western influence on Thai culture

I was once in a meeting at work when a manager in my company was talking a little about American influence and Thai cultural individuality, and it occurred to me how almost everything about the context and everything within sight could be traced back relatively directly to Western influence, much of that to the US.  We were working in a high-rise building, in an IT company, wearing Western clothes, sitting on office furniture in a conference room, with everyone carrying phones, etc., with none of this a part of Thai originated culture and almost none of it here 50 years ago.  Even what he was saying and the context he was speaking from, the role of an upper manager talking to subordinates in a conversational way, had direct origins elsewhere.  But then he was both British and Thai, educated in the US.

It wouldn't really be possible to tease out what was original and what is Western influenced in Thailand.  There are obvious imports like 7/11 and KFC, and English use, and smart phones, but the rest is a mix, as much both foreign and based on the past customs here as stemming from just one source.  Globalization is like that.  It almost doesn't make sense to ask if it's positive or not.  Someone would have to go way out in the country in Myanmar to find people not influenced by it to get the opposing view, if life really was better before modernization, and even then those rice farmers might be wearing t-shirts and sneakers and might possibly already have cell phones.

For sure one of the negatives is obesity.  Many Thais are experiencing what it is to be fat, diabetic and suffering high blood  pressure. 
I recently returned from Northern Vietnam and noticed all there are very slender.  Even in the city of Hanoi.

But the strange thing is even in the small village where I live there are some overweight people and they don't eat western food.  A
Alcoholism is a problem here too but don't know that I'd lay that on western influence.  Beer comes from the west and certainly lends itself to the alcohol problem and weight.