Uncle Chips, Lays, KFC, Mcdonalds, Dominos: What’s happened to real food?
Patricia Mukhim
What are our children learning, eating, ingesting? Is all the junk food good for their health? No, it isn’t! So what are we doing about it? Nothing! Packaged food is so easy to appease our children with. And why only children? Even grown-ups go for them when they are inside vehicles and fling the empty packets on the roadside. Children see their parents and elders do that and don’t think it’s any big deal. I sometimes wonder if schools, where children spend roughly about 6 hours of their time daily, meaning 30 hours a week and about 900 hours a month, ever tell them about the health hazards of consuming junk food instead of real food? And now you will ask me what real food is? Most people of my age grew up eating food prepared at home. That’s what I would call real food. We had wholesome food comprising rice, vegetables, some meat or fish pieces, dal, one fried vegetable; sometimes dry fish chutney (tungtap)and salads of tomato with cucumber and lettuce or we simply chewed leaves like jamyrdoh, or the other edible leaves. During the winters we would cook tungrymbai (fermented soya bean) to give our food that special taste. At least that was the simple Khasi cuisine. We couldn’t afford to eat at restaurants and eating joints as we do today. We also didn’t have so many patisseries in every locality with the most mouth-watering, irresistible bakes.
The tragedy is that even those of us who know better are now beginning to pander to our taste-buds with the new range of delectable food, much of which is cooked in hydrogenated oils and also flavoured with monosodium glutamate (ajino-moto), especially Chinese dishes. In an age of information overload, I don’t have to spell out the negative effects of eating instant noodles, pizzas and other packaged food products. Google will tell us all there is to know about how the kind of food we consume today is becoming our enemy instead of an ally.
A study published in, “The Journal of Pediatrics,” 2004 found that fast-food consumption in children was linked with many dangerous precursors for obesity. According to this study, kids who ate fast food were more likely to consume a higher amount of calories, fat, carbohydrates and added sugars in one fast food meal. They were also less likely to consume as much fiber, milk and fruits and vegetables as children who did not eat fast food. Children who consumed more fattening foods while eating fast food were also likely, in general, to eat more unhealthy foods at other meals. Further, a statement released by the journal, “Nature Neuroscience” in 2010, says high-calorie food can be addictive, causing children who occasionally eat fast food to learn problematic patterns of eating. These factors were found to place children who regularly ate fast food at increased risk for obesity.
Nutritionists the world over blame junk food for the rising rates of diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke. Increasing rates of chronic illness affect children who regularly consume junk food. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA, predict that if current trends continue, one in three U.S. adults will have diabetes by the year 2050. Diabetes can result in disability and premature death. The Center for Food Safety noted in 2012 that obese children are also more likely to develop high cholesterol and heart disease later in life. Studies have shown that changes can happen in children’s bodies even when they’re young that are associated with disease at a more advanced age. All this information is available at our fingertips today, yet we refuse to act and change our eating habits. It’s like sleepwalking to disaster. So addicted are we to junk food that even in distant locales of Meghalaya and every tourist destination you can see people hanging dozens of packets of Uncle Chips, Lays, Kurkure and what have you instead of taking time off to serve a good, hot meal cooked in a hygienic way in the village kitchens. Of course it is easier to sell packaged food, bottled drinks and bottled water but where do the packets and the bottles actually land up? No one cares. Not the seller, not the buyer and least of all the manufacturer. We can see for ourselves that junk food packed in multi-layered plastics is not just bad for human health, but, many animals have died consuming these plastics. We not only harm human health but also harm other creatures and above all the environment. These plastics are today ubiquitous and manufacturers laugh their way to the bank. And yet under the Plastic Waste Management Rules (PWMR) the producers, importers and brand owners are supposed to establish a system for collecting back the plastic waste generated due to their products. An amendment to the PWMR in 2018, by which a six-month deadline was fixed for producers to arrange for recovery of waste in partnership with State Urban Development departments, has made little progress. Can Meghalaya lead the way in holding the manufacturers of Uncle Chips, Lays, et al accountable?
The addiction to junk food is such that kids bring these packaged foods to school and eat them during their breaks. On the way home too they buy packaged foods instead of waiting to get home and having a healthy snack with tea. In this case one can say that parents have themselves become the enemies of their children. Otherwise why would parents feed poison to their kids? And what is junk food but a slow poisoning of the human system from a very tender age!
Look at any drain in the city today. What are you likely to find? There is single use plastic, little plastic bowls and spoons and plastic cups in which the alu-muri seller peddles his wares. These clog the drains and create an unhealthy scenario where flies and rodents breed.
Another worry about Shillong city is that all this plastic junk finds its way into the two major rivers – the Umkhrah and the Umshyrpi. When the plastic tsunami hit the Umiam Lake recently, the Meghalaya High Court took suo-moto notice of the catastrophe. That happened because a long wall of our only dump site – Marten had collapsed due to heavy rains. All the waste went down into the Umiam Lake. Till date that wall has not been repaired, hence the High Court should take cognizance of this. This is a vicious cycle. While there are a few people employed as plastic waste segregators at Marten and its whereabouts, they are too few to process the mountain of plastics that are dumped into this overused landfill every single day. Meghalaya has no plastic recycling unit. Whatever is collected here goes to Guwahati and elsewhere.
The point that merits the immediate attention of the Government of Meghalaya is that the state can no longer sustain the unwieldy generation of plastic waste. All the talk about cement companies buying plastic waste for power generation has not culminated into anything tangible. There is no alternative for Meghalaya’s long term environmental safety but to ban single use plastics and to hold the manufacturer of plastic packaged goods accountable under the PWMR, 2018.
I started this article with junk food but am ending it with the unsafe disposal habits that had led to environmental catastrophes across the globe. If our children could be fed healthier food at home and also be educated both at home and in school about the vicious cycle that junk food creates in their bodies; the cravings it induces and the harm that the packages do to their environment, I believe children will be the biggest campaigners against packaged junk food and fast food.
Why is our education system not addressing this crucial point in Health Education?