Although 99% of the people on Singapore streets still look like sticks to me, according to many anxious news reports, Singaporeans are actually getting fatter. And even if you’re all “love your body”, being overweight might put you at a higher risk of heart disease or diabetes. To put things in perspective, it seemed like about 50% of the people at my previous workplace had diabetes.
So you’ve decided to start losing some weight. But take a look around you and you’ll discover it’s close to impossible in Singapore, especially if you’re on a budget. Here’s why.
Everyone in Singapore knows the cheapest places to eat at are hawker centres and food courts. In fact, with even McDonald’s inflating their prices, they are virtually the only places where you can get a meal for $5 or less.
But try as you might to convince yourself that fish soup or yong tau foo are healthy, they aren’t. Well, sure, a bowl of fish soup might be healthier than eating five big Macs and then smoking a whole pack of cigarettes. And a couple of bowls aren’t going to instantly turn you obese.
Over time, however, the high salt content and MSG will cause bloating, ill health and eventually lead to weight gain.
If you don’t believe me, check out this post written by a blogger who ate every meal at hawker centres for a week.
When you eat out you really have no idea what they’re feeding you and how many times the food on your plate accidentally fell to the ground on the journey from kitchen to table.
In addition, if you could witness first-hand how much oil and salt the cook added to your meal, you might actually lose your appetite.
Obviously, cooking at home gives you the greatest control over what you put in your body. But guess what—Singaporeans just don’t have the time to cook. A 2002 study showed that 32% of teenagers did not have home-cooked food since both their parents were working.
With some of the longest working hours in the world, Singaporeans just don’t have the time to constantly run to the grocery store and prepare dinner, let alone make lunch in advance to take to the office.
What’s there to do in Singapore? Nothing except shopping and eating, cry most people. And food and drink are pretty much the only things people do when they socialise. Even if you eat lettuce leaves at home on Saturday, get invited to a buffet by your friends on Sunday and there goes your diet.
To make matters worse, eating is a national sport in Singapore and regular people actually monitor the opening of new restaurants and, most recently, cafes.
If you actually have a social life and leave the house for reasons other than work, chances are you’ll find yourself tucking in to a slice of cake at a hipster café or stuffing your face with dim sum on a steamy afternoon.
When you’re socialising, staying healthy gets even harder as you’re more likely to opt for a big night out at Chomp Chomp or Korean BBQ. Unless your friends are health nuts or vegetarian, most Singaporeans turn up their noses at paying good money when large amounts of meat or alcohol aren’t included.
To make matters worse, in Singapore, the sun never goes down on food, especially unhealthy options. Hungry and bored at 3 in the morning? No problem, just nip downstairs for a quick prata and Milo Dinosaur. Emerging all hot and sweaty from a club at 5am? Time for some bak kut teh.
Not only does this mean you have ample opportunities to stuff your face virtually any time of day, it also makes people less observant of mealtimes. Many of my friends who work till 9 or 10pm every day often have dinner at 11pm or eat at the office and then follow up with supper after work.
While it’s true that late night options tend to be cheaper than eating at restaurants that open specifically for lunch or dinner, let’s just say that you’re not going to be appearing on the cover of Men’s Health anytime soon if you keep up those nightly satay sessions.
Here at MoneySmart, we don’t like to use the word “doomed” unless we have to. So we’re going to say that there is a way out of this sticky situation that doesn’t involve doing Crossfit. And while we don’t claim to be stopping traffic with our abs of steel, here are some tips that will have you looking better than us without having to turn to loan sharks.
Look for specialty salad joints: While it’s true that it’s pretty difficult to get a healthy meal in Singapore for under $5, if you up your budget to $10, it’s doable. Specialty salad joints usually throw together filling salads for a reasonable price, and you get to pick your own ingredients and sauce. Here are some cheap ones:
My Salad Bowl, Golden Shoe Car Park, 50 Market Street, #03-10 – A stall at the Market Street Hawker Centre (Golden Shoe) serving up fresh salads for about $5
Cook healthy meals in bulk at home – If you have no time to cook every night, spend one day over the weekend making healthy meals in bulk and then store them in the fridge or freezer. We like this salad-in-a-jar idea.
Buy healthy read-to-eat items at the supermarket. No, sorry, that doesn’t mean you get to make a beeline for the instant pizza or ice cream. There are ready made salads (substitute the sauce for extra virgin olive oil) and sushi for those who are too lazy or too time-strapped to cook.
Do you have any trouble eating healthily without spending huge amounts of money? Let us know in the comments!
Its a nightmare trying to even get a balanced meal in singapore. Its all carbs, a little protein n almost missing fibre. The only stores in a hawker centre where you can get a proper serving of veg are the cai fan n yong tau fu stores. We need a lot less carbs, more protein and even more fibre in our diet.
It’s no secret that Singapore’s economy is quite labour-intensive. Employees work extremely long hours by global standards, and the tendency is to rely on cheap labour. Still, the wheel must keep turning. Recently, a news report emerged with the exhortation that the Singapore economy needs to become less labour intensive.
Does this mean bosses are just going to fire half their existing employees and pile their work on those lucky enough not to get the sack? We hope not. Here are some ways employees can make themselves more productive.
Most jobs do not require their employees to display the linguistic acumen of Shakespeare. But having a poor command of English often hampers employees in the discharge of their duties, making them slower and poorer at communicating.
Veronica, a 30-year-old editor, has trouble communicating with the design and IT crew at her workplace as they speak mostly Mandarin at work. “I don’t have a problem if they speak amongst themselves in Mandarin. But when I need to liaise with them for a publication, it can be frustrating when they refuse to speak English,” says Veronica, who is able to converse only in very basic Mandarin.
In line with varying degrees of fluency in English and an education system that prioritises exam grades over soft skills, employers have long bemoaned the paucity of good presentation skills in the Singapore workforce. Once again, this isn’t about mimicking the Mr Darcy but rather about gaining confidence speaking in front of a crowd, errors not withstanding.
Rachel, a 24-year-old HR executive, laments that her bosses often privately talk about hiring Western foreigners over locals due to the poor presentation skills of candidates from the latter pool, an accusation she thinks is not unfounded. “The Singaporean candidates tend to give by-the-book answers. When you ask them what their interests outside of work are, everyone says that they enjoy watching movies,” she says.
Many Singaporean workers are good at carrying out instructions, but when it comes to innovating at their jobs, they seem to be lacking. The face-time heavy culture at many companies contributes to a lack of incentive to become more efficient at work.
Says Bertha, a 41-year-old secretary at a law firm, “Many of the young lawyers spend a lot of time walking around the office and chatting with their friends the whole afternoon. They only start to panic around 6pm. I try to leave as early as possible so you hardly see me chitchatting, but most of them stay until late at night.” On the other hand, Bertha herself has hacked her own job by collecting templates during her free time at the office so she can effectively churn out documents on the fly without having to waste precious hours searching for precedents.
After a lot of fanfare heralding the $500 received by each Singaporean in their SkillsFuture account, the furore has died down and the programme has been all but forgotten. This is a pity, as SkillFuture can actually make you more knowledgeable at work, and boost your efficiency, meaning man-hours spend on the job can be cut.
30-year-old Jessica, a marketing manager, used her SkillsFuture credits to take a course in SEO and digital marketing to better understand what the SEO contractors hired by the company were doing. “Before, they used to just go about their jobs unsupervised, just giving us a report at the end of each month. Now that I understand SEO more, I’m better able to tell them to change the way they do things if it’s not efficient.” This has helped Jessica in her work and she now spends fewer hours fretting about the company’s online presence.