RELIGIOUS OFFERINGS OF SUGARY DRINKS and fatty foods might bring good luck to Buddhist devotees in Thailand, but they’ve created a major health crisis for the monks consuming them.
Nearly half of the country’s 300,000 holy men are believed to be obese and suffering from chronic diseases, a study has found.
Now the revered monastic order is being urged to diet and exercise to shed those excess pounds.
“Obesity in our monks is a ticking time bomb,” Dr. Jongjit Angkatavanich, a nutrition and diet expert at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, told the Bangkok Post.