A teenage boy in Kaohsiung was diagnosed with stage three bowel cancer on Wednesday, which doctors attributed to a lack of exercise and poor diet.
The Formosa Cancer Foundation on Wednesday also reported that recent interviews found that 80 percent of patients with bowel cancer frequently had late-night snacks and often stayed up late.
Poor habits are hard to avoid in modern society, particularly given the heavy demands placed on many Taiwanese workers, who are often required to work overtime.
An article posted on Web site livestrong.com on Oct. 3 last year suggested that “junk food” has a comforting effect on the reward center of the brain, which is why people seek out unhealthy snacks when they are dealing with stress and anxiety.
This reward-seeking behavior is further exacerbated when dealing with a lack of sleep, the article said.
In Taiwan, such habits begin early, as high demands are placed on children from a young age. They are often sent to cram schools after regular classes and are required to pass demanding examinations to enter good secondary schools and universities.
The nation’s elementary schools have long banned sugary drinks, and in October last year, the Ministry of Education moved to ban sugary drinks from junior and senior-high schools as well. However, the school system is ultimately limited in its ability to control students’ habits.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiang Nai-hsin (蔣乃辛), who proposed the blanket ban on sugary drinks in schools, said that about 29 percent of grade-school children are considered obese.
One reason might be that many students eat off-campus, bring packed lunches from home or frequent the popular beverage shops that abound near many schools. Students are generally also spending more time playing video games on mobile devices and less time doing physical exercise.
The Health Promotion Administration in December identified cancer as the leading cause of death in the nation, with colon cancer at the top of the list. One person is diagnosed with cancer every five minutes, it said.
Parents might even be unintentionally contributing to the development of cancer in their children, as some commonly consumed foods such as cured meats and pickled vegetables might cause cancer if eaten often, Taiwan Society for Chest Care chairman Lee Chang-ming (李章銘) said in November.
Smoking and alcohol consumption are also leading contributors, and while children are unlikely to engage in those activities, developing poor habits when one is young is likely to lead to other poor habits in adulthood.
Should parents be held responsible for their children’s obesity and unhealthy behavior? The impulse might be to say “yes,” but the issue is more complicated than that. Parents could be quite busy and might struggle with their own unhealthy habits. These days, both parents often work, and neither has the time to cook meals at home.
Nevertheless, obesity is becoming an epidemic and something must be done to tackle it. The WHO has identified childhood obesity as one of the most serious public health threats of the 21st century. The number of obese children today is roughly double the number in 1980, WHO statistics show.
One thing parents can do is teach their children about nutrition and make them aware of the salt and sugar levels in “convenient” foods. Even convenience stores have healthy options, such as salads, fruit, unsalted nuts, low-sugar yogurts and eggs, and children can choose unsweetened bottled tea or low-sugar soy milk instead of carbonated sodas or juices.
Parents should also try to reduce their children’s study load and look at sports as an extracurricular option, instead of indoor activities. Parents might be busy, but they should nurture health-conscious children.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this