There are lies, damned lies and statistics

When the last National Health Survey was conducted here in Singapore in 1998, one in ten students (and one in four grown-ups, literally) were found to be overweight or obese. Now, I don't know about you, but those results had us spluttering over our cup of Curry noodles.

For being overweight or obese can lead to some seriously damaging situations - like diabetes, heart-attacks and always getting picked last at school for any team sports. Plus there's the obligatory name-calling (eg 'fei zhai', 'pig' and 'fat a**'), shopping at camping shops for clothes and never being able to see if your laces are undone.

Now, many reasons have been cited for the swell in obesity levels - such as eating unhealthy foods, being 'big-boned' and 'water-retention'. We can't really comment on the latter two but we can help on the food front.

Say a pack of instant noodles (90g) has on average 25g of fat and you munch your way through 2 packets a week. Over a year, that's a hefty 2.6kg of pure fat .
[Maths Lesson No.1: 25g x 2 = 50g per week x 52 = 2,600 grams].

However, if your noodles are only 99% fat free, then that means over the year, and some 100+ packets later, you'll only consume about the same amount of fat that's in just ONE lazy, lard-laden pack of instant noodles.
[Maths Lesson No.2: 0.25g x 2 = 0.5g per week x 52 = 26 grams].