Sugar and spice?
IT’S KITE-FLYING season, so nobody should be surprised by the Government’s latest talking horse, namely, a tax on sugary drinks.
Don’t get me wrong. I support the proposed tax 100 per cent. It’s an acceptable, desirable method of raising revenue for a cash-strapped Government that just spent half a billion dollars on new cars for ministers and phantom used cars for police. Even better, this is a genuine indirect tax.
So why delay introduction? Whenever a government taxes us, it’s done instantly by ministerial decree. What’s up? Are there problems relating to allowable sugar levels or time for further ‘consultation’ with big business? Nobody consulted me when GCT was being imposed on my residential electricity use or petrol consumption.
Maybe there hasn’t been enough political disinformation spread about how healthy this’ll make us. Propaganda expert Christograph Tuftoned and his BFF Tarn Cameraon have been touting alleged health benefits as if optics equal results.
But less sugar in locally made ‘juices’ won’t make them healthy. I dispute it’ll even make them healthier than before. Depending on where the lobbying of (oops, sorry, ‘consultation’ with) Government results in allowable sugar content levels, there’ll likely still be too much sugar in these drinks. Furthermore, other artificial ingredients could work together with remaining sugar to ensure unhealthiness. Healthconscious individuals should give them what my Cockney friends would call the Spanish Archer (‘el bow’).
STILL UNWELL
Furthermore, less sugar in drinks won’t make Jamaica healthy, no matter how many cute advertisements Christograph produces. For example, Irish potato (a Jamaican favourite) is so chock-full of sugar, it makes beer appear a health drink. Bread and rice, sugar content aside, are harmful to health but unavoidable by many fiscally vulnerable Jamaicans in the ‘prosperity’ era. If we eliminate sugary drinks (NOT what this Spice Girls Government really, really wants) but binge on bun, fried chicken, or pork pie, we’re still unwell.
That’s not the only danger of swallowing currently hyped lower-sugar-drinks-will-makeyou-healthy baloney. Thirty years ago, as president of the Fat, Ugly Redmen’s Club (FURC), I searched for truth about obesity and found that, like education, eating should be for life, not beauty. Slimness should be a byproduct of healthy living, not a fixation. Fit for Life by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond opened my mind to new realities. Blinded by society’s unhealthily superficial obsession with thinness, we’ve been tricked into accepting general, misleading advice like ‘eat plenty fruits and vegetables’.
Much is omitted from that advice. Like all members of the animal kingdom, our bodies function best when we synchronise our lives with our natural cycles. Generally (nothing is cast in concrete), mornings (4 a.m.–noon) are for elimination, afternoons (noon–8 p.m.) for consumption, and evenings/nights for assimilation/use. Don’t eat after 8 p.m.
Fruits are best sentenced to solitary, so eat them first thing (breakfast/mid-morning snack) or three hours after a meal. Fruit rots and turns into acid, killing nutrition in other foods. Eat fruits, don’t juice them. Eating fruit gives you all the benefits, including fibre. Juicing delivers only the sugar. Banana and other ‘concentrated’ fruits are ‘fattening’. Unless you’re an athlete, avoid them. Steaming/stir-frying vegetables kills the full nutritional value. Vegetables are best eaten alive (as in salads) for hydration. Dumplings have zero nutritional value.
Jamaica should promote moderation. Going to extremes is silly, especially in a world where the number one cause of death is being born, and we’re forever inhaling dangerous carcinogens.
Let’s promote healthy substitutes for bread/rice (Jamaican farmers produce excellent dietary fibre sources like yam, dasheen, a zzsweet potato); exercise (in moderation; expensive gym memberships not required); proper sleep; less meat; more selective mixing of the Food group family (protein/vegetables or carbohydrate/veggies keep grumpy inlaws like protein/carbohydrate mixes away); less sugar; less gluten; less caffeine; and less stress. I believe stress causes more deaths than pork fat (my favourite medication).
Let’s get the sugary-drinks tax show on the road! But, please, spare me the hypocritical sideshow.
Peace and love.