A
recent study by the non-profit CADI Research Foundation
found that Indian American men have the higheset rates
of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) and die of the disease
at a younger age than males of any other race in America.
Indian American women meanwhile have a CAD rate three
times higher than that of American women and is the
highest among all other immigrant women.
Diabetes and hypertension
in the Indian community is also at very high rates and
both these diseases have a corelation with CAD.
I interviewed several
people from the older generation and what I gathered
is that the first generation of immigrants who came
here from India wanted to make sure that their children
had access to better nutrition (both in quantity and
quality), and thus the practice of stuffing your face.
For all of you who went through childhood having your
faces stuffed by your parents (myself included) perhaps
now is a time to pause and reflect on the damage that's
been done. Perhaps you're you're a young adult and already
fighting obesity in addition to all the other growing
pains.
So what to do about
it? So much of it can be controlled at home. Maybe dinner
can become the smallest meal of the day instead of the
biggest. Maybe re-introducing breakast (and I don't
mean McDonald's breakfast menu) is a start. Perhaps
it can be addressed from the church point of view by
eliminating the whole coffee and donut subculture that
prevails in so many churches and replace it with a banana
and water diet. Or skip the whole practice of feeding
people in church and fast on Sundays, living on fruit
and water. Maybe you have some better suggestions.
If the body is the
temple of the soul, we are destroying the temple!
by Tom Kovoor
Tom is
well known discussion leader for the youths at New York
CSI CHurch
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