Eat your vegetables - there are obese people in Africa

I just finished reading a story that creates a chink in the armor of one of the timeworn expressions of parenthood. "Eat your vegetables - there are starving people in Africa who would love a shot at those green beans. " From the story on allAfrica.com:

Nutrition experts have said that obesity - unwanted fat that poses a major health problem which results in diseases like diabetes milletus, hypertension and a host of others is a major problem in Africa.

Later...

Statistics indicate that 28 percent of the Cameroonian population is obsessed and is likely to reach 35 percent in the next five years.This situation is attributed to changes in eating habits which now tend to be more Westernised.

TK: The writer says "obsessed" but I think means "obese." Perhaps obsessed with eating Big Macs. In any case, how can U.S. moms plays the "starving people in Africa" card with news like this? From the Alternate History Discussion Board come this recollection of the argument and its effect:


Mothers for decades have admonished their finicky children with this scorcher: "Finish your vegetables!!! Don't you know that there are children starving in (insert currently downtrodden nation here)!!!" For me, as an kid in the mid 80's, the 'currently downtrodden nation' was Ethiopia; the news was filled nightly with images of starving children and despondent parents during the 1984-85 famine, and it always made me feel guilty. For my own parents, it was Europe, and later, China. Children today are served up atrocities in Sudan, the Congo and Iraq as reasons to gobble up their black-eyed peas and brussel sprouts.

Imagine yourself, several decades from now, seated around the holiday table with your kids and grandkids (if you are old enough to have them already, add a generation). As you gnaw away at the remains of that tasty drum stick, your (grand)daughter glances angrily at little Joey's untouched serving canned asparagus and lets the scorcher fly. What forlorn nation's starving children does mommy serve up to little Joey as an incitement to eat his asparagus? What's happened to that country to bring about the misery?

TK: While research has shown that Gen X mothers don't like to be guilted into serving their kids more fruits and vegetables, the tradition of guilt as dinner table motivation has a rich and storied history. Given the rise of obesity and the Western diet in Africa, another country or continent may have to be found to serve as a "starving people" stand in for mom's serving of the extra helping of guilt to junior.