In June, officials from Thailand’s Public Health Department urged laypeople to offer healthier alms to monks, who pour from temples in their saffron robes each morning to roam the streets collecting their meals in the Buddhist tradition.
Amporn Bejapolpitak, the department’s deputy director general, also suggested that monks add more physical activity — like cleaning their temples — to their sedentary lives of prayer and meditation.
Obesity has reached alarming levels in Thailand, which ranks as the second - heaviest nation in Asia, after Malaysia. One in three Thai men are obese, while more than 40 percent of women are significantly overweight, according to Thailand’s national health examination survey.
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