Singapore Women Dying to Be Thin
One woman is dead, another needed a liver transplant to save her life and several others are seriously ill after taking an herbal slimming aid.
The women all took the Chinese-made "Slim 10" diet pill, which contained the banned substance Fenfluramine and has now been yanked from the market, but its highly publicized side-effects have had little impact on sales of other brands.
In Singapore culture, "we don't accept people who are big", said Tey Beng Hea, head of a weight-management program at Singapore's Alexandra Hospital explaining the obsession with being thin.
Most Singaporeans are petite and "the bigger ones tend to be the butt of jokes, adding to their insecurities", he said. A 17-year-old college student, at 1.6 meters (five foot, three inches) tall and 60 kilograms (132 pounds), told AFP she had been taking diet pills on and off since she was 11.
"I wanted to look better and I guess there's pressure from friends and magazines," she said.
She quit the pills last year after a series of dizzy spells and headaches and said her weight reduction program now was binge eating and "I throw up after every meal." But slimming-pill retailers are laughing all the way to the bank as they cash in on the lucrative business. One local chain, General Nutrition Centers, reaped between three and four million Singapore dollars (U.S.$1.7-2.2 million) in sales in 2001, according to Chief Executive Cynthia Poa.
"Slim 10" is reported to have racked up three million dollars in sales in the five months it was on the market with 20,000 bottles sold at 150 dollars each.
Tey cited a patient, a university graduate in her mid 20s, who was mildly overweight. He considered her "well proportioned" but she was not happy. When he asked her why, she looked him in the eye and said: "Do you think guys would look at girls like me who are fat?" At a recent forum on slimming which aimed to improve women's perspective on dieting and body image, Tay recalled that: "From my bird's-eye scan, most who attended were not seriously overweight." The yearning to be thinner was compounded by advertisements, with media glorifying people who were underweight and medically unhealthy, Tey said. Normal-sized girls looked up to dangerously thin models as having the "to-die-for" physique.
The models were "so thin, they become exposed to certain health risks", he said.
"Their immunity is compromised and their resistance to infection is very much reduced.
"We find that statistically they are more susceptible to tuberculosis, cancer, and their guts have problems absorbing nutrients.' "Women are their own worst enemy," AFP quoted **** Singapore Women's Weekly **** Editor-in-Chief Tara Barker, as saying.
"Once, we did a story featuring normal-sized women in clothes.
Almost immediately, we have women calling in, saying, 'Why are you showing big women?' "And when we interview men they say they prefer women with curves. But women just don't believe them.
"A magazine is led by its readers. We can't force down their throats what they don't want to see." Retailers say sales of slimming pills slumped more than 30 percent because of the publicity surrounding "Slim 10" but it was not the end of the thin fad. Sales of meal replacement diet products rose a similar amount.
The medical watchdog Health Sciences authority is now checking 45 Chinese-made slimming products to see if they have been adulterated with synthetic chemicals, and the importers of "Slim 10" have been charged with contravening the Poisons Act.
Police are also investigating the "unnatural death" of 43-year-old Rani Raja who died early this month from liver failure after taking "Slim 10".
But despite the controversy, pharmacist Chen Yee Ju backed diet pills if taken correctly and for a short term.
"I've been in this industry for about five years and no one has come back reporting adverse side-effects. Slim 10 is a freak case," he said.