Food for thought …

The famed fast food outlet in South Africa has donated children’s desks to a school in dire need of them.

Bad policy priorities across the region have left schools desperate for repairs and upgrades. But is this the way to do it, encouraging children into junk grub?

The campaign group www.heala.org is calling for clearer guidelines on the dangers lurking in soft drinks and meals high in salt, sugar, fats, cholesterol, colourants and preservatives.

Much as tobacco suppliers have been forced to do, it wants the food and beverage industry at large to re-examine their aggressive marketing and show on labels high risk ingredients.

Soft drinks are especially dangerous. An “original taste” Coca-Cola, for instance, contains about 7 teaspoons of sugar, the Coke makers admit. Imagine putting seven spoons of sugar into a steaming mug of coffee or tea. Most soft drinks are overloaded with sugar to appeal especially to children.

Heala says the upshot of all this: obesity, diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, strokes and worse … death from any of the aforementioned.

The message is clear. We are what we eat.

In countries where poverty is rife, fast food takeouts relieve hunger pangs without solving the underlying problem.  Sometimes a free Coke is thrown in.

Outside take-outs in my neighbourhood beggars and the destitute are seen rummaging through waste bins for pizza crusts and other leftover scraps.

Fact File Zimbabwe

The proliferation of junk food, good or bad, is a scar on the landscape, not only from the litter of discarded plastic boxes and wrappers strewn all around.

In the new jargon, it has been “weaponised” too. Free handouts get people to attend political events and rallies. Roll up, roll up for propaganda and a free chicken slice and chips.

This comes at a time of Zimbabwe’s estimated 88 percent unemployment,  90 percent of the economy relying on informal trading and street vending, of about 40 percent of the population facing “food insecurity” and where increasing numbers of formal businesses are closing down after decades in operation.

We have one of the world’s highest rates of luxury Mercedes vehicles per capita of the population, reflecting “gross inequalities” that persist, according to latest studies. Low slung Lamborghinis and suchlike are also to be seen on a few streets not pitted by potholes. (Left: shaking hands without crossing the road. No luxury Lambos here.)

Officially the population stands at about 16 million, but some four million have fled abroad, either as economic fugitives or victims of persecution.

Wherever you are, there’ll be junk food nearby. Take care and  bon appetit … carefully!

Concerns will forever persist over what is loosely known as the military industrial complex of munitions makers and civilian manufacturers including ‘Big Pharma,’ the giant conglomerates that want to sell more of their drugs at the expense of promoting ones that actually cure various illnesses – Anon.

In Harare’s troubled domestic economy, the government has ordered a purge to remove vendors cluttering downtown streets. Police have also announced there will be a clampdown on dangerous private minibuses and illegal small car ‘mishikashika’ taxis. The cops say of 15,000 such vehicles operating in the capital only 3,000 are authorised to do so. Often the zigzagging drivers haven’t taken standard driving tests and, if at all, hold driving licences obtained by bribes. They don’t observe lane discipline or the basic rules of the road – speed limits, no overtaking into oncoming traffic, obeying stop signs and red lights. It would also appear some, under age to drive passenger vehicles, are woozy on weed or who-knows-what.

Traditional 40-seater coach-type buses are few and far between because of poor maintenance that keeps them off the road.

Many of the offending and recklessly driven smaller vehicles are owned by ranking military and police officers and government officials. Even cops must ride in overcrowded mishikashikas to get to work. Don’t expect the traffic chaos to be tamed any time soon.