Day 4 (7 Jan) Reflection

7/1/16

We are back to business, going early in the morning to the Department of Family Medicine at Chiang Mai University (CMU) to interview the doctors there about nutrition labelling and smoking. Our interview further confirmed the dismal situation whereby nutrition labelling receives little attention in the average Thai’s daily life, and many find the labels indecipherable. Doctors could only do so much to educate their patients. This made us wonder whether educational level made a difference to people’s understanding of nutrition labels.

To answer this question, we gave out surveys and conducted a focus group discussion with CMU students. In what I now consider typical Thai hospitality, they were extremely open and willing to answer our various questions about their eating habits and how they shop for food. In contrast to the difficulty we had in communicating with the locals on the street, it was like talking to friends back in Singapore with these CMU students. The natural ease of chatting and laughing with them might have beguiled me to what an amazement it is that here we are, speaking one common language. Putting aside the ills of globalization, and the spread of English purported to spell the death sentence for indigenous languages in many place, at this moment I am thankful that it has brought us closer to them. (And the Thai language is still very much alive).

We learned, from their sharing, that there is no systematic program to educate students to be literate in nutrition knowledge and nutrition information. The onus rested on the people themselves to seek it out on the Internet. The only encouraging piece of news, I think, was that the students knew how to read basic information on nutrition labels and cared, as far as health and beauty are concerned, to select the healthier products. This means that educational level may not be a good indicator of whether consumers can use nutrition labels. As the CMU students and the old lady I met in Chiang Rai showed me, in the absence of top-down educational programs, the individual’s concern for her own well-being determines whether they pay attention to, and even learn to read nutrition labels.

One remark from a student stood out to me: that in Thailand eating at McDonald’s is considered a marker of affluence. I’ve seen this first-hand in my own country, a neighbor of Thailand and a country that opened its market to global trade rather late – where McDonald’s opened its first store just two years ago. Going to McDonald’s, in both countries, is a special treat. Meanwhile, in the US, it’s the urban poor that frequent fast food outlets so as to stretch the value of their dollar and fresh vegetables are a luxury. It’s a big reason why obesity is more prevalent among this demographic in the States. On the other side of the globe, the typical Vietnamese diet abounds with vegetables. But it looks like either familiarity breeds contempt or the appeal of a novelty like hamburgers is so irresistible, that people start to prize mass manufactured food over the local cuisine. The opening of the iconic Golden Arches tends to be hailed as a step to progress in developing countries. But just maybe we should take a step back, and see just what it is that we have traded off and lost in the process. What counts as development? Is it worth the price?

In Chiang Mai, I see the image of my homeland and its problem. In my Thai counterparts, I see part of the solution. Here is an educated young generation who have the world wide web at their fingertip. Equipped with such knowledge as I have heard from them, they can make better food choices and help their families do the same. Globalization may have spread fast food and the consequent risk of obesity, but globalization might also hold the corrective, if people would but make good use of it.