Deliciously deadly: why unhealthy food is so good

HANDS UP if your answer to the question "What's your favourite food?" is, "I love a good beet salad."

That's what I thought.

It's unfair that the foods many of us dearly love contribute to ill-health if indulged often, but this is usually by design.

Staggering rates of non-communicable diseases in TT make our population particularly susceptible to covid19. Diabetes and hypertension are just two among the buffet of prevalent chronic diseases. These illnesses are typically linked to unhealthy diets and lifestyle choices.

The afflicted are often chided as weak or wanton in their indulgences, but that's an oversimplification. Corporations spend billions in scientific enterprise and advertising to ensure you continue the consumption upon which their ever-ballooning profits are built.

Almost everyone knows that regularly eating fast food and grazing on junk can be harmful. Still, many of us keep at it because we are pinned on one side by companies force-feeding us like foie gras geese. On the other side, the vicissitudes of life herd us towards the convenience and fleeting gratification of the almighty three-piece.

Think of the advertising slogan for Pringles, "Once you pop, you can't stop." They aren't even trying to mask their true intentions. I remember my first time encountering this crack in tube form as a child. I ate that stuff until my lips blistered from the salt.

Like other processed and fast foods, Pringles are engineered with the unholy triumvirate – salt, sugar and fat. These elemental forces hack the pleasure centres of the brain, making you feel good and encoding your brain with an irresistible craving. Humans are extraordinary creatures, but not everyone has the iron will to resist comestibles designed to hijack our biology.

Some time ago the Minister of Health bemoaned the number of people undergoing amputations in public healthcare because of unchecked diabetes. A grim picture indeed.

However, consumers in the thrall of junk food don't imagine themselves languishing unattended in any one of our hospitals as a result of, say, a thrice-weekly fast-food habit. That dystopian future belongs to someone else.

All they see is the momentary bliss of that deep-fried, cheesy, sweet-and-sour, happy-for-the-hour mind control.

I know, because I was there for several years myself. Prolonged inattention to how I ate led me to attain an unimaginable mass. I doubled in size, and not in a good way, like how a salary might (should) double in size. Life is hard and junk is easy and, let's face it, delicious. I felt unique in my "failure" even though I knew others struggled similarly.

At Trincity on mornings, there's an endless procession of young men buying currants rolls or pies and a soft drink to eat quickly before they pick up their shifts at a nearby factory. It's what their wages and time afford them. The young think of themselves as invulnerable. Consequently, the eating patterns established in the resilience of youth stay with them when their older selves are less able to cope.

It's tough to give up unhealthy foods and consumption patterns. It's infinitely tougher to stay off them. Cooking at home now feels like working in a steel foundry because we've become accustomed to buying food. Consequently, we do it less. Even when we cook at home, the foods we prepare aren't much better, as they lean heavily on cheese, oil and sugar.

Helping our citizens adopt healthier lifestyles means putting up a fight equal to the forces marshalled by the insidious food industry.

Terrorising or shaming people into eating healthier doesn't work. The Ministry of Health, in collaboration with the wider society, needs to mount a campaign to help consumers see the concrete ways they can change their eating habits and, more importantly, stick with those changes. It's not just about what people should eat or avoid, it's how they can manage these shifts over the long term.

On an individual level, there are countless support groups online where like-minded people trying to improve their health through diet connect and compare notes. If you're struggling with consistency, you can even form your own group, comprising accountability partners – friends or relatives on the same path who will keep prodding you forward.

We all know eating poorly pays deadly dividends in the long run. Less understood is how an entire industry and the challenges of life are stacked against us. Simply telling people to make better choices doesn't work.