by Ricky Jimenez
This week’s topic is a quick discourse on what things the younger set hanker for, or feel about in a passionate way, or are conscious of when in the company of the opposite sex.
Junk food, which nutritionists refer to as “empty calory food”, is our main header. It is so called because as the name implies, it is stripped of fiber, vitamins and nutrients. Eating junk food can’t make children healthy, and adults energetic. It can put undesirable fat and bulges in the wrong places.
School authorities have a responsibility to make sure junk food is not made part of the school canteen’s offerings, but they are not doing enough. Youngsters are easily tempted ro pick junk food in front of them. Not knowing any better and influenced by peers or the barkada, they order what friends choose.
On another level, a book writer mocks consumers eating junk food even as he blames the economic systgem in the free world for creating hunger and obesity among people. Robert Albritton wrote the scathing criticism in his book Let Them Eat Junk – How Capitalism Creates Hunger and Obesity. He argues that “capitalism is intrinsically incompatitble with sound farming practice and the production of nutritious food”.
However, a book reviewer of GRAIN Magazine, based in Barcelona, Spain, observes that the Albritton book may be ranting against capitalism because the author premised his arguments in a Marxist framework.
This writer understands that capitalism is diametrically opposed to Marxism since the former considers the means of production such as land, machinery and labor as privately owned and operated for profit. On the other hand, Marxism means that the means of production are publicly owned and managed for the welfare of society as a whole.
In this age and day, the two economic systems don’t meet just like the East and West. Historically, however, capitalism has proved more efficient and more productive than socialism because of the incentive it gives to hard work. (New American Desk Encyclopedia, 1984).
On hunger and obesity, quarterly magazine SEEDLING, says:This year (2009) more than one billion people will go hungry while another half a billion people will become obese. The magazine says three quarters of those without enough to eat will be farmers and farm workers while a handful of agri-business corporations will amass billions of dollars in profit! (Shades of the Albritton Marxist argument!).
On a down-the-ground advisory on junk food, Dr. Ethel R. Nelson, MD, wrote that nearly everyone eats far too much sugar. “However, consumers may point out that they have never even added any sugar to anything they took – coffee and tea included.
In her book “Eight Secrets of Health” (Philippine Publishing House 1994), Dr. Nelson says there is such a thing as “hidden sugar” in cola drinks. Leading brands are said to contain 11 teaspoonsfuls of sugar per 12 ounce bottle. There are 20 calories per teaspoonful of sugar, or a total of 220 calories. Sugar is a refined food whose fiber has been left behind in the cane pulps by the manufacturer. This sweetening agent contains “empty calories”, and therefore is poor food, and fattening.
SEEDLING magazine says climate change will cause severe water and soil conditions, threatening to push millions to go to bed at night on an empty stomach.
What can we do in our local level as consumers, confronted with this grim scenario? The suggestion: Let’s learn to live simply so others will simply live, to borrow from the late Indian leader Nehru. (email me at : rjrjrajimenez@gmail.com).
