“Talk­ing bout food... ah feel dat is here dat we re­al­ly lorse we way, be­cause every day Tantie hear­ing bout a se­ta younger and younger Tri­nis get­ting sick wid what used to be ole peo­ple dis­eases—colon prob­lems, all kin­da can­cer in all kin­da strange places. Is like we eh eat­ing enough ah de bhagie and ochroe and ting. Is all dat fast-fried “card­board” and de rest of food dat processed to with­in an inch of its life we does be shov­el­ling in dat caus­ing dese prob­lems, oui.

“We need to get we­self back to the habits dat made we grand­par­ents reacha ripe ole age with nev­er a trip by de doc­tor. Is de blue food and rest of pro­vi­sion wid stew salt­fish, baigani and toma­to cho­ka wid sa­da dat re­spon­si­ble fuh mak­ing we fore­bears live long and heal­ty. But yuh know how stub­born Tri­ni could be, and how we does be so eas­i­ly in­flu­enced by de North Amer­i­can styling... I ent know when we go learn!

“It eh too late yet... at least not for our chil­dren.”

— Re­pro­duced with

per­mis­sion, from the

Trindi­ary (www.opus.co.tt)

of May 29, 2001.

The T&T Guardian pub­lished this in an ar­ti­cle writ­ten 25 years ago. It is too late for those chil­dren.

Junk food: fast food; ul­tra-processed food; sug­ar food; ad­dic­tion food. Call it what you want. It’s full of tox­ins: hor­mones, an­tibi­otics and oth­er things. The hor­mones in­clude growth hor­mones and steroids. Par­ents who don’t want their asth­mat­ic chil­dren to take steroids ap­par­ent­ly see noth­ing wrong with feed­ing them chick­en, stuffed with steroids to make chick­en breasts big­ger. Many of the an­tibi­otics are the same ones we use in hu­man med­i­cine and have the same side ef­fects. In ad­di­tion, there are oth­er good­ies like trans fats, which raise your “bad cho­les­terol” (LDH) and re­duce your “good cho­les­terol” (HDL). Heart at­tack food. Can­cer food. Stroke food.

Fast food is al­so chock-full of sug­ars that are quick­ly ab­sorbed. When you eat fast food, there is an enor­mous in­crease in your blood sug­ar. That stim­u­lates the re­lease of in­sulin from your pan­creas. As a re­sult, your blood sug­ar lev­el plum­mets, go­ing be­low the nor­mal lev­el and caus­ing low blood sug­ar. Low blood sug­ar makes it dif­fi­cult for you to con­cen­trate and makes you hun­gry. It can take up to three days just to re­cov­er from such stress.

Junk food is harm­ful. Fac­tor in our in­creas­ing­ly lazy lifestyle based on cars, so­cial me­dia and TV, and it’s re­spon­si­ble for the world­wide epi­dem­ic of obe­si­ty that is a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to deaths from heart at­tacks, strokes, di­a­betes, os­teo­poro­sis, de­men­tia and can­cer.

Peo­ple know all this. But the ad­ver­tise­ments are so per­sua­sive that most of us be­lieve them.

The ef­fect of the ad­ver­tise­ments has been ex­ten­sive­ly doc­u­ment­ed in a spe­cial edi­tion of the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Pub­lic Health pub­lished last Wednes­day, ti­tled “Ul­tra-Processed Food & Pub­lic Health.” It again doc­u­ments the links be­tween ul­tra­processed food con­sump­tion and chron­ic dis­ease, cog­ni­tive im­pair­ment and ad­dic­tion. It doc­u­ments how gro­cery stores and su­per­mar­kets are filled with food en­gi­neered by huge in­ter­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions to max­imise con­sump­tion and nor­malise un­healthy prod­ucts while dri­ving chron­ic dis­ease.

“The sys­tem is rigged. If you go in­to a su­per­mar­ket want­i­ng to eat health­ful­ly, you’re fight­ing the sys­tem on your own”, says Pro­fes­sor Mar­i­on Nes­tle, who couldn’t have a more un­healthy sur­name than that and yet is one of the top re­searchers in­to how food cor­po­ra­tions ma­nip­u­late the pub­lic in­to be­liev­ing the junk they pro­duce cheap­ly and sell ex­pen­sive­ly, is good for us, keep­ing us eat­ing, keep­ing us sick.

The da­ta is clear. Junk food com­bines re­fined carbs and fats in ways that trig­ger pow­er­ful re­ward re­spons­es in the brain, lead­ing to ad­dic­tive-like con­sump­tion and a high­er risk of de­men­tia and cog­ni­tive de­cline among old­er adults.

It’s the same play­book that Big To­bac­co used. Draw­ing from his­tor­i­cal in­dus­try doc­u­ments, re­searchers found that once to­bac­co com­pa­nies like Philip Mor­ris and RJ Reynolds piv­ot­ed and ac­quired food com­pa­nies like Kraft and Nabis­co, they used cig­a­rette sale tac­tics, in­clud­ing flavour en­gi­neer­ing, ag­gres­sive mar­ket­ing and con­sumer psy­chol­o­gy, to scale up food brands, in­clud­ing food mar­ket­ed to chil­dren.

Twen­ty-five years lat­er, we have enough ev­i­dence now that ed­u­cat­ing peo­ple about health­i­er food habits sim­ply does not work. The news that over half a mil­lion Trin­bag­o­ni­ans can­not af­ford to eat healthy means Gov­ern­ment needs to move.

In­stead of min­is­ters gallery­ing on Amer­i­can war­ships with Tri­nis who want to eat dou­bles, per­haps they should pay at­ten­tion to our food im­port bill, cost of treat­ing obe­si­ty, ban junk food ad­ver­tis­ing and as­sist lo­cal farm­ers to pro­duce more of Tantie’s food.