feeding the fattest country in asia - nytimes.com 28, 2017 · readings, award ceremonies, ... over...

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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2017

AIRPORT SPASLOUNGES’ LATESTWAYS TO RELAXPAGE 15 | TRAVEL

WOMEN’S WORKEMPOWERMENTIN A COFFEE CUPPAGE 8 | BUSINESS

BRAZILIAN TRADEOFFWETLANDS WITHERAS FARMING BOOMSPAGE 3 | WORLD

The New York Times publishes opinionfrom a wide range of perspectives inhopes of promoting constructive debateabout consequential questions.

From my window in Brooklyn Heights,I’ve watched the Staten Island ferrycome and go for more than two yearsnow, a big orange boat crisscrossingthe water. That’s when I’m home,which is not much.

At night, I hear the foghorn, a re-assuring sound, fading slowly likememories. On the road, in yet anotherhotel room where my hand can’t locateby instinct the light switch, I imaginethat sound sometimes. It makes mesmile. Home is little things, the clunkof the door closing on your world.

There’s a lot going on out my win-dow: joggers on the promenade,

barges plowing theEast River, chopperslanding on the prowof Manhattan, planesnosing down intoNewark Airport, carson the first traffic-free stretch of F.D.R.Drive where hopesurges only to collidewith reality at abottleneck. The view

always reminds me of a children’spicture book. Yes, my love, that’s ahelicopter.

I don’t look out on all that enough.Water is life, a mirror one day, a mael-strom the next. Do I live in New Yorkor camp in it? Sometimes I wonder. Iresent the inevitable question: Howlong are you in town for? Forever, Ifeel like saying. That’s right, the far-thest I’m going for the next six monthsis the convenience store on Montague.

Home’s important. Belonging isimportant, right there behind love interms of human needs. Watching anold movie on your couch is important.That’s what holidays are for. I watched“Shampoo,” a minor Hal Ashby mas-terpiece. “You never stop moving,” Jill(Goldie Hawn) tells her feckless hair-dresser boyfriend, George (WarrenBeatty). “You never go anywhere.”

The movie’s set on the eve of Nixon’s1968 election. A TV blares in the back-ground. There’s Nixon. He says theAmerican flag won’t be “a doormat.”He says “the great objective” of hisadministration will be to “bring theAmerican people together.”

That which is new under the sun is

The dangerof dreamsdeferred

OPINION

COHEN, PAGE 11

Of home andbelonging and hope and the Staten Island ferry.

Roger Cohen

Deborah Feldman has learned to followthe sun. The 31-year-old Brooklyn-raised writer is now spending her fourthwinter living in Berlin, a place notoriousfor its long, gray months, and by nowshe has it down: On the rare days whenthe cloud cover breaks, she hurries toher local market hall, a 100-year-old,light-flooded space in the Kreuzbergneighborhood of Berlin. There, the sunshines around noon, for an hour.

Then, juggling TV interviews, photoshoots, newspaper deadlines, publicreadings, award ceremonies, child careand work on her new novel, Ms. Feld-man moves to a west-facing terrace in anearby cemetery, before heading to her

favorite cafe table at around 2 p.m. for afinal 20-minute glimpse of the sun. “I tryto get all the light I can,” Ms. Feldmansaid, with a smile.

This perseverance has characterizedmuch of Ms. Feldman’s extraordinarylife. Born into a Yiddish-speaking Ha-sidic Jewish sect founded by Holocaustsurvivors, after World War II, in theBrooklyn borough of New York City, Ms.Feldman was raised to believe thatHitler’s extermination of the Jews wasGod’s punishment for European Jewishassimilation. To save the Jewish nation,she was taught that Jews must liveapart from society and abide by old Jew-ish rules and traditions.

She documented her repressive up-bringing, the arranged marriage she en-tered into at 17 and her decision to takeher young son and leave the communityin her best-selling memoir, “Unortho-dox,” which was published in the UnitedStates in 2012.

But even after the success of her book,Ms. Feldman never felt quite at home inthe United States. She found main-

Finding a voice in German, through Yiddish

FELDMAN, PAGE 2Deborah Feldman at her apartment in Berlin. She left behind a restrictive community ofHolocaust survivors — and an arranged marriage — in New York.

GORDON WELTERS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

PROFILEBERLIN

Never at home in America, an author discovers newresolve in move to Berlin

BY SALLY MCGRANE

Over the past three decades, this in-creasingly prosperous nation has be-come the fattest country in Asia, withnearly half the adult population nowoverweight or obese. Several years ago,Dr. Tee E Siong, Malaysia’s leading nu-trition expert, decided to act, organizinga far-reaching study of local diets andlifestyle habits.

The research, conducted by scientistsfrom the Nutrition Society of Malaysia,which Dr. Tee heads, has produced sev-eral articles for peer-reviewed academ-ic journals. But scientists weren’t theonly ones vetting the material. One ofthe reviewers was Nestlé, the world’slargest food company, which financedthe research.

Among the published articles was onethat concluded that children who drankmalted breakfast beverages — a catego-ry dominated in Malaysia by Milo, a sug-ary powder drink made by Nestlé —were more likely to be physically active

and spend less time in front of a comput-er or television.

The research exemplified a practicethat began in the West and has moved,along with rising obesity rates, to devel-oping countries: deep financial partner-ships between the world’s largest foodcompanies and nutrition scientists, poli-cymakers and academic societies.

As they seek to expand their markets,big food companies are spending signifi-

cant money in developing countries,from India to Cameroon, in support of lo-cal nutrition scientists. The industryfunds research projects, pays scholarsconsulting fees and sponsors most ma-jor nutrition conferences at a time whensales of processed food are soaring. InMalaysia, sales have increased 105 per-cent over the past five years, accordingto Euromonitor, a market research com-pany.

Similar relationships have ignited agrowing outcry in the United States andEurope, and a veritable civil war in thefield between those who take food indus-try funding and those who argue thatthe money manipulates science andmisleads policymakers and consumers.But in developing countries, where gov-ernment research funding is scarce andthere is less resistance to the practice,companies are doubling down on theirefforts.

Few examples of close ties betweenindustry and science are as striking asthe case of Dr. Tee, 70, whose relation-ship with business has deepened in re-cent years.

“He’s a god in the region,” said BarryM. Popkin, a professor of nutrition at theUniversity of North Carolina. “But at thesame time, he’s very linked to industry.”

When corporate money influencesnutrition science, Dr. Popkin said, theevidence of what is healthy for people“gets obscured, gets confounded.”

In addition to Nestlé, based in Switz-erland, Dr. Tee’s work has been fundedby the American giants Kellogg’s andPepsiCo, and by Tate & Lyle, a Britishcompany that is one of the world’s big-gest makers of high-fructose corn syr-up, among others. He said scientistsneed cooperation and financial supportfrom companies, who can supply much-needed resources.

He noted that traditional Malaysian

Children buying snacks and soft drinks at a stand just outside their school in Kota Bharu, Malaysia. The country’s residents have become the most obese in Asia.PHOTOGRAPHS BY RAHMAN ROSLAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Feeding the fattest country in Asia

Plates of nasi kandar vanggey, a chicken curry dish, at a restaurant in Ipoh. Malaysia’sleading nutrition expert lays part of the blame for obesity on traditional cuisine.

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA

Local nutrition research in Malaysia is paid forby global food giants

BY THOMAS FULLER,ANAHAD O’CONNORAND MATT RICHTEL

OBESITY, PAGE 2

The United States Department of Home-land Security is increasingly goingglobal.

An estimated 2,000 department em-ployees — from Immigration andCustoms Enforcement special agents toTransportation Security Administrationofficials — are now deployed to morethan 70 countries around the world.

Hundreds more are either at sea forweeks at a time aboard Coast Guardships or patrolling the skies in surveil-lance planes above the eastern PacificOcean and the Caribbean Sea.

The expansion has created tensionswith some European countries that saythe United States is trying to export itsimmigration laws to their territory. Butother allies agree with the UnitedStates’ argument that its longer reachstrengthens international securitywhile helping to prevent a terrorist at-tack, drug shipment or human smug-gling ring from reaching American soil.

“Many threats to the homeland beginoverseas, and that’s where we need tobe,” said James Nealon, the depart-ment’s assistant secretary for interna-tional engagement.

A surveillance mission this monthwith Homeland Security Departmentagents in drug transit zones near SouthAmerica highlights the department’s ef-forts to push out the border. After takeofffrom a Costa Rican airfield, a crew ofagents aboard a Customs and BorderProtection surveillance plane begantracking a low-flying aircraft that ap-peared to be headed toward Ecuador.

The aircraft, which intelligence re-ports reviewed by agents indicated hadno flight plan, flew just a few hundredfeet above the ocean — an apparent at-tempt to avoid detection by radar.

“When they are flying that low,they’re probably up to no good,” saidTimothy Flynn, a senior detectionagent, watching the plane on a radarscreen.

An hour later, hiding in the cloudcover to stay out of sight, the AmericanP-3 Orion pulled up behind the plane. Anagent with a long-lens digital camerasnapped a string of photos of the plane’stail number and other identifying de-tails. Mr. Flynn radioed the informationto the authorities in Ecuador who werewaiting when the plane landed, arrest-ing seven people and seizing more than800 pounds of cocaine aboard.

Ecuador may embrace the HomelandSecurity Department agents, but otherAmerican allies say the department’sforeign reach is a stretch.

In Germany, some lawmakers have

U.S. expandsglobal reach to defend itsown bordersABOARD A P-3 ORION,OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN

Some allies say deploying2,000 Homeland Security agents abroad goes too far

BY RON NIXON

BORDER, PAGE 5

Issue NumberNo. 41,925

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