Hurry with Harambee
ANDREAS OBHOLZER WRITES:
The fast, junk food and drinks industry is feeding the pharmaceutical industry. These “terrible twins” don’t promote health and productivity.
Sugar is the number one addiction worldwide, since the era of slavery in the 19th century. It gives you a three-hour energy rush and then you need a recharge. Sugar is an appetite stimulant. You become fat and hungry. Salt makes you thirsty. If you depend on sugar spiked sodas and salty chips, you end up hungry, thirsty and obese.
Obesity leads to hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, reflux, snoring, cancer and target organ damage, of all your organs, due to oxygen load shedding, due to thickened, narrow blood vessels.
Smoking and alcohol abuse is sin taxed with a health warning – good!
However, sugar, the biggest disease culprit, is exempt from sin tax and VAT. It is the cocaine for the poor struggling masses.
If we tax sugar, “we may lose votes” (short term) but long term the nation’s health will benefit. We “treat” the damage with drugs!
Sugar tax can cross-subsidize VAT exemption on real good unprocessed food, milk, eggs, brown bread, mineral and vitamin enriched maize meal, apples (Vitamin C), carrots (Vitamin A), beans, pilchards and Meatma products (soup bones, tripe, organ meat and lard).
Aim for every house to have an orange tree, and compost tyres for carrots and tomatoes. Have hens in rural areas for eggs (the single best total food).
A child with an empty stomach cannot benefit from schooling. Thirty thousand children did not return to school after the Covid-19 pandemic. Four thousand teenagers became pregnant, due to lack of reproductive counselling and contraceptives – a massive social scar.
Primary health care (promotion, prevention and screening) is the UNICEF Foundation for health, with access to education.
If we have children begging at robots, adults selling sweets and parked car attendants, we have failed the promise of 1990. The next promise of Vision 2030 is around the corner.
If we Harambee and hurry up, with compassionate common sense, we can become the land of the Brave. We share this place, we all belong.
The fast, junk food and drinks industry is feeding the pharmaceutical industry. These “terrible twins” don’t promote health and productivity.
Sugar is the number one addiction worldwide, since the era of slavery in the 19th century. It gives you a three-hour energy rush and then you need a recharge. Sugar is an appetite stimulant. You become fat and hungry. Salt makes you thirsty. If you depend on sugar spiked sodas and salty chips, you end up hungry, thirsty and obese.
Obesity leads to hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, reflux, snoring, cancer and target organ damage, of all your organs, due to oxygen load shedding, due to thickened, narrow blood vessels.
Smoking and alcohol abuse is sin taxed with a health warning – good!
However, sugar, the biggest disease culprit, is exempt from sin tax and VAT. It is the cocaine for the poor struggling masses.
If we tax sugar, “we may lose votes” (short term) but long term the nation’s health will benefit. We “treat” the damage with drugs!
Sugar tax can cross-subsidize VAT exemption on real good unprocessed food, milk, eggs, brown bread, mineral and vitamin enriched maize meal, apples (Vitamin C), carrots (Vitamin A), beans, pilchards and Meatma products (soup bones, tripe, organ meat and lard).
Aim for every house to have an orange tree, and compost tyres for carrots and tomatoes. Have hens in rural areas for eggs (the single best total food).
A child with an empty stomach cannot benefit from schooling. Thirty thousand children did not return to school after the Covid-19 pandemic. Four thousand teenagers became pregnant, due to lack of reproductive counselling and contraceptives – a massive social scar.
Primary health care (promotion, prevention and screening) is the UNICEF Foundation for health, with access to education.
If we have children begging at robots, adults selling sweets and parked car attendants, we have failed the promise of 1990. The next promise of Vision 2030 is around the corner.
If we Harambee and hurry up, with compassionate common sense, we can become the land of the Brave. We share this place, we all belong.
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