“Africans have become sedentary. We spend our days in the car or in the office, we eat fast-food and our children put on weight watching television”. Professor Vincent Onywera from Kenyatta University in Nairobi is studying a problem that is becoming dramatic: escalating obesity, particularly among very young people. While outside the capital the real problem is malnutrition, in Nairobi things go the opposite way: middle class people, whose life style is similar to that of Westerners, eat junk food and do not practice enough sport. The Ministry of Health has recognized that this is a problem and school menus are now under control while vending machines are forbidden in the schools. However, figures are unmistakable: one person out of two in Nairobi is overweight.
