Why are so many Indian Brahma Kumaris fat or obese?

Researching the number of child deaths in India the BKs ignore, I was reading a state wise study of the nutritional status of women and men in India (2005-06) It stated that in Rajasthan, where the Brahma Kumaris have their headquarters and their god spirit is supposed to descend, the percentage of (non-BK) women whose body mass index is below normal is 36.7% (the mean is 40.5%).

Allow me to state the obvious, this is caused by the pernicious malnourishment poverty and hunger brings.

The Brahma Kumaris have established charities to "alleviate poverty"? I recently wrote to them to ask how much poverty they had alleviated, how much of their budget goes into poverty alleviation and how they went about it.

They, of course, ignored me.

Therefore, please allow me to ask a different question ... why are so many Indian Brahma Kumaris fat or obese in a nation were there is so much hunger and starvation?

BKs often claim the BKWSU is such a good cult because there are not the kind of financial excesses seen in other cults ... that the leaders live such frugal lives (example, ... we have only seen pictures of their leader in one white Rolls Royce!).

In return, I point out that in comparison to the vast majority of Indians, they actually live lives of luxury.

Having lived for the whole of their lives being financially supported by others ... not having any skills, trade or education and never having to have a real job ... if after their money ran out in the 1950s they had not turned their cult into a business to life off, they would have been reduce to begging or the lowest and hardest labouring jobs in India. And without doubt a premature death. Instead, they float about in their angelic saris being driven from centrally heated or air conditioned centre to centre, being fed, clothed and looked after by unpaid servants, flying business class from VIP meeting to VIP meeting etc etc etc.

Nice life if you can afford it ... and all free of taxes!

So, let me ask again, whilst 40% of Rajasthan is going hungry ... why are so many Indian Brahma Kumaris fat or obese?

Do they or their god spirit not care about the poor? Is sitting on their fat asses, being fed and served by unpaid servants, really "serving humanity"?

Taking a single photo at random ... you would be hard pressed to find one skinny BK amongst them.

Hah. I found one skinny BK. She is sitting in front row, third from right end. One more the first one in front row from right end. One more......

It is a puzzle. Right? Lets count Brahma Kumaris who after focussing too much on point of light lost their eye power & can be seen wearing spectacles.

They ask to come out of worldly happiness but one can see a fan kept right in front of their faces. What is that on which they have placed their feet to avoid scratches from red carpet? Really they are examples of detachment.

Can anyone read their minds here in this pic? I read one common thought taking round in every BK mind. Its, " Why we have to sit here again & again when we can see all this on our tabs? It is waste of time, instead we could have encouraged more of people, personally, who are not mosquitoes or crab souls but rich & therefore close to Baba".

No one should have problem with BK obesity. They eat from donations of their followers. It is not going from our wallets. There is a unique concept which may be Brahma Kumaris disclose in near future that obesity or size of their bellies is nothing but an indication of intensity of donation coming in BKWSU.

If they become skinny, know that donations have gone down & it is time for followers to put more money in their trusts to help Baba indirectly. Agree?

Bearing in mind that India is home to one out of three of the world's starving people, over 7,000 Indians die of hunger every day, and more than 70 percent of the women and children with serious nutritional deficiencies as anaemia ...

Why are so many Brahma Kumaris - living off other people's donations - overweight or fat?

It may just seem like a cheeky question or an insult but there are some serious issues here.

It's obviously because they are eating too many rich, fatty and sweet foods and not exercising at all ... we know that because they've had to start diabetes and heart disease programmes ... but, why?

In the first place, I'd say they were overeating to silence their minds and bodies ... sublimating other sensual or even sexual desires. That's to say, that they are not particularly yogi but "bhogis", as the Murlis call people who live for their senses.

But, most likely, there are also other unevolved and unenlightened cultural influences at play ... that is to say, traditionally in India to be fat and not work was and still is a sign of power and wealth ... only the poor, starving and hard working were skinny.

Therefore, is what the BKs want to represent is that they are also powerful and wealthy ... powerful and wealthy enough to be so overweight it interferes with their good healthy?

Of course, having young, unpaid servant girls working for you, doing all the cleaning and running around helps too ... if working hard, sport or hard exercise "not royal" for the BKs, what is the basis for their idea of what "royalty" actually is ... Standing still, dressed up in fineries having everyone serve you ... like the Lakshmi and Narayan poster?

It's obviously because they are eating too many rich, fatty and sweet foods and not exercising at all ...

Yeah and I don't think they've ever been educated on things like importance of maintaining good physical health, the right kind of diet etc because every education other than Murlis and Baba was considered futile which would only lead ppl towards "body consciousness & other kinds of impurities ..."
I also think that the Dadis and top-level Didis eat a well-balanced & a wholesome diet while the junior teachers & not-very-famous-or-prominent Centre Sisters have to make up with a different kind of diet. I mean it depends on the clientele and the amount of money that's pouring in, in that Centre.

That's to say, that they are not particularly yogi but "bhogis"

I agree.

every education other than Murlis and Baba was considered futile which would only lead people towards "body consciousness & other kinds of impurities ..."

I agree ... it's a kind of stupidity, immaturity or conceit. I am not sure which.

I think the reason they do not address it, and cannot address it, as if they did many of the BKs would leave!

There's a story about when Lekhraj Kirpalani tried to ban tea as non-sattvic and there was a near revolution within the BKWSU so it was allowed to stay. Coffee is not sattvic and yet some leaders live off it. Dhristi cannot transform the effects of caffeine ... nor remove the effects of food addictions. And it has a big effect on the mind and mood.

I think it's also avoiding real issues; mental, physical and emotional, which is what I'd like to underline. It's more evidence of how what they are doing doesn't actually work and illustrates what they are really doing is just caste ascendency ... clambering to the top of the pile where they are fed ... or over fed ... for doing nothing but advertising their own self-importance.

I don't know how much it is just about food addiction and how much, culturally, it's an expression of worldly power and presence but either way they are eating up donations to do it. Donations that could go to a more real and better cause.

I know myself that the times when I have overeaten or binged on "comfort foods" were times when I was unhappy or depressed. And it also makes you even more unhappy ... so it's a kind of vicious cycle. It's a sign something is wrong with you. Those kind of foods dull your mind and literally send you to sleep, like you see many BKs doing during their meditations. Strictly speaking, if sattvic foods are overeaten, they are no longer sattvic. they become tamasic. I, myself, put on a lot of weight when I became a BK, and felt very uncomfortable but it's one thing you won't be criticised for as for someone else to point it out is "body-conscious" of them ... so you can indulge.

And you are right, the BKs have institutionally - for decades - dismissed all other kinds of education and put down healthy living, whether eating or exercise, as something negative ... "Bhakti". "Food Bhakti ... health Bhakti", even though Lekhraj Kirpalani, himself, was active, kept in shape and played sports.

To call something "Bhakti" in BK is just about the worst insult or putdown.

They believe all you have to do is "remember Baba" ... and stare at your food ... and everything was good, then promote a way of living where being sick is also good ... a paying off bad karma.

Yes, the bad karma of eating badly or of not looking after your body.

Right on cue, scientists publish a paper and it is discussed in the media. Oh, I forgot ... Brahma Kumaris are not meant to read newspapers.

Mindfulness or cake? The battle against stress and comfort-eating

The sweet foods we crave to relieve stress have been shown to cause obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Short of a ban on sugar refinement, how can we break the habit?

A small study published in the journal 'Neuroscience Letters' discovered receptors for stress hormones in taste buds. This could help explain why people end up preferring sweeter foods in times of trouble.

"Stress and sweet are obviously linked. We've known that for a very long time," says Rocky Parker, lead author on the study at the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia. For instance, people with Addison's disease, a rare disorder that causes a deficiency of stress hormones, experience dramatically heightened sensitivity to sweet and salt tastes. But if you give someone with Addison's a shot of these stress hormones, their taste immediately returns to within normal realms of sensitivity.

"... the modern malaise of grinding, daily ongoing stress, often referred to as chronic stress, has the opposite effect. You don't exercise enough and your body goes into energy storage mode, while simultaneously, says Parker, after months of stress it "leads to long-term changes in gene expression, decreasing the amount of sweet-taste receptor you produce in your taste buds".

""Once stress-induced feeding becomes habitual," she writes, "the problem-solver, executive part of the prefrontal cortex may no longer be actively engaged in the outcome; 'comfort food' intake may become a reflex ... habitual relief of life's discomforts using this means inevitably leads to obesity".

To make matters worse, "emotional 'comfort feeding', when used repeatedly, results in primarily abdominal obesity", which is the kind most commonly associated with heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Dallman's advice was to "deliberately increase training of our cognitive, executive prefrontal brains to overcome emotional, habitual responses, using techniques like mindfulness".

(I won't say "meditation" as that does not seem to be working in the BKs world and I don't think their practises their cognitive, executive prefrontal brains).