So I spent an arduous five minutes looking up about the Polynesian diet using Google.
The World Health Organisation: Globalization, diet and health : Globalization has also had profound consequences on health, as can be seen by the rising rates of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) throughout the Pacific (16–18) and in much of the developing world. Imported high fat-content meats, especially corned beef, mutton flaps, and chicken parts and dense simple carbohydrates, such as refined sugar and flour, are among the main causes of the rising rates (17, 19– 21).
The Indigenous Action Network : Early traders, whalers, and missionaries in the Pacific brought with them other, apparently more benign, elements of their civilizations: ship's biscuits, flour, salt and sugar, corned beef, and alcohol. What was once just a trickle of these commodities has become a flood since World War II. The decades since the war have been characterized by sweeping social change in virtually every aspect of life. And, once again, new diseases have begun to take hold - this time the diseases of modernization...
Poor dietary balance is perhaps the most striking of these factors in the Pacific, where there is an ongoing transition from a high-fiber, low-animal-fat diet based on root crops, fresh fish, green leaves, and coconut to one based on white flour or rice, tinned meat and fish, and large quantities of sugar and salt. In Fiji the proportion of total energy derived from imported food has been steadily increasing; in 1977 it was already 43 percent nationwide, and by 1981 it had risen to 63 percent.
One of the most dramatic and well-documented changes in disease pattern has been the increase in diabetes, primarily in Polynesia and Micronesia, but also in Fiji, where 20 percent of hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from diabetes-related illness. Rates of diabetes are particularly high among the Indo-Fijian population. Although it is thought that heredity factors play a part, changes in diet, reductions in physical activity, and rising stress levels have allowed the disorder to increase manifold in recent decades.
Dr Salei’a Afele-Fa’amuli : Similar to the health status of inhabitants of other developed countries and continents, the overall health of Polynesians has changed drastically with modernization, change, and the introduction of imported and fast foods. For instance, recent research suggests that Samoans in American Samoa are among the most obese in the world. Further, Samoans in Hawaii and west coast United States primarily are overweight and obese. Generally, all of the Polynesian islands—including Hawaii, Tonga, Tahiti, Fiji, non-U.S. Samoa, American Samoa, and New Zealand—have growing obesity problems and other related non-communicable diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, renal disease and gout. Obesity is further accelerated enhanced by the change in lifestyle from intensive physical labor to minimal physical activity and sedentary desk jobs. The overall diet in the Pacific islands has gone from wholesome to refined: daily complex carbohydrates to simple and refined carbohydrates of unenriched bread and rice; fish to daily fatty meats such as lamp flaps, pig’s feet, pork, turkey tails, beef and corned beef. Sweet carbonated beverages are readily available and preferred over spring water.
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I'm glad I didn't have to keep a diary of my moods and the phases of the moon for a year to find that out, because apart from taking thousands of times longer, it might not have worked. Also, I'm not a self-absorbed narcissist with grandiose delusions.
