David E Bratt MD

Naipaul is cor­rect. Noth­ing is re­al in T&T un­til Lon­don says so. Min­shall on­ly be­came Min­shal­lian af­ter Barcelona.No one no­ticed we were get­ting fat? No one was watch­ing the Car­ni­val bands? No one read the re­search pub­lished in the lo­cal me­dia on obe­si­ty? We had to wait un­til the Dai­ly Mail put us in our place? The Dai­ly Mail? Of all the sec­ond-rate news­pa­pers in the world, we have to ac­cept what the Dai­ly Mail says? Yes.

That is what the peo­ple an' dem does read. Face it fel­lows, you all could write every Tues­day, Wednes­day and Fri­day for years that Tri­nis get­ting fat and not a soul will take you on but as soon as "faren" talk about "fat Tri­nis," all man-jack and their nen­nen rush to re­peat what­ev­er the "faren" news­pa­per say.

Well if is so, is so! We go take it an' run.Our fat­ness is a con­se­quence of our change in lifestyle. Lifestyle here refers to di­et and ex­er­cise. De­spite what peo­ple want to be­lieve, di­et is the more im­por­tant. Eat a ba­nana split in five min­utes and you con­sume 500 calo­ries.

Run a Sa­van­nah in 20 min­utes and you use up 250 calo­ries. Walk it in 30 min­utes and you lucky if you ex­pend 200 calo­ries. Yes, you can in­flu­ence your weight by ex­er­cise but to do so you have to spend about two hours a day, sev­en days a week, ex­er­cis­ing hard. None of this walk­ing-talk­ing, hand-swing­ing, bare­ly-raise-a-sweat thing. That's good for your mus­cle tone and your ego but for lit­tle else.

Poor di­et refers to fast food, junk food, the food you get at KFC or Mc­Don­alds or any of the oth­er fast food places–full of fats, calo­ries, salt, sug­ar and chem­i­cals. It doesn't need to be cooked. It's cheap. It's very avail­able. Work­ing moth­ers with lim­it­ed time and even more lim­it­ed eco­nom­ic re­sources love it. It tastes good; the kids love it. Busi­ness­men love the prof­its. When chal­lenged, they do a lit­tle spin and claim they are in­ter­est­ed in im­prov­ing their food and of­fer a sal­ad.

But it's bad food. Last month, the US Cen­ter for Sci­ence in the Pub­lic In­ter­est said an ex­am­i­na­tion of 3,498 chil­dren's meal com­bi­na­tions at 34 US restau­rant chains found that 91 per cent of the meals failed to meet vol­un­tary nu­tri­tion stan­dards set by the Na­tion­al Restau­rant As­so­ci­a­tion's own Kids LiveWell menu stan­dards. Their own stan­dards! "Nine of the top chain restau­rants, in­clud­ing Mc­Don­ald's, do not have a sin­gle kids' meal that meets the Kids LiveWell stan­dards."

An­oth­er ex­am­ple that in­dus­try self-reg­u­la­tion does not work.Com­pound­ing the dif­fi­cul­ty of keep­ing your child's weight down by ex­er­cise is the change in chil­dren's play, from out­doors to in­doors. Kids now spend more time sit­ting down watch­ing TV or on a com­put­er play­ing "games."

Their work­ing par­ents are no longer around to watch over them, streets are full of ag­gres­sive dri­vers, there are few­er and few­er parks in res­i­den­tial ar­eas plus, in many ar­eas, it's sim­ply not safe any­more to have your child out­side be­cause of crime.So it's in­ter­est­ing that the Min­is­ter of Health has be­gan to make nois­es about "health­i­er lifestyles," and some ed­i­to­ri­als have at last start­ed to ad­dress the is­sue. So far it's all talk and no ac­tion. In T&T, of course, talk is of­ten con­sid­ered a syn­onym for ac­tion.

One hears the min­is­ter talk about a one-year-old Fight the Fat cam­paign. Has any­one else heard about this? I haven't. One hears the usu­al sound bites that the Min­istry of Health will "soon" be "launch­ing a mul­ti-pro­longed me­dia cam­paign high­light­ing the dan­gers of un­healthy eat­ing high sug­ar in­take and food ad­di­tives."One hears the usu­al talk about per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and about cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty from the ed­i­to­ri­als and let­ters to the ed­i­tor.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, none of these things have ever worked. There is no ev­i­dence that ap­peal­ing to busi­ness­men ever made them change their busi­ness prac­tices. And why should they? To the con­trary. No one is in busi­ness to lose mon­ey.Per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is the kind of thing well-mean­ing peo­ple like to quote. It will on­ly work when peo­ple have: a) the knowl­edge to make in­formed choic­es and, b) the eco­nom­ic means to take those de­ci­sions.

That means Gov­ern­ment has to take up a ma­jor role in as­sist­ing par­ents. They need to get in­volved. In ed­u­ca­tion, in eco­nom­ics but al­so in crime and traf­fic con­trol and in sub­ur­ban de­vel­op­ment.Hear the min­is­ter again: "If peo­ple do not curb their cur­rent lifestyle, in 15 years tax­pay­ers will have to foot a high­er med­ical bill for the in­crease in hos­pi­tal beds need­ed for the in­crease in di­a­bet­ics, am­pu­ta­tions, kid­ney fail­ures, heart at­tacks and high blood pres­sure cas­es that will oc­cur."

So what does your Gov­ern­ment in­tend to do about it? Pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion­al cam­paigns? Sub­sidise lo­cal veg­eta­bles and blue food? Tax fast food? Ban juice and sweet drink in schools like in Mex­i­co? As­sist the Bo­cas Lit Fest so that it does not have to take mon­ey from fast food com­pa­nies? Come back in 15 years and we will tell you.