Tapu Misa: How exquisitely proportioned beauty turned to fat

Its quite a comedown to go from being considered "the most beautiful race of people" ever beheld - the description of one Lieutenant Clerke during James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific - to being slated as the fattest people in the world.

In the two centuries since Cook and others wrote admiringly about the "exquisitely proportion'd" physique of the islanders they met on their voyages, we have acquired some undesirable dietary habits and a damaging myth about ourselves.

Not only that we Polynesians are genetically disposed to be fat, but that we aspire to fatness because of some cultural imperative. Because there is mana attached to being immense.

I'm not sure how we got conned into that one, but it's time we put it to rest before it puts us all away.

It's true that this myth has been embraced rather too enthusiastically by some of us, most notably the King of Tonga, whose hugeness earned him a place in the Guinness Book of Records.

But if missionary accounts and photographic records are anything to go by, fatness was virtually unknown among Polynesians. Instead, as missionary Thomas Williams observed of the Tongans in 1840, "large, powerful men abound".

They still abound, these large, powerful specimens, noticeably in sports teams here and around the world - but so, increasingly, do the fat and chronically unhealthy among us.

Last year Pacific Islanders were described by an international taskforce as having the highest rate of obesity in the world. According to Ministry of Health figures, 27 per cent of Maori women and 47 per cent of Pacific Island women were obese - up 50 per cent from 1989.

Now our children are among a worrying number presenting for Type 2 diabetes, a preventable disease that a decade ago was unheard of in children. Most are seriously overweight.

It's possible that genetic predisposition plays a part in this but if so I'm inclined to think it is a small part. The more likely suspect is our diet and lifestyle. We love our food and unfortunately much of it isn't good for us.

Where once we lived on fish and vegetables, now our dietary staples are lamb flaps, canned corned beef, tinned fish and fried chicken.

We've developed a taste for fat - yes, fat does have a taste - and we've incorporated these foods so successfully into our culture that it is now difficult to weed them out. For instance, cans of corned beef, more congealed fat than beef, are given away at funerals and weddings with as much ceremony as the fine mats.

Habit plays a part, as does poverty. Good food - fruit and vegetables, fish at $25 a kilo, and quality cuts of lamb and beef - are often priced out of the range of low-income households.

All of which seem to be threatening the physical advantage that has seen Polynesians succeed in so many sports, and which some theorists say was developed over centuries of sea voyaging.

A British scientist, Andrew Prentice, professor of international nutrition at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, suggests that the obesity pandemic afflicting the developed world may be bringing about our next dramatic shift in human evolution.

The last major change was 200 years ago, when Europeans shot up about 30cm in height because of improved diet.

"We are at a fascinating time in our human evolution," he told the BBC. "The increase in height ... stayed with us and now were increasing in girth and that is going to stay with us as well."

Our children are most susceptible. They are getting fatter faster than adults and storing up so many health problems that scientists predict many will be outlived by their parents.

The reasons are not mysterious - they're eating more and doing less. But the solutions are not as blindingly obvious.

Education would make a difference for many. Fairburn Rd Primary School in Otahuhu introduced a no-junk-food policy in its tuck shop two years ago because it was "an educationally sound and healthy thing to do". According to the principal, it has also been profitable and there are fewer overweight children.

In the United States, a Wisconsin high school last month reported that removing soft-drink machines and introducing a healthy menu five years ago had made students much better behaved.

It can't just be left to schools, though. Some of our leaders need to take up the challenge if we are to change attitudes and help our communities wean themselves off the foods that are killing them.

The fact that the King of Tonga has been working out and talking about healthy feasting is a start. I know of one church that has tried to encourage its parishioners to hit the gym regularly.

Some marae have modified their boil-ups to include more vegetables and replaced cordial with water and white bread with wholemeal.

We need to give our children a healthy image to live up to - and ditch the idea that we're genetically programmed to be fat. We need to see ourselves as we once were - and can be again.

* taputapu@paradise.net.nz