World cuisine fascinates me. It doesn’t matter where it is; the mere description of exotic ingredients captivates me. It gets even more interesting when the cuisine is linked to culture and history: When I learn that a certain dish consumed today was eaten by people there ages ago — such as the 2005 discovery of the world’s oldest noodles in China — then there’s something remarkable about it, as if the past lives on there and can be tasted.
Okinawan food, for example, is fascinating. Minimalist, good for you, it resembles what food is originally for: Survival — something enough to keep us alive. Contrast this with, say, southern American cuisine, especially African American cuisine, and you’ll see a stark difference: Okinawan food focuses on being healthy fuel. Southern American food focuses on nutrition…for an extinct era. Early on, when slaves were doing hard labor, they needed something to keep them going, so food eaten by slaves was loaded with all sorts of oils and carbohydrates. Understandable at the time, but today people are no longer laying bricks, hauling wood and working in the field from dawn to dusk: They are sitting in offices and homes. Mules and horses have disappeared, as now people drive cars. Modern lifestyle has changed drastically, to worse in terms of physical activity, but lots of foods stayed the same.
The result is observable: Obesity, disease, pain. This asynchronous change is not unique to the US. We have it here too. We used to be much more active as Saudis: Walking, riding, working with animals, working with palm trees in the fields, and so on. So our food supplied us with energy to keep up with tasks. As with many nations, we no longer move like we used to. White rice — a “dead” food, nearly devoid of nutrition and detrimental to health — is not only a staple food, it’s almost an addiction. The thought of a Saudi home without white rice is nightmare to us. Unfortunately, our lifestyle changed and our food didn’t. So it’s no wonder obesity is on the rise here. Saudi Arabia ranks 7th in diabetes rates worldwide. This is getting even worse after the introduction and spread of the atrocious American fast food, which many young people now treat with the same sacrosanctity their parents treat white rice.
We as humans need an awakening. Culture changes too slowly that only few take notice, and so the entrenched habits remain unchanged since they’re so detached from their consequences. It’s sad that we need disease statistics to nudge us toward adopting healthier lifestyles, and many times even that isn’t enough.
