Modern girl
Published:
July 18, 2013 at 10:25pm
My international worldwide network of spies don’t send me only the political stuff. This was at McDonald’s in Gozo – and no, it’s not Joe Grima again.
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http://www.ibtimes.com/why-are-maltese-so-fat-213170
Ghax dan Gonzi qatilna bil guh.
Obesity is more likely to be found in poor countries – good food costs money.
Joe, eating healthy is surprisingly less expensive than eating junk food every day.
[Daphne – Exactly so. The source of most obesity in Malta is processed food (expensive) and sugary carbonated drinks (expensive in the quantities they are consumed).]
Then you know nothing about food, Joe.
Those of us who do not eat junk food on a daily basis can prove the contrary.
[Daphne – It’s not necessarily junk food. Lots of what we eat is not junk, but still it’s processed, and that’s where the problems come in. Also, the Maltese diet is heavily rooted in bread and especially pasta, and those are major contributors to obesity.]
Kevin, I don’t know about prices in Malta. In the UK, eating processed, industrial food is much cheaper than buying organic food be it meat from a butcher or veg from a good outlet.
The problem with today’s society is that many prefer quantity and poor quality rather than eating the right quantities of high quality food.
It’s a world epidemic.
Obviously, education plays a bit part in all this. Where I live in the UK it is very hard to come any obesity. If you go to working class areas, you’ll be confronted by the extreme opposite.
Kevin, same applies to catering: in the UK fast food outlets are the cheapest places to have lunch. It comes at about a third of the price of a simple meal in say a gastro pub.
Daphne, re pasta and bread. Are the Maltese aware of how the French and Italians eat and their portions?
[Daphne – Pasta is not part of the French diet. And yes, Italian pasta portions are small.]
[Daphne – Pasta is not part of the French diet. And yes, Italian pasta portions are small.]
You’re right, pasta is not traditionally part of the French diet although it commonly accompanies meat dishes. The French are big meat-eaters, cook a lot with butter and cream, eat saucisson, pates and cheese regularly. However the portions they eat are tiny with salad or carrots being staple first courses.
Yes, I agree with you of course, especially as it is also consumed in huge amounts.
I chose to mention only junk food for the simple fact that I’ve noticed that queues outside take-away shops who sell unhealthy foods seem to be getting longer from year to year – obviously, take-away outlets all over the islands are on the increase because they are in demand.k food
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are thousands of people, including children, who for various reasons live mainly on junk food.
Joe is right – here in Scandinavia it is the same.
It is cheaper to eat poor quality processed foods than vegetables. Swedes do eat loads of vegetables though (their salad portions at lunch break are larger than the actual lunch course itself) and they all seem to be exercise maniacs.
One of the things I enjoy most when in Malta is visiting the farmers’ market in Ta’ Qali and marvelling at the cheap and wonderfully tasty fruit and vegetables there.
I barely touch meat (well except fish and some rabbit) when I am in Malta.
Joe,
I lived in the UK for a while and still travel there on a monthly basis. Organic foods are truly more expensive.
Overall, however, eating is cheaper in the UK than in Malta. What used to cost me a pound at Tesco’s or Morrison’s costs me one fifty here. (Granted I missed the local tomatoes, olives and pork).
However, a healthy lifestyle is not about going on a diet or just eating organic foods.
Cooking techniques, knowing your saturated from non saturated fats, natural sugars, balanced diets, and so on, is the key contributor to reducing weight.
People seem to think that a good meal is about enormous portions with food cooked in butter or veg oil and swimming in cream. That just gives you indigestion.
Steaming chicken, for example, retains the natural flavours of the meat rather than mask it with deep frying oil. I find that sea salt significantly enhances flavour more than your processed variety.
Halal meat, for example, is less expensive but more tasty than the normal equivalent.
It’s one thing buying a ready cooked meal in a freezer bag and it’s another thing cooking yourself.
From what I saw in the UK, people do not like going through the process of cooking a meal. They prefer something quick – just stick it in the microwave or buy some take out is the usual recipe.
Keeping healthy is also about self-control.
What healthy Meditterranean diet or lifestyle?
All we’ve been doing for the past six decades is to look down on anything which had an ounce of quality.
Just look at the nerve jangling colours, shop fronts and jagged architecture, nothing works together. In the name of some democratic fallacy which we’ve definitely misunderstood and gladly adopted anyway.
Food is just the tip of an iceberg holding utter disillusion with who we aren’t and what we’ve managed to destroy.
There’s another minor discrepancy between the Maltese and the rest of the Med, a propensity to aesthetics. The opposite of, that is.
As if we’ll ever revert to a diet as a regime, how about promoting and emphasizing ‘slow food’ (why everything has to be categorized is beyond me) at public gatherings?
Offer an incentive to operators, they’ll scrap their deep friers that same day.
All foreigners I’ve had over would remain puzzled at who we are. Even because the pace of absorption is too slow to keep up.
I follow certain ‘cookery’ programs, OK, make that product placement, and all I see is mayo, wraps, smoothies and creams. Recipes can be anything up to a couple of screens long. Hilarious, impossible and fake.
All that fuss and then they can’t even get a risotto right, too bloody busy chatting snidely at each other
I’ve never actually seen anyone ever mention cooking time, or the basic physics of heat and its effects,, makes it dull presumably.
There’s no precision, no definite relation between ourselves and the quality of the work we do, materia, that which keeps us from our senses banished. Ever noticed how Maltese painting tends to get either lost in brushwork or straight out of Grandma Moses?
We mistake confident discipline for lack of creativity. Utter rubbish. They say cooking is an art, baking a science. Wrong again, science and art belong elsewhere together.
And if that doesn’t include the food we eat, overdone, overcooked and overwhelmed, be it salmon, pumpkin or just an egg.
On with the sugars, salts and synthetic tastes.
We have a perfect example of the average Maltese in our beloved prime minister when he thinks there’s some pyramid in taste, steak being 33rd degree. Which one he couldn’t specify.
Comfort food’s definitely on the cards when class struggle turns edible. Stuffing your gob to make up for personal misgivings becomes politics, as well.
Tax junk food and make it illegal to sell to minors. Before heart disease grows into a pandemic and the usual suspects get to pick the bill.
Twistees got their lites, so no problem there. Rant over.
Jozef is a chef. I can vouch for him.
And whatever anyone says, it is far, far cheaper to eat like an athlete than like your average Maltese.
One kilo of beans, lentils, brown rice, oats, frozen peas, frozen mixed vegetables, quinoa or any form of complex carbohydrates is cheaper, by weight, that anything you can buy off a restaurant counter, and it’ll last you for days.
Add egg whites (more protein per kilo than prime fillet, and cheaper) and canned tuna in brine.
The only thing which can push up the grocery bill will be fish and chicken breast. Strictly speaking, if you can get your protein elsewhere, you don’t need them.
Of course you can buy organic stuff and double the price of everything, but you can be sure that anything to eat from even the healthiest “eatery” is not organic. Or they wouldn’t be in business. Far better to buy non-organic, bog-standard food and cook it yourself.
And for heaven’s sake, drink tap water. It’s clean, it’s safe, it’s cheap. It saves the environment because you’re not using plastic bottles.
Not much different from the prehistoric one.
http://www.squatterman.com/images/malta-fat-lady-goddess-squatter-man-women-statue.jpg
The lady above is the reincarnation.
peppermint-iced-bun XL
One of the victims of GonziPN’s ghaks u guh .
BMI of 30 or more.
Pure ignorance in eating healthy foods.
Kim Kardashian is hiding from the paparazzi in Gozo?
I didn’t know they had Imax in Gozo
can we have your email address pls? thanks
[Daphne – [email protected]]
So modern and… progressive.
The point of this photo is not so much the woman’s shape and size as her unbelievably bad choice of attire.
That is true but wouldn’t the photo be a great backdrop to use on a billboard for the anti-obesity campaign.
People need to be educated in reading food labels.
Anyway, is our obesity problem going to be solved by a bunch obese people?