03/24/2018
World champion in obesity”!
Lincoln Edwards, DDS, PhD
President, NCU
World champion in obesity”! Who would want to be holders of that title? I can almost be sure that most people would not! Yet, according to the Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Caribbean is world champion in obesity. With all these hills and mountains to climb every day, almost everywhere in the Caribbean, how have we managed to acquire so ignominious a title? This is what happens when we adapt terrible eating habits, instead of sticking with our tried and proven natural, organic, and healthily prepared plant-based diet that so adequately nourished our great-grandparents. In addition to diet, they walked many miles a day before the advent of numerous modes of transportation.
Before the plethora of outlets, Jamaica’s fast food was the tried and proven patty, with filling made from the locally produced grass-fed cow. How have we managed to become the fattest people on earth? We have forsaken the eating of simple foods and a healthy way of life, and we have embraced, too well, the junk food served up so enticingly all around us; and correspondingly, we hardly walk anymore!
Let us remember that obesity is associated with numerous lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. Young people are becoming more and more susceptible to these diseases as we become negligent in healthful living. With half of our population under the age of
30 years, the restoration of the health of the people of this region is dependent on the leadership of the young who are more educated, more aware and hence, more informed than their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents ever were.
Thus, it is over to you, young people. I am counting on you to do a better job with your health, and as such, the health of the nation. I am confident that you will!“
