The attempt to use this as scientific evidence:
But snacks like bun rotis tend to offer empty calories without key nutrients. Ahmed, who often eats only one meal a day, has lost weight in the year since he moved to Dhaka. “That’s because these foods give them a quick burst of carbohydrates, but it runs right through them and they need another one,” says nutritionist Barry Popkin, who has observed similar trends in other developing countries as they become more urbanised and industrialised.
Bread and butter is terribly bad for you. This ultraprocessed food d’ye see? Our proof is this lad in Dhaka who has lost weight.
Ahmed used to eat a far more nutritious diet of fish and vegetables, but rising salinity in the rivers around his coastal home town of Bhola ended his livelihood in fishing and forced him into the city.
We’re not even sure about that bit of evidence - Bengalis do know how to fish in salt water. Yes, we have been there, do know this.
A sweet, butter-filled bread roll, neatly wrapped in plastic, has become the snack rickshaw rider Jewel Ahmed reaches for when he needs to eat while stuck in traffic in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.
Bun roti, as the rolls are known, are sold for 10 Bangladesh taka (7p) at the same stalls where the city’s rickshaw riders buy heavily sweetened tea to ward off hunger and tiredness.
Ahmed has stopped being a fisherman in fresh waters and instead become a rickshaw driver in Dhaka. Bangladeshi rickshaws are large, heavy and pedal-powered - without gears. Again, we’ve been there and we even asked around as to why there were no gears - too expensive was the general agreed answer.
Snack attack: how the west exported unhealthy eating to Africa and Asia
Oh, right, capitalism, markets, globalisation, all at fault as bloke who takes one of the most physically exhausting, calorie consuming, jobs on the planet loses weight. Eh? What better proof can you desire than that? Proof perfect, innit?
It’s difficult to know whether we should be shouting at these people or laughing. But certainly we shouldn’t be taking them seriously.