The figures are appalling. Nationally or internationally, over half the human race is now overweight, with another half of that very overweight, i.e. obese. For the first time in the history of mankind, there are more fat children than thin ones.
The change is driven by changes in lifestyle, stress, sleep patterns and exercise, but above all, by changes in the food that we have been eating for the last thirty years.
The most significant change is the amount of processed food. This displacement of long-established dietary patterns by processed food is the key driver of the pandemic of overweight children and adults and the key element in the development of multiple diet-related chronic diseases.
The UK medical Journal, The Lancet, has just produced a 3-paper Series that “reviews the evidence about the increase in ultra-processed foods in diets globally and highlights the association with many non-communicable diseases.”
We are talking about sweet drinks, sweetened non-carbonated drinks, baked goods, sweet snacks, ready meals, savoury snacks, dairy products, sauces and dressings, reconstituted meat products, and other solid foods.
The Lancet Executive Summary of Friday, November 21, 2025, goes on to say, “This rise in ultra-processed foods is driven by powerful global corporations who employ sophisticated political tactics to protect and maximise profits.”
In other words politicians and doctors take money from food companies in exchange for refusing to take action to control food companies or to educate the public about the junk they eat and the harm it does to the body: excess weight; obesity; type 2 diabetes; hypertension; dyslipidaemia; cardiovascular disease and mortality; heart attacks and sudden death; strokes; chronic kidney disease; inflammatory bowel disease, depression and most things that kill modern humans.
We are in the midst of another pandemic, not as well-known and disruptive as COVID-19 but much more severe and widespread. It affects equally the young and the old, the rich and the poor. This pandemic of fatness of children and adults is an urgent public health threat “that requires coordinated policies and advocacy to regulate and reduce ultra-processed foods and improve access to fresh and minimally processed foods”, says The Lancet.
Unlike COVID, public health doctors seem reluctant to face up to this. The same doctors who had no difficulty locking down workers and disrupting the economy, locking down children and disrupting education, defend eating habits by saying, “it’s culture”.
The Lancet goes on to say, “Education and relying on behaviour change by individuals is insufficient.” Much of that is due to the lack of critical thinking being taught in our schools, the machinations of advertising companies and their psychologists who are paid good money to manipulate our emotions and our bovine acceptance of the opinions of “influencers”, many of them paid by food companies to push their disease-creating products.
The problem with food is two-fold. One is our view of food content. The second is the parent’s view of their child’s size.
For the past thirty years, there’s been a gradual rise in the number of overweight children in T&T and, alarmingly, in the number of parents who do not think their children are overweight or even obese. They believe their child’s weight is normal. In an alarming percentage of cases, they believe their child is actually underweight. Until this is changed, parents will continue to feed processed food to their children.
More problematic is our opinion about food. That is today at the level we were in the 60’s with cigarette smoking.
There are similarities and differences between smoking and eating. Both influence our outlook and behaviour.
The pleasure we used to get from smoking, the dopamine high, is the same pleasure we get from eating processed food. Cigarettes and processed food are drugs which cause disease and death.
In its heyday, cigarette smoking was considered “modern”, hip, and fashionable. Consider the pride many openly show after picking up their bucket of fried chicken. They reach.
Both are unnecessary. Both are cheap. Both soothe the appetite temporarily. Both appear innocuous; what harm could an occasional cigarette do, what harm can the occasional hamburger do? But both are poisonous, hidden menaces.
There may be a difference in appearance. Contrast the smell of the cigarette, the yellow staining of the fingers and teeth in smokers against the sweetness of baked goods, savoury snacks and dressings.
Eating processed food makes you appear healthy or “plump”. “Plump” is considered healthy. You get “plump” after you stop smoking.
Like cigarette smoking, governments will do nothing about our food until the cost of taking care of the diseases caused by ingesting processed food becomes too large to ignore.
If cigarettes are any guide, that is some 40 years in the future. Get accustomed to having a set of plump people taking up space in your maxi or airline seat.
