Sustainable Living Hong Kong

China and Hong Kong, in different ways, are both fretting over the prospect of an ageing population and how that will impact on the cost of healthcare and productivity.

Various indicators, however, are suggesting that the problem lies elsewhere: the population may not live to impose a long-term health burden; instead, the burden and impact on productivity will come much sooner than the governments think, in the medium term.

The shift to a high-protein, western diet has given rise to a population with a health profile that is much inferior to that of previous generations. This is documented in the book Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines Are Changing a Nation, by Paul French and Matthew Crabbe (Anthem Press, 2010). In Hong Kong the shift was made earlier and the impact is getting worse: heart attacks are becoming common among the middle-aged and more young people have become obese.

A population on such a diet is unlikely to live to a ripe old age; instead, they are likely to require treatment for diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other diseases from a young age – if they can still be treated in ten years’ time: the World Health Organisation has warned of humanity’s impending loss of the battle against bacteria, which would render most surgeries impossible due to the risk of life-threatening infections.

The irony of course is that part of the strategy for pushing up the GDP, which has nothing to do with our quality of life; is to encourage a poor diet. Many multinational fast food companies are targeting the China market to boost revenue as their domestic market in the US stagnate. At the same time, local food companies that run fast food chains or produce junk food from cup noodles to sugary drinks are falling over each other to list on stock markets and expand.

This is all good news for the pharmaceutical companies that make drugs for treating such lifestyle diseases, but their profit is society’s loss, in the form of reduced productivity and compromised health, not to mention the mental, physical and emotional burden imposed on carers.

Simply encouraging exercise and healthy menus is like encouraging smokers to quit, without raising taxes or instituting a ban on smoking in public places: it just doesn’t work. A tax on junk food is the bare minimum the government should consider. At the very least, this would place the cost of treating diet-related ailments on those responsible for causing them, and reduce the burden on the public purse.

Marie Antoinette was supposed to be so out of touch with the plight of ordinary people that, when told they didn’t have enough food, said: “Let them eat cake.”

Historians have disputed the attribution ever since, but the story remains a popular one because it illustrates so well the inability of the privileged to understand the hardship suffered by others. Transpose the situation to modern-day Hong Kong, and we’d have a university don advising harassed Hong Kongers to make their own cereal for breakfast rather than eat the packaged, sugar-laden variety.

Yeah right. Even for those well-off enough to afford domestic helpers who can make it for them, there’s hardly the time. There’s the long and stressful commute, all the way from the farthest reaches of the New Territories (or Shenzhen and beyond in the future if the government has anything to do with it) to Central or Quarry Bay for many; which makes it impossible to sit down to a proper breakfast. Then there are the long hours at work; people get home so late and tired that all they want is crash for as long as they can before they have to get up and step on the treadmill again. Even ten minutes of extra sleep seems preferable to ten minutes for a breakfast at home.

Healthy eating is a good idea, but the way Hong Kong is run simply makes it impossible – something Maxim’s is well-aware of, if not the university don. That’s why they make such a killing selling buns in their MTR shops. Commuters rush in, pick up the already bagged, equally fattening buns, brush their Octopuses over the readers and click-clock their way back to their offices in a uniform march.

Imagine how different things might be if there were legislation for maximum hours as well as a minimum wage? People would actually have time to eat a proper breakfast and, because of that, save tonnes of plastic bags and cereal boxes, and be healthier.  Or a development strategy that made it possible for people to afford homes closer to their workplaces, so they could walk to work at leisure.   No stress, no pollution.

But that’s not going to happen, because the Marie Antoinettes among Hong Kong’s governing class haven’t a clue. That’s why there are people who have never had to work for a paltry hourly wage presiding over the minimum wage bill, as well as people who have never had to take public transport introducing the idling engine bill but refusing to discuss the introduction of a congestion charge, because they themselves only ever get anywhere in chauffeur-driven cars.

Here’s another reason to avoid junk food: BPA (bisphenol-A), a chemical compound used to make plastic bottles and line food packaging, is considered a synthetic estrogen that can cause a range of diseases, including cancer and sexual dysfunction, as a result of excessive exposure.

Because infants and young children are especially sensitive to such compounds, there have been calls to ban the use of BPA in milk bottles and toys. Now, the call has finally been extended to the rest of us.

BPA is contained in the lining of canned foods and beverages as well as pizza boxes and other fast food containers. Very few manufacturers have switched to alternatives. Pressure from lobby groups may eventually force a switch, by which time we’d already have ingested way too much of it, so, in the meantime, the best solution is to eat freshly cooked food as far as possible and avoid junk food.

Put some effort into the powerpoint and add a little jargon, and a simple idea becomes a fascinating presentation.

A reader sent me this video after reaching the “Diet” chapter of my book. Don’t let this spoiler stop you from watching the video, but in plain language, this is about a new approach towards cancer treatment that involves tackling the inflammatory mechanism involved in the disease.

Now the doctor is full of good intentions, but being a medical practitioner and not one who’s versed in socio-economic issues, he missed the irony of his proposition, that dietary intervention early on would be cheaper and more affordable than medical treatment in the later stages of cancer.

He showed a slide of “Third World” women ambling with baskets on their heads at this point to reinforce the idea. Trouble is, this “Third World” already has lower incidences of cancer compared to the “First World” because the people eat mainly fresh, local produce rather than packaged food imported from elsewhere (except where the land and/or water has been polluted by industrial establishments) – you know, the kind of food that in Hong Kong now requires labelling.

That means the cheapest, simplest “intervention” would be to keep the food conglomerates out of these places and leave these people alone, or at most help them improve irrigation techniques and crop choices, not sell them chemical-laden junk. That goes for us too: it’d be much better to expend money and energy reviving Hong Kong’s agricultural sector and teaching Hong Kongers how to grow their own food – urban farming is the way forward in the new millennium – rather than get people to figure out the salt, sugar and fat content of packaged food. That’s the only way to become truly healthy.

At first it was a few lines of text, like “smoking is hazardous to health”. Then things got graphic and tobacco manufacturers are required to allocate more and more space on each packet of cigarettes to show images of diseased lungs, etc.

Would such a labelling requirement alone have been enough to make smokers quit though? Nicotine is addictive after all. Before governments realised the enormous cost to the healthcare system imposed by those suffering from smoking-related diseases and implemented measures to ban smoking in most public places and raise taxes on cigarettes, the number of smokers who quit were small.

If we’re lucky, the current implementation of food labelling requirements would be the first step in attempts to wean more consumers off prepackaged food. If not – because of pressure from the food manufacturing lobby and misguided belief in consumer choice – then we’re staring at successive generations of young people who will have shorter lifespans due to poor diet and a healthcare system that is too expensive to prop up.

In the UK, it is estimated that cardiovascular disease accounts for at least 150,000 deaths a year, 40% of them involving patients who are under 75. Much of that has to do with a poor diet containing excessive amounts of fat, sugar and salt. The new food labelling requirement will tell consumers how much of these a food product contains, but will this help?

Not according to former US Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler, who explains in his book The End of Overeating how food manufacturers have perfected formulae for these ingredients to get consumers hooked – much like drug addicts are hooked. Or the smokers who become insensitive to the scary images on the cigarette packet because they’re more preoccupied with getting a nicotine high.

And we haven’t even dealt with the environmental cost of prepackaged food. How much oil is required to transport all this junk food around the world? How much more oil is used to make the packaging? What about the water, trees and electricity required to produce something of so little nutritional value?

All for what? To bump up corporate profit while our health is compromised? When the financial crisis hit the west, people reacted to governments’ effort to rescue banks still handing out big bonuses by pointing out that gains were being privatised while losses were being socialised. Dressing up a failure to legislate against junk food as “consumer choice” is no different.

Once upon a time Judith Mackay and Anthony Hedley were considered quaint if not the most hated spoil-sports.

They campaigned relentlessly against smoking, pointing to its damaging effects not only on personal health but also on the healthcare system as a whole due to the cost of treating patients with diseases directly or indirectly related to smoking. The tobacco industry dismissed them and tried to use their vast funds to squash them, but after many years of campaigning, governments and public opinion finally came round, and what was once considered a natural, even necessary, part of social interaction is fast becoming a habit that’s repugnant to most, including some who are still smokers themselves.

My faint hope is that this may be the starting point of a similar campaign against alcohol. Am I nuts? Everybody has a tipple now and again, what’s wrong with that? A small amount of red wine is even supposed to be good for the heart, right? Just a small amount, though, is also sufficient to impair judgement enough for someone to drive erratically and cause innocent deaths. The effect of a large amount is worse, and it’s not just because of liver cirrhosis and other related diseases to the drinkers and the total in treatment cost they rack up for all taxpayers; but also because of the immense suffering it causes. Think domestic violence.

But for a government anxious to maintain GDP growth, it’s absolutely vital to encourage drinking. Which is why Hong Kong’s government is celebrating a wine expo and the old Labour government in the UK dismissed a scientific adviser who had the courage to point out that alcohol is more dangerous than cocaine and other drugs.

It’s unthinkable for the many who have grown up in a drinks culture to contemplate changes that will mean turning their traditional way of socialising upside down, but if an economy is to effectively address the many problems that can trace their causes back to alcohol, stringent control is the only way to go. Cigarettes have been a socially expected gift for mainland Chinese for many many years, but apparently now, with the government beginning to crack down on smoking and people being more health-conscious, organic food is becoming a welcome alternative, so it can be done.

What’s the point of trying to catch drug-abusing youths while sucking up to alcohol producers? The ketamine-taking youngsters hurt themselves; the alcohol-fuelled adults hurt themselves, their families, innocent pedestrians and the whole healthcare system.

May 8 is World Fair Trade Day and Fairtaste has organised a fair trade party at their office. Details:

Date: 8 May 2010 (Saturday)
Time: 2:00-5:00 pm
Place: Unit 10, 13/F Wing Hang Ind Bldg,l 13-29 Kwai Hei St, Kwai
Chung

Join them for some tea and sharing. For more information about World Fair Trade Day, click here.

During a discussion about Fairtrade products today, I noted the clever way in which multinationals squeeze big profits out of dregs. The cocoa they buy from farmers for making coffee, for instance, is graded according to quality. The best ones are sold as branded beans or ground coffee and the poor-quality ones are used to make instant coffee.

In the past the really bad ones would have to be thrown out as trash, but then these big guys hit on a brilliant idea: sell the trash! Just mask the poor quality by adding milk and sugar then package it as something hip to consume, and watch the money rolling in. And it works: the can of iced coffee or the sachets of “3-in-1” are so convenient and so addictive, teenagers and time-challenged office workers can’t get enough of them.

“So basically we’re being fed pet food,” my friend observed. And she was absolutely right: it’s the same principle: package the organs and bits of meat that meat sellers used to throw away as premium pet food, and they have pet owners stocking up from New York to Hong Kong.

Then I came across a classic piece of greenwash, in which the Fairtrade Foundation no less carried an announcement by Nestle that it was going Fairtrade with Kit Kat (alas, in the UK and Ireland only) by paying cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast a Fairtrade price plus extra “to invest in long term community and business development projects of their own choice.”

OK OK – if you want the corporates to do better in terms of social responsibility, you’ve got to give them a pat on the back sometimes. But hang on: never mind the Fairtrade commitment covers only a tiny portion of the company’s products, it also does nothing to address an equally serious problem – that of the use of palm oil obtained from cleared tropical forests.

Although in theory many multinationals, under pressure from consumers in the west, have agreed to source palm oil from sustainable plantations, the reality is that few are doing so. In a place like Hong Kong, it’s doubtful anyone’s bothered. Consumers have nowhere near the same level of awareness as their counterparts in Europe. Who could imagine that the Kit Kat, or bar of soap, or tin of biscuits can have such implications for the last remaining tropical forests in the world and their inhabitants? Like the chap in the spoof video, we’re smeared with blood and don’t even know it.

Speaking of the Post-80s, a friend told me one can tell someone’s Post-80s if they’re late for an appointment and act as if nothing’s happened (if they’re Post-90s, they may not turn up at all).

There are other ways of distinguishing this group from older generations. For example, being the first generation to grow up with the internet, they may press a doorbell with their thumbs rather than index fingers (too much texting and gaming) and they are much more relaxed about giving away personal information in exchange for free-this and free-that.

And there is a third way of telling these youngsters from the older generations: their palate, or lack of one. They’re happy to wolf down anything, however stale, full of preservatives and MSG-laden it is. It all started with the Post-70s, who are the first generation to enjoy McDonald’s hamburgers in Hong Kong, but has got a lot worse with the Post-80s, because theirs is a generation fed with both fast food and prepackaged food to an unprecedented degree.

In an earlier post I’ve already discussed how fast food companies use fat, sugar and salt to make their food addictive. Now, with increasingly sophisticated preservation and packaging techniques, these companies have also made what used to be treats a staple in young people’s diets. They were considered treats because in the past they had to be made fresh by hand so there was a price and one couldn’t have too much of it. Now companies make them on a production line, thus lowering costs to such an extent people can eat as much of them as they want, whenever they want.

They are way too young to know anything about “flying olives” (飛機欖), preserved olives that sellers delivered by accurately pitching them onto the balconies of low-rise residents. The selling took as much skill as the making of this traditional treat. Now, you can go to any number of junk food shop and make your pick of packaged snacks. Even restaurants now rely on ‘logistics’ rather than good chefs to feed their customers, having food mass-produced in factories then trucked to the restaurants to be served. They sure make a lot of money for serving second-rate food, and what do the waiters and cleaners get paid per hour?

We don’t think much about how things end up this way, but we should, because Hong Kong is so concerned about the wealth gap. What we have is not only the loss of a fine palate dulled by excessive use of chemicals, fat, sugar and salt, but also:

• the loss of an important part of a culture that prides itself on its appreciation of good food
• poorer health as a result of obesity, diabetes, bad teeth and other problems arising from over-consumption of junk food
• loss of sustainable livelihood for ordinary people who can no longer make freshly-made treats in affordable shops or stalls, their business having been taken away by industrial giants mass-producing them in factories and retail chains that can afford high rent selling everything they used to make by hand

Think about this next time you pick up a pack of dim sum or ready-made sesame pudding from the supermarket. A Chinese-Canadian chef from Vancouver had observed that the Chinese cuisine here had gone downhill over the years. When palates are trained to eat production line food, is it any surprise?

It’s struck me how easy it should be to live sustainably, simply by getting rid of some bad habits.

Take, for instance, our liking for soft drinks. How much water can we save by drinking water from the tap rather than soft drinks laden with sugar or – even more pointless still – low-cal versions that just taste sweet. Bottled water, as we know, is plain stupid, especially when there’s an unprecedented drought affecting most of this part of the world.

The manufacturing of soft drinks and bottled water involves the use of water not only in the drinks themselves, but also in the manufacturing processes, to clean and to cool products and machinery. The issue of wastewater is acknowledged by the soft drinks industry, which also concedes that “the reduction in pack sizes and the removal of preservatives would lead to an increase in the water intensity of production and is likely to lead to increased demand for water.”

Rain harvesting may help, but not if a place is already suffering from drought.

One of the most important features of climate change is worsening water shortages. Given this scenario, do we really want a single drop diverted to make drinks that are bad for our teeth and health? Selling soft drinks is good business for a multinational corporation, but disastrous for many communities. Imagine drawing water from a drought-prone area to make soft drinks to sell to consumers all over the world. You’ve no doubt read the story in the Post recently (if not, read this).