Decolonise our nutritional habits

DR. A C OBHOLZER WRITES:

On the 21st of March 1990, Namibia gained its freedom, dignity and justice at the political level – liberation!

However, our nutrition is still colonised and growing in that regard. The main toxic foreign body is sugar, in drinks and food. Before German colonial times, sugar was absent in Namibia.

Today the public is overwhelmed by sugar promotions at all levels. The public is captured, addicted and enslaved by sugar. It is now part of the South African colonial industrial diet.

Sugar is the number one addiction worldwide. It is the cocaine of the masses. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it is a Trojan horse of diet. It is quicksand. It is poison. You need a recharge every three hours.

Excess sugar is locked into the fat prison. You become hungry and obese. When your blood sugar fall, you become sweaty and faint (cold turkey withdrawal). You need another hit.

The addiction often starts during pregnancy. Mothers are overweight and develop gestational diabetes. The baby becomes big with no choice. It is born often by caesarean section with a chemical memory of high sugar.

If the mother does not breast feed for twelve months and switches to sugar/carb based weaning food, this sugar addiction becomes second nature. Bad fast food choices at home and school result in the “big family” syndrome.

The sugar/carbohydrate tsunami, results in “hungry obesity”, leading to hypertension and diabetes. The results in target organ damage – blindness, dementia, stroke, heart attack/failure, fatty liver, renal failure, amputations, impotence and infertility. All your small blood vessels narrow and block.

You rest in peace, before you rest in peace. You snore, acid reflux, develop arthralgia and cancer. Your health grinds to a halt.

The people who benefit, are the sellers of sugar/refined processed carbs, but they don’t cover the collateral damage. Dentists, doctors, pharmacies, hospitals, rehab, frail care centres and Avbob work overtime to cope.

About 20 percent of adults are seriously obese. Sugar is promoted as giving you go, but it does not say where to.

Sugar and refined, processed, preserved, adulterated and fermented carbs are not essential food stuffs. They are commercial capture slavery. You end up needing more and more often. You choose death style over lifestyle.

Health is not expensive. Try disease.

Sugar abuse, just like alcohol, is dangerous to your health. The Ministry of Health and Social Services should through information, education and communication give the public the ability to make good choices.

Sugar should be taxed with 10% and with VAT of 15% and products should have a warning and tea spoon sugar content label.

The money collected can be used to exempt good foods from VAT – like milk, eggs, brown bread, unsifted maize meal and mahango with vitamins, pilchards, Meatma, cabbage, carrots and apples.

This will not cost the treasury a dollar, and people will exercise good value for money real food choices. Yes we can, but only if we courageous to change for the common good, long term!

If you cannot see your toes standing up straight, with your chin on your chest, you can’t see Vision 2030. The Promised Land!

A Luta continua, Victoria é Certa.