Poverty: The Latest Fitness Fad

It's interesting that here in this very poor country, people seem to be able to keep up outrageous working hours and workloads, blithely walk and cycle distances that we would quail at, and are almost never fat. Most of them are fit and glowing with health and vitality, despite being on fairly meagre rations.

Yes, there are bugs everywhere.And the locals are not 'used to' or immune to the malevolent microbes and whatnot that teem in a country where fridges are rare, food is prepared in the open air, (or indeed on the ground) chickens walk non-chalantly through kitchens, and everyone shares spoons and glasses, eats from communal bowls with their fingers and washes dishes in cold water.

Nope, they all get sick, too. They just cope better. What's amazing is that they don't get a lot sicker a lot more often. The answer has to be what they eat.

Far from this being a minefield of dietary disaster, I am eating healthier than ever.

The food is all local, organic, fresh, un-processed and seasonal, something we yearn for in the so-called First World. Everything is grown, sold, bought and prepared within a kilometre or less from where one eats it.

Local people seldom eat bread, cakes, puddings etc---dessert is mostly fresh fruit. Nobody can afford much in the way of soft drinks, and few drink coffee or tea. Virtually none of the locals eat french fries, none eat meat pies or hamburgers, and a lot of them have utterly fabulous teeth. Sugary stuff is creeping in and biscuits are becoming popular, but they are still a luxury for most folks.

And getting back to ME for a moment, I pretty much do the same. For those of you who have an interest in the state of my corpus, the diet here seems to be very good for me, (there being less of my corpus than usual) and I feel pretty good. And i's not because I'm sick al the time. It's something new called 'éating healthy food'.

There is this pesky gluten intolerance, of course. I find that it's less of a problem up here where there is plenty of rice, of course. Mind you, I was shattered recently to learn that I react very badly and pretty much instantly to rye flour and soy sauce (!!!!) This is a blow as I love them both. I exist on rice, fruit, nuts, eggs, cheese, lots of vegetables, a bit of meat and the occasional pig-out on steak and chips and such at the French cafe.

I simply walk past the croissants, baguettes, doughnuts, cakes and pastries that beckon daily, and eschew all but rice noodles when it comes to pasta. I have very little to put butter on. You can't buy anything that is purposely gluten free, not even rice crackers, but you can occasionally get corn-flour baguettes. Trouble is even the vendors can't remember which ones are wheat and which ones are corn. Heavy sigh....

So, while you'll always need to bring your immodium or gastrogel and such with you, this is the place to come to lose the avoirdupois. As long as you avoid the French pastries and the French restaurants, of course.....And the lovely, crisp Lao beer.....(No I can't drink beer either, except Heineken, strangely enough.)

Or you can try the Amazing Lao Instant Weight-Loss Regimen, which is simple: drink one glass of Mekong water and retire to a bed near the loo.