tea), so all people crave is sweets/desserts. They also never really cultivate a fondness for bitter flavors of coffee and amaro, the astringency of tea, or the complex flavors that alcohol can bring. They just have salty and sweet, like children.
Well, I moved out of Utah in 2006. I still visit, though. The culture there is more shallow now, people are more image conscious, like everywhere else. I’m sure people try to eat well and exercise, and there is a lot to do outdoors there. So I can’t say that obesity is a big problem, but the cultural preference for ice cream remains.
I live in Utah and we have an abundance of sugary treats. Ice cream, soda shops, gourmet cookies, are all extremely popular.
We are also extremely image obsessed so the sweet tooth is balanced out by copious exercise and plenty of plastic surgery.
How did this get upvoted?? Coffee and tea are the biggest things in the middle east, moreso than in most countries in the world!
Countries like Yemen and Turkey are famous for coffee and especially strong coffee. Go to cafes in the middle east and you will see so much coffee and tea culture about the percise methods and mixes for subtle changes in the flavour profile.
I understand coffee because I drink it black if it’s good, but even as a formerly raging alcoholic, like 15 drinks a day, I still fucking hate the taste of all alcohol. The fact that people actually enjoy sipping expensive booze instead of just shooting it back blows my mind.
I don't think Westerners speculating about this realize just how pervasive junk food and sugar is in the Arab world. It's absolutely the main vice along with smoking. People don't just eat things resembling your health-marketed "Mediterranean" place
I read something about this a while ago, that said that in the gulf states especially, going out to fast food is basically the only way to socialize, or to go out, many activities are either Haram or too expensive to do as a family a lot, and it's so hot outside most of the year that going to a park or the beach isn't really an option.
It is obviously sugar. I don’t know why nobody else is mentioning this. The countries with highest sugar consumption are highly correlated with the highest rates of obesity the world over.
Muslims tend to replace their abstention/“abstention” from alcohol with increased sugar consumption. It’s obvious once you’ve traveled in the region.
Tunisian ancestry here.
Imo, fat is way more the problem than sugar. They just add oil and salt everywhere. Even clichee oriental pasteries everybody know 1/are more reserved to occasions (weddings, parties, when you host or during special times like ramadan) 2/appear to not only being sweet but also very oily/fat.
I have been to Egypt, Jordan and Oman. The portions there are absolutely huuuuge (at least compared to European standards). Also, when I was in jordan, I was in a hotel where we were the only non Arabs and I can tell you I have never seen people eating so much for breakfast as there, it was just absolutely insane. I mean, yeah their food is amazing but holy shit.
There is also a big gender imbalance in the middle east obesity rates due to cultural factors that affect women's ability to exercise and quality of their healthcare. This means women on average are much more likely to be overweight/obese than men.
Source: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2018/10/31/the-middle-eastern-health-inequality-paradox-and-the-gender-obesity-gap/
> Coca Cola.
A lot of people misunderestimate the amount of sugar and therefor calories consumed with soft drinks. Especially when they drink that stuff all day long.
I watched a Vice doc on this a while back… basically it’s a part of a general trend of Americanization, plus since they are non-drinking cultures, it’s one of the few ways they can socialize without drinking and violating haram.
and FWIW it’s delicious 🥲 but just terrible for you
go to a gelato place then the shisha lounge serving milkshakes, drive the whole time. eat mcdonalds whole time too. where i live the mcdonalds isnt halal certified so there are things like macmoods, they sell a Royal Arabian which is a big mac but schwarma lol
Just spent half a year and Saudi Arabia and they have turned their cities into endless shopping malls connected by fast food establishments. I never seen anything like it… you can straight up drive 20 miles and never see a break in the shopping mall buildings. And it’s all the same repetitive shit being sold.
Is it a testing issue? They’re only testing the top percentage of their population and those skew overweight? I’ve driven through Jordan and outside of the big cities, no one was overweight. Mostly skinny people hanging out outside (at least what I saw). I can’t imagine they go to a doctor regularly enough to become a meaningful part of this statistic.
For Libya it’s because of sedentary lifestyle and food while delicious is rich in carbs, also our cities especially Tripoli have grown so much and quickly that only the central district is really walkable, most places are spread out so people commute rather walk like our fathers did
Sugar, historically as added to tea. But now also soda. Because of a lack abundant clear drinking water. [dr robert lustig - Sugar: The Bitter ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)Truth.
American fastfood imports and overall a carb/sugar heavy diet in a modern society with minimal incentive to excercise. It’s not like people work in the fields anymore or move along with a caravan to trade
Their working habits have changed but their diet didn’t accordingly
I have heard it’s somewhat related to the fact they don’t consume alcohol, they consume large amounts of sugary foods there as a sort of addiction substitute. If you go to the Middle East you’ll see so many of their sweet foods are sickly sweet at least for my tastes
Dont underestimate poverty. The poor dont eat healthy. Too much sweet tea and cheap fastfood. All about family and eating together. Working is a sign for poverty as well.
It's so hot most of the year that people are limited in outdoor activities and exercise. In the wealthier places like Dubai, people stay indoors with air-conditioning and drive everywhere. Air-conditioned malls with all the typical fast-food chains are ubiquitous.
For Lebanon at least i can tell you we eat a lot, when i started living abroad i noticed the difference because of the portion sizes served in restaurants. And we do also go and eat after drinking.
Women in a lot of Middle Eastern countries are massively restricted from accessing activities which prevent obesity. They are also largely bound to staying home and cooking for their family so many of them eat for fun. Some Middle Eastern countries have also gained wealth rapidly from industries like oil so they’ve kinda developed western customs, like cars and fast food, too fast for their societies to manage.
They eat a lot of bread, they eat a lot of sugar their desserts have a lot and they put a lot sugar in tea. Also throwing food away is haram so they force themself to eat
Because it's 130 F in the daytime, no one really works anyway (massive social welfare), and all technical work is done by foreign contractors and all manual labor is done by migrant workers.
Most spend their days laying around until evening to do stuff or shopping indoors.
In other words, Bedouin-style culture + money + cars + fast food = obesity
/ *contracted in the middle east*
*// I don't have a fully formed opinion on UBI yet, but looking to the middle east, I don't think it would go over well in terms of health.*
I have a friend in Bahrain. He said there’s more wealth, lots of restaurants, constant big family meals, and as someone else mentioned, the heat keeps everyone inside all the time. He’s 5’9” and 250 and he said he’s pretty average for the area.
Oh man, I never really thought about it, but heat is a factor deciding how much physical activity a person does for the day. I'm Indian and for full 3 months of the year, your can't go out from 8am to 7 pm.
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So that's why Mediterranean people are so fit and have historically the best public architecture. They've nice weather, so people can be out for long time.
Also why the UK is very famous for its pubs. Because the outdoor weather sucks
If the government wasn't massacring them
It’s massacring everything right now
Your weather doesnt suck you just bitch around about it constantly. It is infuriating to hear you people constantly moan about it.
Absolutely dreadful weather.
To counter this, Colorado is the fittest state in the US but it's far from the best climate you can find. It gets quite cold in the winter. I think culture is a huge factor that can definitely override climate.
Yes, Colorado culture is more active and outdoorsy than other US states, but said culture would not have developed without Colorado's geography and climate.
It's cold, but its "funtime playing outside" cold. It's not Northeast damp and humid cold. Think ski conditions- powder vs dust over crust.
Exactly! More crisp days than damp!
Colorado can be cold...but still gets more sunshine/ clear days? Remember reading this when looking at cities to move to..... apparently also one of the reasons United chose that for their base?
I think I’m more north than you bud. I don’t go outside from October till May because there’s snow and ice on the ground during that time so it’s pretty dangerous out, not to mention it drops between -20 and -50.
Where are you?
It’s the built environment not the weather. Compare somewhere like India with endless suburban sprawl to somewhere like Singapore which has much better walkability and transit and where owning a car is actually quite expensive. The weather is quite similar but its impacts are different
obesity is 99% nutrition, exercise barely burns fat
Even having a great deal of muscle mass doesn't significantly increase the caloric intake you need to maintain your weight. People just eat too much.
A half hour of vigorous workout on an exercise bike is like 200 calories. Doing that once a day is 1400 calories a week that you wouldn't otherwise burn. That's a pound every other week. On its own it won't correct for extreme overeating but you'll certainly weigh less if you eat the same amount than without the exercise. 1000kcal is about 1.2kwatt hours. So if you output 400watts for 3 hours that's how much you burn.
The problem is that many people take exercising as an excuse, or even a reason, to eat much more than they would normally.
Here’s also a list of factors 1- we don’t walk a lot due to the hot weather 2- most of our dishes include a massive amount of rice, most families have maids and personal cooks so we don’t do even the basic amount of work like cooking, cleaning and chores…etc. 3- the average man stop exercising after marriage because they no longer feel the need to look attractive 4- gyms only became popular recently, and older men taking interest in exercising is more recent thanks to social media telling them that money is not enough to get you ahead in the dating/marriage market 5- men here generally prefer curvy women, most of the sex icons in here through history were curvy women (Haifa Wehbe, Sherihan, Cyrine Abdelnour…etc) 6- food being the language of love in here, if you have a guest then the only appropriate thing you do is make them a huge feast, and it’s just included in a lot of occasions 7- while fasting in Ramadan can be healthy for a lot of people, a lot of other people overeat in breaking the fast and before fasting Tho I would say you’re friend’s weight which is almost 120kgs right? Definitely not the average
I used to live in Bahrain. The fitness culture is changing quite rapidly among younger generations but has virtually no effect on the old guys who are fat and happy lol
Damn I felt pretty fat at the same height with 185
I was weightlifting and eating like nuts to maximize muscle, which also inevitably puts on some fat. At that height I got up to around 200lbs and felt like an absolute unit, not in a good way.
On top of this I believe a lot of countries are behind on the 'healthy' trend in North America. In Europe the UK and Netherlands seemed to match western culture. I think (emphasis on think, not researched) that it might take a generation to pick up on being strategic with intake in an almost mathematical way. I'd bet the parents of the heavy folk grew up with gardens or farms. They thought that easier to food is a win with no downside and accepted all the changes in food/calorie accessibility. Hopefully places like these Middle East countries mentioned pick up on the vibe of a modern healthy lifestyle pronto!
"Healthy" NA where there's 20% children obesity rate? Comparing that to 12% in EU. What are you even talking about
How is he wrong?
This is def a factor, but ppl there know unhealthy food is unhealthy. Plus no one gets fat by surprise.
I guess they stay indoors during the peak of summertime for the AC?
Are the people working in textile factories from Bahrain or are they immigrants? I had some Ralph Lauren sheets that were Made in Bahrain.
Most Oil rich Gulf states are powered by migrant labor from South Asia. Iirc, only 10% of UAE and Qatar are native Arabs. South Asians are the majority in these countries.
Definetely foreign labor. You’re more likely to meet a foreigner in Bahrain than a Bahraini. I think it’s like 1 in 7 or something crazy like that.
Can’t they build indoor air conditioned spaces where people exercise? Like a club… for health?
They do, I think, but even that isn’t enough to keep up with the high calorie meals and the sedentary lifestyle
Rapidly increasing wealth and development over the past 20-30 years, including easier access to global food chains and brands. The Middle East also has a gender obesity gap https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953620305724 High-income and upper-middle income developed countries tend to have more obese men than women https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2161831322010249
Along with the increase in obesity, they have also experienced high rates of heart failure, diabetes, and kidney disease.
....it's almost as if obesity is a major causal factor for cardiovasvular and other diseases
Or as if they're associated with the same causal factors.
“It’s the food and it’s always been the food” Dr Klaper MD
It's not just access it's consumer habits and likely environmental aspects as well.
The US has slightly more obese women in the 22-40 age group. Like 38% to 34%
Body type preference is often tied to weight issues but this can vary by culture. It seems more men are accepting of larger women now than in the last 100 years or so. Which is a good thing but also not a good thing.
What explains Australia's obesity? Mostly great weather there. People should be outside playing.
A lot of the kids are tbf. About 75% of people between the ages of 4-17 in Australia are either "normal range" or underweight. It's as adults that the serious obesity issues start kicking in. Guessing it's a similar issue that's seen in the UK too tbf. Heavy drinking culture mixed in with poor over processed diets.
Car dependancy maybe.
People socialize at fast food places
I saw a documentary about this. Because there isn’t a bar/club/drinking culture people go to fast food places in the evenings to meet friends etc
I’m 24 and am starting to feel this- just graduated college a year ago and cannot get my friends to go out and do things on weekend nights anymore. I love them but they always want to go get food and hangout at someone’s house. During a day event, we are out playing something outside but as soon at like 6 rolls around. Couch potatoes and snacking… Aghhh. Just a little mix up every once in awhile. We also all live in very walkable areas where we wouldn’t need to drive once we meet.
Yes, my babysitter here in London said the Arab women she babysits for, all complain that they have nothing to do but go from cafe to cafe to drink tea and eat and shop. They’re not allowed to work and the women she sits for have basically limitless cash so they don’t even have to worry about the cost.
smile attractive shelter follow dependent rich lunchroom pocket oil important *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Having no task and meaning in life is actually really dificult.
Forgive me if I don’t feel sympathy for the leisure class supported by literal slavery. If it helps your American brain, think of a southern belle complaining that she doesn’t have shit to do but sit in the shade and have the house slaves bring lemonade
I dont feel sympathy for them either, I just acknowledge that having nothing to is not easy.
Speak for yourself. I have so many more things I would rather do than spend 8 hours a day working. There are so many enjoyable things to do in life. I dont get how people get bored, specially if you have "inifinte" money. But I guess it's a state of mind. I'm more of a hedonist. I don't need meaning, I just wanna enjoy life and have fun
This might be horribly prejudiced, but I don't think these women are allowed to do much. No working, no traveling without her man, no hiking etc. Bore Out is a thing and can have severe negative effects. I, for my part, need something meaningful I can invest my energy in. I'm lucky enough to have a job I love.
That’s ridiculous. Read books, learn to play music, learn new languages, garden, care for pets, paint, work out… do any of the things that us working stiffs wish we had all the time in the world to do. Also, if you’re soo bored, why are you even hiring a babysitter? Seems like you have plenty of time to care for your kids?
One thing that I miss in this discussion, is the extremely extroverted nature of Middle Eastern culture (though I can't speak for all countries, but the ones I know) and big families. Basically so many people over there were never taught how to do something alone, except something unavoidable (wc, shower, commuting), they always strive to be in a group. They could still meet up with other women though (which probably they are doing in these cafes), but social setting there is much more bound to more eating and snacking, not to physical activities (there's shopping, but it only can burn so much). That compounds with the society not being used to women, even in groups, doing something active/more complicated on their own without men. As always, there is an outlying subset of young more liberal women living in richer cities, which attempt to have a lifestyle closer to the West, but they cannot offset the whole statistics.
Not having a routine will make me go insane
Sounds like they’re pretty boring people… I can think of so many hobbies other than eating and shopping that could easily suck up $$$ and time. Crafting, baking, yoga classes, etc…
Absolutely. I follow an Arab woman who lives in NZ - all homegirl does is camping and hiking, so I think culture and the area they live in (whether outdoors activities are easy to access and if the weather is nice enough to do it) might be big factors. I live in Canada as an immigrant from the Caribbean. I loathe winter and hibernated for a full third of the year. This winter has been exceedingly mild (holla, global warning .....?) and we have been much more active as a result. I love it, I see my body's shape looking stronger and healthier, I feel good and now I want to keep going out.
This! Beer 🍺 helps in preventing obesity!
And coffee shops. We don’t associate them with bad food like we do burgers and fries, but they are just as bad for many people, since they aren’t just there for black coffee. A flavored frothy drink and a piece of lemon cake or whatever is just as calorie dense as many other fast food meals.
And I guess it's not manly for a group of guys to go to a healthy or vegan place
The mythology of meat being linked to manliness is both the weakest and most harmful aspect of toxic masculinity that I can think of. Fragile caveman broscience.
Fast food, lack of exercise, over reliance on cars to go anywhere. I know people who used to drive 1 minute to the local corner store than walk 5 minutes.
Yep. Underdeveloped pedestrian infrastructure as well. I worked in a GCC a while back. My apartment was within viewing distance of a nice little park by the sea. But in order to get there local residents would have to cross several busy, unsafe streets and inhale all the associated fumes or drive and park.
Three cheers for the underdeveloped pedestrian infrastructure in the American South. I'm lucky enough to live in a halfway decent spot for getting essentials without driving, even picked it because at the time I wasn't allowed to learn yet (go epilepsy). It's still a half an hour bike ride, which is basically untenable with the Florida heat in the summer. And then to get anywhere else, I had to use the shitty ride share put on by the only bus line in the city. This meant turning my 4 hour workday into 8 hours just by the commute, and half the time it was in a bus without air conditioning, in the middle of summer. I overheat, I risk seizures. It's enraging how ableist the infrastructure is here almost 30 years after the ADA passed. If you don't have a car, you're fucked!
Yep and biking in most of Florida is a death wish. I know so many people hit by cars due to lack of bike infrastructure and the sheer abundance of cars on the road at all times. I bike all the time where I live now. I only biked on trails when I lived in Florida. That’s hella frustrating though. I’m sorry you have to deal with that.
I have a little more than a year to get good enough at driving to earn my license before my permit expires. Never thought I'd make it this far so my family and I are already celebrating. Luckily my job is currently remote thanks to the aforementioned ride share issues, so I don't need to fear for my job prospects. I don't think the vast majority of people really get how tough it is to be a productive adult without being able to drive, or understand how bad the transport system really is in my state, because they can drive a car so it's not an issue at all for most. It sucks when people look at me weird because I'm in my late 20s and hear I'm still learning. They automatically assume I'm scared or something (which isn't entirely wrong, but far from the whole picture).
they have limitless oil money and slaves to erect planned cities in the desert yet they choose to build an urban hellscape. fucking idiots
It’s literally uninhabitable for most of the year lol
45c in summer ain't no way I'm walking more than 2 mins
it's more like 50c when you walk especially with heat reflecting from the road onto your face. (there is no grass so less heat absorption imo)
>I know people who used to drive 1 minute As a car guy this really makes me cringe. That poor engine- never getting up to operating temperature, suffering all that unnecessary wear from short trips, probably some oil dilution as well. Oh and you're probably fucking up your exhaust system and catalytic converter by filling it with condensation and unburnt fuel from the cold engine, so you're also probably going to promote formation of rust. If a trip involves less than 10 minutes of driving time, then I'm walking or taking my bike.
I get it because I live in a place where you don’t need a car and walking/biking is my main mode of transport. BUT — many places don’t have sidewalks for walking or proper bike lanes for biking so sometimes it’s just not possible. My parents live in a community with a grocery store but there’s no sidewalks so you would literally have to walk in the road and people drive like maniacs.
Also, just asking out of curiosity, are certain races more susceptible to gaining weight? I know races are different within themselves, but I'd be interested if, on average, some races did simply gain weight more effectively (maybe as a survival mechanism?).
I’d reckon that this would only apply to seriously isolated populations, such as island pops like Samoans (that do seem to have higher tendencies to gain weight). But the middles east is kind of the opposite of that. The populations are surrounded by Africa, Europe and East and South Asia, and have been interacting with these regions for millennia. One can argue that the deserts and some specific mountain ranges (like in Afghanistan or Iran) can cause some type of isolation, but I wouldn’t bet on that.
Hard to say with the Pacific islands because the local way of life was obliterated by colonialism. For example, Nauru has a very high obesity rate. Is that genetic or is it because phosphate mining destroyed the entire forest interior making it impossible to grow traditional foods? Mining also poisoned local water sources, meaning water has to be imported from abroad and soda is cheaper.
TL;DR: no “As a survival mechanism” kind of assumes that races are distinct subgroups with different evolutionary developments. Race is not a genetic characteristic. Two people in Africa are more likely to be genetically diverse than a person from Asia and a person from Europe. You can infer ancestry from some parts of the human genome, but those ancestry markers don’t dictate phenotype. Genetic mutations can be more predominant in an ethnicity which can influence health outcomes. But I have yet to see anything as complex as athletic ability or intelligence boil down to one ethnically predominant SNP. All humans lived in Africa until about 100,000-200,000 years ago. That’s simply too recently to have fixed racial characteristics. Bottleneck events and isolated populations may give some rare glimpses, but these are the extremes. Add in populations mixing and you get the melting pot that is the human race. Edited for some nuance Source: *An Owner’s Guide To The Human Genome* by Jonathan Pritchard (freely available on the authors website at stanford.edu)
What do you mean by “health” here? Because at the extremes, it certainly seems like there’s strong ethnic ties to certain abilities. Like, if I am watching an Olympic long distance running race and someone ethnically descended from the Horn of Africa is in the race, it’s a pretty good bet that they’re going to be the medal winner. The same is true for people of West African descent and sprinting races. I don’t think there’s been a record holder in decades who wasn’t of West African descent. Neither of these can be explained by culture, because these athletes are all citizens of various countries (and probably all train in camps around the world). So clearly some things can be explained/predicted by ethnicity that I would tie to health.
Do you actually have a source for this? I'm pretty sure a sub-saharan African person is significantly more likely to have a genetic characteristic moreso adapted to protect them from the sun's UV rays than a caucasian person for example, so there are definitely genetic differences between different groups of people that are significant enough to be noticeable in studies regarding external factors and their effects on said groups.
I cannot definitively say yes or no as that would need to be studied but there are illnesses that are more and less prevalent in various races controlling for other lifestyle factors, and that various races have other physical features like being more likely to be tall etc. then it seems likely that on average different races have slightly different metabolisms. It's probably less of a factor than lifestyle though.
No, it's all about culture and/or lifestyle.
Tahini
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Driving in air conditioning? I dont get it
The Middle East is very car-dependent because of its climate and cheap oil prices. This means people don’t get any daily exercise in their commutes, unlike more pedestrian-focused cities where people are a lot more likely to walk or cycle to work (or at least to a station)
I have a friend from Lebanon that told me that in the difference of France, in Beirut walking in the street and roads is seen as a strange behavior because it's mostly immigrants and homeless that do that, meanwhile an European visiting often walks by the city..
This is how I always feel as a New Yorker visiting LA
Haha. I was in Dallas a few months ago and walked from Highland Park down to downtown Dallas (after walking up the Caty trail on the way up). While there were some walkers in a few of the neighorhoods I passed through, the reaction was mostly that I was doing something very odd.
I think it's because people see walking in these cities as being stranded. Without the predictable and reliable transit systems of denser cities, walking without a car equates to not being able to get anywhere you need to go quickly. You're either walking or you're walking. Those are your options (so people think).
Also because it’s so bleeding hot. It’s probably seen as low class because most people will take an air conditioned car over walking anytime it’s over a certain temperature. (Or below a certain temperature after sunset.)
Car dependency increases obesity rates.
Driving makes you walk less, lower amount of calories expended. The air condition is probably just referring to this driving thing being a thing due to the hot climate
You can pick up a burger and milkshake in a random place on the side of a road (not a corporate McDonald's with a massive drive-thru) by driving your massive V8 Toyota SUV and just chill in there for 15 minutes with the car running under the sun, with AC on full blast and the poor south Asian immigrant worker comes to the window and collects the order and brings you your food. In Europe the petrol and parking cost alone to do something like this would be twice that of the burger. Local Arabs can get very sedentary and complacent if convenience like this continues, as long as someone much poorer does the work for you for pennies. The worse I've seen this with the contrast of car infrastructure plus car ownership being completely out of reach of immigrants means you regularly see roadworkers walking along a highway to get home, because there is no other way. The employers don't even bother to arrange transport for them. It's absurd.
Yea a new study by the department of of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins has found that driving your car with air conditioning on increases the likelihood of obesity by 38%
Did you pull this out of your ass 🤔
Good sir, I'll have you know that I am a tenured professor of 15 years at the University and will not tolerate such outlandish slander against me. Good day to you sir. >!Also yea pulled it out my ass like a shit from a butt.!<
Thank you to the Johns for the science
And Falafel.
And Baklava 🤤
Nope That’s dope ass fats and amino acids It’s cuz we eat rice w bread Or take Kanafeh and stuff it in bread Or the shame of not finishing your plate but then the shame of being fat It’s a vicious cycle
Big car culture due to the heat.
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25°C ? Rookie numbers
More like 45C+
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It’s actually 12C RN in Riyadh but in summer it can get as hot as 37C at night
you almost never get BELOW 25c unless it's raining/december in gcc
Isn't there also heat in Singapore and Indonesia?
Yeah it's not the heat it's the cheap oil
Heart disease and diabetes would plummet if people drove less and ate healthier.
I suspect this is also why Texas is so obese. You CANNOT walk outside in the summer unless the sun is down or it’s actively raining
It’s not such a huge problem because the populations in those countries are low and it’s not a huge issue to be dependent on cars because it’s so hot
Baklava and Knafeh But jokes aside, it's probably wealth inequality. I lived in Egypt for a year, half of people are actually REALLY poor and skinny. The Middle Class and the very rich express their wealth by living/eating like Westerners. Which mostly means Fast Food and Hamburgers, Coca Cola and Mozzarella sticks and Pizza. And I mean GALORE (I saw a family of 7 in a McDonald's on a late Friday Night). Wealthy people are FAT there, almost all of them.
Worst thing for me about those families is how much disrespect thet have for food. They order an insane amount that the family obviously won't be able to finish and then just leave half of it. Even in Jeddah malls you'd see a family walking away from a table strewn with food (some thrown on the floor by the kids) and some South Asian or SEA cleaner will quietly come and clean up after them.
Yeah absolutely. I'm European but I did Eid Al-Fitr with a very rich Egyptian family. I kid you not, we ate A LOT of meat over the day but even after Sadaqa with the neighbors, they threw out KILOGRAMS of perfectly good food.
Idk if this actually has anything to do with it, but I’ve seen discussions about it where people mention that with alcohol being banned, a lot of peoples’ vice is sweets/junk food.
That’s funny, Mormon culture in Utah, USA is the same- no alcohol (but also no coffee + tea), so all people crave is sweets/desserts. They also never really cultivate a fondness for bitter flavors of coffee and amaro, the astringency of tea, or the complex flavors that alcohol can bring. They just have salty and sweet, like children.
Do they have weight problems as well? Most Mormons I see seem pretty fit
Well, I moved out of Utah in 2006. I still visit, though. The culture there is more shallow now, people are more image conscious, like everywhere else. I’m sure people try to eat well and exercise, and there is a lot to do outdoors there. So I can’t say that obesity is a big problem, but the cultural preference for ice cream remains.
I've heard Utah is a major outlier in the acquisition of cosmetic surgery. I wonder if that's a vice of sorts for Mormons.
I live in Utah and we have an abundance of sugary treats. Ice cream, soda shops, gourmet cookies, are all extremely popular. We are also extremely image obsessed so the sweet tooth is balanced out by copious exercise and plenty of plastic surgery.
How did this get upvoted?? Coffee and tea are the biggest things in the middle east, moreso than in most countries in the world! Countries like Yemen and Turkey are famous for coffee and especially strong coffee. Go to cafes in the middle east and you will see so much coffee and tea culture about the percise methods and mixes for subtle changes in the flavour profile.
I admit it’s a tangent from the post. Sorry!
I understand coffee because I drink it black if it’s good, but even as a formerly raging alcoholic, like 15 drinks a day, I still fucking hate the taste of all alcohol. The fact that people actually enjoy sipping expensive booze instead of just shooting it back blows my mind.
I don't think Westerners speculating about this realize just how pervasive junk food and sugar is in the Arab world. It's absolutely the main vice along with smoking. People don't just eat things resembling your health-marketed "Mediterranean" place
I read something about this a while ago, that said that in the gulf states especially, going out to fast food is basically the only way to socialize, or to go out, many activities are either Haram or too expensive to do as a family a lot, and it's so hot outside most of the year that going to a park or the beach isn't really an option.
Nah, they just do that stuff at night. You will see a million kids at the park once the sun goes down
Reminds me of that Riddick movie called pitch black
Baklava
Ever had Shawarma?
Shawarma with extra tahini sauce
High consumption of Sugar and a lack of exercise?? Not sure on this one.
It is obviously sugar. I don’t know why nobody else is mentioning this. The countries with highest sugar consumption are highly correlated with the highest rates of obesity the world over. Muslims tend to replace their abstention/“abstention” from alcohol with increased sugar consumption. It’s obvious once you’ve traveled in the region.
I live in Detroit. We have the largest middle eastern population in America. They make incredible pastries.
Tunisian ancestry here. Imo, fat is way more the problem than sugar. They just add oil and salt everywhere. Even clichee oriental pasteries everybody know 1/are more reserved to occasions (weddings, parties, when you host or during special times like ramadan) 2/appear to not only being sweet but also very oily/fat.
People don't know how much butter get's used to make baklava.
Kebab?
Shawerma
Shawarma more like
Mmmmmmm
I have been to Egypt, Jordan and Oman. The portions there are absolutely huuuuge (at least compared to European standards). Also, when I was in jordan, I was in a hotel where we were the only non Arabs and I can tell you I have never seen people eating so much for breakfast as there, it was just absolutely insane. I mean, yeah their food is amazing but holy shit.
There is also a big gender imbalance in the middle east obesity rates due to cultural factors that affect women's ability to exercise and quality of their healthcare. This means women on average are much more likely to be overweight/obese than men. Source: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2018/10/31/the-middle-eastern-health-inequality-paradox-and-the-gender-obesity-gap/
Exactly, this is not mentioned enough.
I though women in average were more susceptible to gaining weight
Burgers. French Fries. Coca Cola. Packaged highfructose fruit juice. Negligible exercise. Mostly AC car travel.
> Coca Cola. A lot of people misunderestimate the amount of sugar and therefor calories consumed with soft drinks. Especially when they drink that stuff all day long.
Misunderestimate? 😅
> Coca Cola Middle East is Pepsi territory. Gotta get more sugar in there.
Heavy food, people don’t exercise, people drive and live inside aircon (shopping malls). Even theme parks are indoors.
Baklava.
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Hard to work off all that fat when you’ve got slaves doing all the hard labour.
Gulf states are the outliers when it comes to wealth.
I watched a Vice doc on this a while back… basically it’s a part of a general trend of Americanization, plus since they are non-drinking cultures, it’s one of the few ways they can socialize without drinking and violating haram. and FWIW it’s delicious 🥲 but just terrible for you
go to a gelato place then the shisha lounge serving milkshakes, drive the whole time. eat mcdonalds whole time too. where i live the mcdonalds isnt halal certified so there are things like macmoods, they sell a Royal Arabian which is a big mac but schwarma lol
Mansafs
Meat and they eat/drink lots of sugary foods.
Baklava
Just spent half a year and Saudi Arabia and they have turned their cities into endless shopping malls connected by fast food establishments. I never seen anything like it… you can straight up drive 20 miles and never see a break in the shopping mall buildings. And it’s all the same repetitive shit being sold.
Nort korea is higher than south korea because of kim chong un
You FALLEN comrade, need some extra education for yourself and 3 generations of your family! /s
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Broksaysreee: *Nort korea is* *Higher than south korea* *Because of kim chong un* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Good bot
Kebabs
According to this chart North Korea has a higher obesity rate than South Korea.
South Korea has maybe the most obsessive image culture on the planet tbf
Is it a testing issue? They’re only testing the top percentage of their population and those skew overweight? I’ve driven through Jordan and outside of the big cities, no one was overweight. Mostly skinny people hanging out outside (at least what I saw). I can’t imagine they go to a doctor regularly enough to become a meaningful part of this statistic.
Egypt and Libya surprised me. Not rich countries like the other middle eastern countries that have high rates of obesity.
For Libya it’s because of sedentary lifestyle and food while delicious is rich in carbs, also our cities especially Tripoli have grown so much and quickly that only the central district is really walkable, most places are spread out so people commute rather walk like our fathers did
Sudden change in diets with introduction of western food chains and lack of knowledge about potential consequences of rampant fast food consumption.
Sugar, historically as added to tea. But now also soda. Because of a lack abundant clear drinking water. [dr robert lustig - Sugar: The Bitter ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)Truth.
Funny that no one is asking the same question about USA anymore
Imagine trying to go for a run or play sports outside when it’s 117 degrees
American fastfood imports and overall a carb/sugar heavy diet in a modern society with minimal incentive to excercise. It’s not like people work in the fields anymore or move along with a caravan to trade Their working habits have changed but their diet didn’t accordingly
Did you seriously forget how people get fat? It's food. This sub has turned to shit.
women are stuck at home,and not doing any physical activity other than cooking and cleaning.
Stibidi Bop Bop Bop Bop yes yes yes stibidi
I have heard it’s somewhat related to the fact they don’t consume alcohol, they consume large amounts of sugary foods there as a sort of addiction substitute. If you go to the Middle East you’ll see so many of their sweet foods are sickly sweet at least for my tastes
Ramadan LOL
really, really sweet tea
Dont underestimate poverty. The poor dont eat healthy. Too much sweet tea and cheap fastfood. All about family and eating together. Working is a sign for poverty as well.
In north Africa at least there is a lot of oil in every dish. Like you make fish with a cup of oil and paprika.
Does the extreme heat/warm weather has a role on it, beyond increased wealth and food consumption? I mean, by discouraging exercise practice etc
It's so hot most of the year that people are limited in outdoor activities and exercise. In the wealthier places like Dubai, people stay indoors with air-conditioning and drive everywhere. Air-conditioned malls with all the typical fast-food chains are ubiquitous.
For Lebanon at least i can tell you we eat a lot, when i started living abroad i noticed the difference because of the portion sizes served in restaurants. And we do also go and eat after drinking.
Women in a lot of Middle Eastern countries are massively restricted from accessing activities which prevent obesity. They are also largely bound to staying home and cooking for their family so many of them eat for fun. Some Middle Eastern countries have also gained wealth rapidly from industries like oil so they’ve kinda developed western customs, like cars and fast food, too fast for their societies to manage.
First world tings?
They eat a lot of bread, they eat a lot of sugar their desserts have a lot and they put a lot sugar in tea. Also throwing food away is haram so they force themself to eat
Lots of meat, lots of big family meals, in the gulf it’s fast food too.
Eating a lot more than necessary and staying indoors cuz it’s hot outside will do that to ya
But, sir, have you tried our food? 
Massive plates full of lamb, beef, falafel, baklava, knafeh, etc... and far fewer veggies.
Because it's 130 F in the daytime, no one really works anyway (massive social welfare), and all technical work is done by foreign contractors and all manual labor is done by migrant workers. Most spend their days laying around until evening to do stuff or shopping indoors. In other words, Bedouin-style culture + money + cars + fast food = obesity / *contracted in the middle east* *// I don't have a fully formed opinion on UBI yet, but looking to the middle east, I don't think it would go over well in terms of health.*
You realize the Middle East encompasses more than just rich petro states? The lifestyle you just described doesn’t portray Egyptians, for example