COORS BELLY OR CORONA BELLY ? WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE
When I was growing up in Australia, BEER BELLY was a common phenomenon to be seen as this photograph by Richard Tommy Campion shows. Believe it or not the photograph was taken at the Beer Belly Competition in Gold Coast near Brisbane, Australia.
Australians have always been proud of their prowess at beer drinking and at one time or another may have held some world records for the litres per person drunk!
I remember it was Fosters in Victoria and XXX in Queensland.
There was a song by Rolf Harris which was a ditty. My Boomerang won’t come back. I am a shame to the aboriginal race..
I was a shame to the Australian nation because I could not tolerate the hops or barley that was the ingredient in the Beer and did not take to drinking beer. Fortunately, the state I grew up had wonderful selection of wines. I remember telling myself: I am going to be a junior doctor here for 3 years and there are about 200 vineyards in this state and that is a good enough time to visit them or taste them all. I proudly declare that noble purpose was mostly successful.
Strangely enough I became a Physician specializing in Endocrinology and the big bellies are somewhat of scientific interest to me from the point of view of Insulin metabolism. And what better place to study this phenomenon than the US of A? where 70 per cent of the population is overweight or obese. Coors is a popular brand of beer in the USA .. so, we could name the middle bulge as Coors Belly and attribute it to malnutrition whether by excessive beer consumption or Fast Food consumption or just plain Coca Cola …
What is the name of a popular brand of beer in Mexico ? Corona.. yes, but that word has a different connotation now. Mexicans did become obese but it is related to a great degree to their extraordinary addiction to Coca Cola and other sugar beverages. In Chiapas I even visited a Church made of Coca Cola bottles and cans! And needless to say, San Juan de Chamula has one of the highest rates of Diabetes ..
What is Corona Belly then ?
Here the accumulation of extra pounds of fat may have to do with a compound situation, which we can address as Social Origins of Obesity
Stress plus Inactivity plus Food Disparity/availability.
During the period of this Lockdown which may extend for another month at least. (Even though I feel that the peak of this infection would be in the middle of the middle , just 15 days away)
I read somewhere that Americans can expect to put on 15 pounds on the average during this period of lockdown. Even when there was no lockdown in this land of the free (Gun shops are allowed to be open during this shutdown, as are Golf Clubs) , obtaining food was not an easy process. Majority of the calories consumed came from Ultra Processed Foods and most people were not even aware that the food or food like substances they were eating were highly processed.
So, we expect divorce rates to go up during this lockdown, but there are many other indicators that may go up: Babies for one, we can expect more babies being born. Many people who are used to eating fast food on a regular basis, would see their weight actually coming down if they are locked down. I expect the rate of Diabetes to go up as the quality of nutrition will decline
