We don’t blog alot about health issues here, and for Western Muslims, I don’t think anybody who does health studies ever looks at us specifically in a way that it would be a ‘Muslim’ story, but there are huge trends in the larger society and it’s fair to ask how much or whether we are a part of them, and how much a specific ‘Muslim lifestyle’ plays into those trends.
Studies suggest overweight kids are coronary time bombs.
Russell Pate was driving through a neighborhood one late afternoon when he noticed something odd.
He couldn’t hear the sounds of children playing. No jump rope patter. No squeals of a bike’s brake. No crack of a bat — just silence.
The streets were deserted because the neighborhood kids were cocooned in their homes, Pate says. It was a scene he’s seen over and over again.
“Now you can drive through entire neighborhoods where you know there are a lot of young kids there and hardly see any of them out,” says Pate, an American Heart Association spokesman.
….A study released last November at a Heart Association conference found that the neck arteries in obese and overweight children were similar to those of 45-year-olds. The children in the study also had “abnormal cholesterol” and were said to be at high risk for heart disease in the future.
The story cites television, video games, the obsession with testing and fast food as culprits. Here in the West, Muslims are usually well-off and well-fed, but despite (or perhaps because of) fasting, food and modesty restrictions, are Western Muslims fat?
