‘Africans going Dutch’: Part Eighteen – Health is relative

Ever since I first entered a supermarket in 2001, the Dutch impress me. They are an educated people who study packages before buying a product. They want to be sure the product doesn’t contain too much fat and sugar. They try to eat what the body needs: not too much, not too little and lots of fruits and vegetables. And they go to the gym to work out. So it’s logical that life expectancy is still on the increase.
In Burundi the mentality is different. People eat too much fat and sugar and very little fruit and vegetables. It’s too much about sweet drinks, roasted meat and a lot of alcohol. In Burundi, the packaging does contain information about the contents, but nobody reads it. The last time I was shopping in Burundi was in 2009 and it was still very difficult to find 'light' (low fat, low sugar) products in the supermarkets. It was even difficult to find healthy bread. It didn’t really surprise me, but I had hoped things had improved.
Even educated people in Burundi are not informed about the consequences of an unbalanced diet in combination with a sedentary lifestyle. And there is a complicating factor: people are proud to be big. A fat man is seen as someone that has a good and healthy life. A fat man may get diabetes, but he is still the boss. All those healthy, athletic Dutchmen who visit Burundi don’t impress anyone. They just don’t have enough mass.
If only the people in Burundi were as well informed as the Dutch, they would behave more sensibly. Anyway, that’s what I thought until last week when my worldview was turned upside down. I read a very strange story in a Dutch newspaper, which came as a big surprise for me. A study at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam showed that almost half of all medical students drink too much and don’t eat healthy. I couldn’t believe it. How is it possible in Holland that some of the best educated people live unhealthily? How could they explain to their patients that healthy eating is good, while they do the opposite?
However if these doctors did become very fat, they would be perfect for health education in Burundi. A fat doctor is someone they would listen to. [related-articles]