Malaysian children eat too much but exercise little

NST: KUALA LUMPUR: One out of every six pupils in the country is fat.
A study of more than 11,000 schoolchildren found that Malaysians are worse-off than children in other Asian countries, such as the Philippines where one out of every 20 pupils is overweight.
"The number of overweight schoolchildren in Malaysia is almost the same as Australia, which is a more developed country," according to Dr Mohd Ismail Noor who conducted the study.
Dr Ismail, professor of Human Nutrition at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, carried out the survey of 11,264 schoolchildren between the ages of six and 12 in Peninsular Malaysia in 2002. It was funded by food manufacturer Nestle.
Ismail said Indian pupils were the heaviest. He said 11.7 per cent of Indians were overweight while 6.7 per cent were obese.
He said 10.1 per cent of Chinese were overweight and 4.7 per cent obese while 10.5 per cent of Malays were overweight and 6.2 per cent obese.
"When a child is in Year One, the weight is less but as one approaches puberty, they become fatter," said Dr Ismail, who is also the president of the Malaysian Association for the Study of Obesity.
Dr Ismail said more 10-year-old boys here were overweight than in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
Malaysian children, he said, ate too much and did not exercise enough.
"In which other country in the world can you eat practically anything 24 hours a day? You can even get hot nasi lemak at 3am. Our environment is so conducive and at the same time we’re sedentary.
"Genes too play an important part, with a child whose parents are both obese having an 80 per cent chance of being obese compared to 40 per cent for a child with one parent who is obese," he said.
Citing a fast food meal of a quarter-pound cheeseburger, large fries and soft drink as an example, he said it constituted 1,166 calories and provided two thirds of the nutrition requirements of a child per day while a plate of mee goreng could be as high as 600 calories.
"Our children are now being influenced by Western portions of food. Being overweight comes with serious health implications," he warned.