Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I'm here to talk about something so necessary and routine
that at times it is almost imperceptible:
food, eating.
Necessary, because we know that food
contains nutrients or substances
that are important for every part of our body.
Routine, because we do it everyday, and I hope multiple times per day.
Many times it goes unnoticed
or is unconscious because we do it quickly;
in the car, at work,
and at that moment we are not aware of what we are putting in our mouth.
I can not go without saying that eating is a pleasure
and it has a very important role in social life.
We eat out with friends, go for dinner and a movie; friends come over to eat,
an afternoon snack is shared in the garden.
It has an undeniable social role.
It also has an irrefutable emotional role. When we are happy,
we eat; when we are sad, we eat; when we are anxious, we eat.
We always have an answer for why we are eating.
To make a long story short, I had to prepare
a gift for my mom who wanted a picture,
a painting, with all of the female generations of the family.
So I had to go back through our pictures
and that made me think,
related to my profession, obviously,
that my great-grandmothers and great-great grandmothers,
who all lived to be at least 109,
ate simply: meat, milk taken straight
from the cow,
evidently pasteurization did not exist...
Very few fruits and vegetables,
they had some concepts of soups and stews...
But they lived well. And they lived to be over 100.
They obviously knew little or nothing about nutrition.
My grandparents, who came midway through life
to live in Montevideo to be with my mom while she was in school,
also lived into their 80s.
They also did not have any nutritional background.
They had the same eating habits as my great-grandmothers,
and my great-great grandmothers, but they died in their 80s.
They did not even have caries.
On the other hand, when I get to my parents' generation,
I find that they inherited those same eating habits,
they don't have any information about it,
but it is the generation of high levels of
cardiovascular diseases, high cholesterol,
high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, weight problems,
and, unfortunately, cancer as well.
And what I remember my parents passing down to me
was that food is not something to play with.
That is the strongest memory about nutrition I have from childhood.
And then there is us, who are between 20 and 40,
we received that information. We grew up with fat, sugar, and salt,
but at the same time, we were a part of
the emergence of supermarkets,
fast food, restaurants, delivery, and stress.
And if I had to define it, I would say that we are
generation "D" for delivery,
and "E" for stressed.
We are familiar with the elevator, the washing machine
-- luckily the washing machine, right?--
the remote control...
and of course, with few data,
we came to be the generation that is here today and
the majority of us are raising children.
So, we could say that if we were to show it in a graph,
-- this is not my family, ok? --
(Laughter)
something like this has happened to us.
We have evolved towards this type of man.
If they had to paint her again, they would paint her like this:
(Laughter)
if they painted her today.
And that's not me saying it: is the World Health Organization.
As early as '97 they declared obesity a worldwide epidemic.
Why? Because the numbers are very concerning.
As you can see here:
One billion adults in the world are overweight.
With everything that entails it, right?
Is like a contradiction between the overweight and obesity epidemic
and the counterpart of people dying
of hunger and malnutrition.
It is contradictory, but that's how it is.
If I go into something even more serious,
and I say it with these words and very convinced,
there are 43 million children under the age of 5 who,
in football terms, the game is played before 5,
and it is here when the habits we teach them
sink in and determine their future preferences
and likes of the youngest... and later the adults.
And this number is truly concerning.
I would also add that 1/3 of those children do not do any sort of physical activity.
And we could think: "Well, that's happening far away,
it is not happening to us..."
The truth is that it is happening to us.
Those numbers are from here.
54% of Uruguayan adults
have some sort of weight problem.
Or, one out of every two.
Don't look around now to see who it is...
(Laughter)
And if we move to the subject of the chldren,
we can say that 1 out of every 4 children
has a weight issue and 1 out of every 9 is obese.
That conditions them for the future.
Not only their nutritional, biological, and physical functions,
but also emotionally.
Because, as we said at the beginning,
eating is social; it is linked with emotions.
So it also shapes it in this sense.
On top of that, those children do not move either.
1/3 of those children are not physically active
and spend more than 6 hours between computer games and television.
The worldwide recommendation is no more than 2 hours a day.
What do the WHO and other experts suggest?
We have to decrease the amount of fat that we eat;
increase the number of times we eat each day,
that is an important point;
and combat obesity.
It seems obvious, but that is what they suggest, clearly.
Perfect. We say: "Well, then it is solved."
I am sorry to tell you that the nutritional reality of our country
is that we eat too much sugar and too much fat and calories.
Calories that don't come just from food;
they also come from beverages.
It is good to know that beverages also act like food
inside of our body.
To give you an example, the amount of salt that we should eat
is about 6 grams; the first little tube that you see there.
Do you know how much we eat? 25 grams a day, 4 times more.
We have a preconceived notion regarding sugar.
I would often ask, when I worked in the clinic:
"Do you eat sugar?"
"No, No! Not at all."
Sugar is not just what we see in the sugar bowl.
It is present in different foods in natural or added form.
which also has to be taken into account.
As consumers we are confronted with food in the supermarket,
and I'm not saying that we spend hours at it,
but there is so much valuable information,
but the majority of you might not understand it.
Finally, when it comes to those phrases
which are an ever-growing trend
in food communication
and in the way that foods are marketed;
high fat, low salt, no salt added, light, low calorie...
the question they ask me is:
"Is it truly low calorie? Is there really no added salt?"
There is a sort of lack of confidence in these health claims.
So in short, I would sum it all up with this phrase and picture
that seem very significant to me.
What has happened is that the brain has become gluttonous
and the body lazy.
And this has an explanation; it is not a myth.
"Glutton", because there are foods that make us want to keep eating.
It's true.
If we open a chocolate bar, it is difficult to stop.
It is hard to say: "Perfect, I had 2, now I'm satisfied."
However if we are faced with five bowls of lettuce,
we are able to finish the first one and say:
"That's enough! I'm good!"
There is a biological explanation for it.
There are certain substances in the body
that cause us to want to keep eating,
and there are others that do not.
At the same time, those substances that make us want to keep eating
take our energy; therefore we become lazy.
Why? Because it takes more work for the body to process them.
So we have a lazy body and a gluttonous brain.
It is not an easy combination.
And I'm talking about healthy people.
If, in addition, the person is overweight or obese,
the brain is more gluttonous and ready to eat,
which makes it more difficult.
By the second half of the century the goals changed:
reduce the amount of salt we eat,
increase the amount of fruit and vegetables that we eat,
and, of course, incorporate physical activity
in order to stop being lazy.
And then I ask myself two questions:
Why do all of this?
Many of you must be thinking, and obviously, "for what reason?"
First and foremost, so that we don't get sick or gain weight,
and, in the case of children, to foster good growth and development.
With that in mind, I'll tell you that one day
my son, who is now 7 years old but at the time was 5,
doesn't eat one single fruit or vegetable, none. That's the truth.
Those who know me know this.
So he said to me:
"Did you see that even though I don't eat any fruits or vegetables I'm growing a lot?"
And I said -- I had to answer
with something intelligent because if I don't --
"Mateo, do you know how much more you will grow if you eat fruit and vegetables?"
Anyways... that is nothing more than an anecdote.
Not only does eating have to do with this biological part,
It has to do with whether food quality and digestion
are in balance with what our body
needs as far as calories and amounts,
it creates balance between ourselves and the rest.
And that is good. It is very good.
That would be the "why."
The harder part is the "how."
Because if it was easy we would not
be in the health situation that we are in now.
As to the "how", I firmly believe
that the response is in going back,
in resetting ourselves a little; reorganizing ourselves.
That is to say: "Well, this is reality; let's change something."
Or, at the least, begin to do something to change it.
There are many things that we can change.
The first is making sure that we eat several meals a day.
For example, how many of you had breakfast today?
Raise your hands fearlessly. Ah, quite good!
It was because you were coming here today.
(Laughter)
It is interesting to reaffirm that eating several meals a day
has its place, and especially breakfast
affects your energy for the rest of the day.
What happens is that it is imperceptible.
Those who did not eat breakfast today, or who skip meals,
try it the other way and you will see how much better you feel.
Then it has to do with returning
to the most organic and homemade as possible.
It involves befriending with the fish,
which is the leanest meat.
Replacing whole milk with skimmed milk.
Drinking water whenever possible.
Eating fruits and vegetables all year.
Using a fork and knife.
Along with delivery and stress, we are in the era
of finger food as it is called,
and that makes it fast food
which isn't bad. It is good to enjoy it.
And it is fine to eat everything so as not to have any problems,
but the issue is achieving balance.
Plan and organize grocery shopping for you and your child's lunches
based on what you have in the fridge.
All of these are are small changes that can be made
without disrupting
the household budget too much.
I do not think that food
is good or bad in and of itself.
The issue is in the way
that we adults
use or abuse it.
The goal is to not have forbidden foods.
So we are not told: "From today no more salt; you have hypertension.
No more sugar; you are diabetic."
You must find balance.
I am convinced that the only solution for all of this --
I'm thinking that you are here today
because you're interested in hearing innovative ideas
that are worth spreading --
so the only solution is to be informed
in every way possible. Today it is easier than before.
Be informed, first and foremost, from home.
Because home is the center, and what we learn at home
shapes us for the rest of our lives.
Be informed about the food industry
which is responsible and becoming increasingly more responsible
for improving the nutritional profile of foods and communicating it better.
Likewise by the media.
Many who are here are involved with the media, right?
And the media have the opportunity to spread all this knowledge
that often reaches us.
And other than this opportunity they also have a little of the responsibility.
In fact, in Europe, for example, nutritional communication
for children is highly regulated.
It has yet to come here. We are very advanced.
And to return to what my friend Eduardo recently said:
"The school is fundamental for teaching."
Children sometimes spend more hours in school than at home.
I humbly believe that nutritional education should be incorporated
as part of it, not just a subject.
It should be part of the curriculum,
from preschool through high school,
cutting across all of the disciplines that an individual must know
basically until they graduate from high school.
Before something like this happens to us.
It is funny, but only to a point.
It could be concerning to us.
In closing,
I invite you to think that we are on time actually,
to make these changes.
Of resetting ourselves, of going back to our roots, to the most homemade.
Of being more demanding, informed consumers.
Ultimately, to be a better version
of ourselves, so to speak.
I say it for us adults
and I say it especially for those
who are now older...
But more than teaching you that you can't play with food
because it costs too much work earning the money to buy it;
and that there are children who go hungry and don't have the same opportunities;
what you eat affects more than just your body.
There are consequences to your mind, your soul, and your emotions.
And that is not a game.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)