SEMINAR: Asian Studies Seminar

The perceptions and behaviours which form Indonesian university students’ diet and exercise cultures are simultaneously an individual experience, a collective mode of identification and reflect diet and exercise trends across the economically developing world. As this generation of Indonesian young people become more educated and aspire to higher-paying sedentary careers in urban centers, the number of kilojoules people can afford to consume will increase while the amount of exercise people participate in is likely to decrease, which, I posit, will have significant social and economic implications for levels of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs). I hypothesize that students, partially in response to broader social pressures for educational success, often ignore their body’s diet and exercise needs. This attitude will probably cause weight gain and set up patterns for life. With rising rates of lifestyle-induced diseases, Indonesia now faces the complex double burden of under- and over- nutrition which could lead to a public health crisis within one generation. In this broader context, the period of university study offers an opportunity to educate young people about diet and exercise, with the hope of enabling them to avoid lifestyle induced NCDs in the future.