Flour power a grave issue

CARNIVAL IS OVER. The time is now ripe to deal with serious life-threatening and debilitating topics. A healthy nation is a wealthy nation. This adage is transposed or filtered down on an individual basis signifying that health is wealth. I am confident there will be no objectors to the health-is-wealth motif.

This brings a most pertinent query demanding an instant answer. Should the state protect your health or destroy your health? Simple answer. Protect and/or enhance the health of its citizenry and visitors. Even feisty Health Minister Colm Imbert can answer in the affirmative with or without travelling to Cuba to fast forward medics to bolster the health facilities of Trinidad and Tobago. However the role of our government in the health sector poses a frightening paradox. The state is actually practising genocide while at the same time providing a modicum of health care to combat its own destructive policy and undertakings.

Government is directly engaged in manufacturing flour, sugar and liquor. Three prime antagonistic elements in the quest for a healthy life-style. Killers on their own, the trio forms a potent concoction known as black fruit cake consumed by the tons especially at Christmas time. So citizens are being hustled or transported to hospital beds and graves courtesy your caring government. State-run National Flour Mills (NFM) is producing processed wheat flour which contributes to human obesity and concomitant diabetes all progenitors of  heart or cardiac ailment rated as top killers in Triniland and world wide. Diet sheets by nutrutionists warn of the danger of white flour. It has been pointed out by scientists that a diet rich in flour can erode the system for regulating blood sugar levels. It is further stated that “cells become increasingly resistant to insulin. Eventually the system breaks, triggering diabetes and fostering heart disease.”

It was instructive that during the rise in the price of flour and bread Prime Minister Patrick Manning and his Consumer Affairs Minister Camille Robinson-Regis added conflicting salt to the pot. Manning proclaimed that the price rise created a window of opportunity for tighter or better individual budgeting and a little more discipline by consumers. He concluded: “It makes for a better citizen.” The lady Minister advocated a cut on the price increase. Neither were vocal on the health degeneration aspects related to flour.

Not so by Sat Maharaj, Secretary General of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha. He touched on the negative health issues entwined in flour and called on government to educate the nation on diet problems. Maharaj noted that steep price rises may have a benefit in reduced intake of refined and processed flour. I had expected he would have expressed similar concern with the non-healthy aspects associated with refined cane sugar churned out by Caroni (1975) Limited.

Massive retrenchment is earmarked for State-owned Caroni Limited to be restructured with 9,000-plus workers handed VSEP  hopefully for acceptance. Government insists that sugar will not be abandoned just cutback in annual productions.White sugar is not a favourite with nutritionists. Even nationalist calypso Trini to the Bone punned Sweet sweet T&T “All this sugar can’t be good for me.” Neither is refined sugar good for diabetics and healthy blood circulation. Financially-anaemic Caroni Limited is not limited to delivering sugar as a health destroyer. Caroni is also about alcoholic beverage namely rum. Rum-drinking can be termed as a recreational binge, but the intoxicating brew definitely cannot be labelled as a health drink.

One-for-the-road drinking anthem of motorists has been a top contributor to multiple deaths and carnage on the road sparked by drunken drivers and tipsy drifting pedestrians. Alcoholism has sparked family breakups, violent behaviour and self destruction. White rum does not fly the flag singly for Caroni though its puncheon rum is feared as much as it is loved. I am bothered about the State investing and producing goods of mass destruction for the populace while pledging to protect and promote the welfare of the nation. Should we call in the United Nations inspectors of the World Health Organisation  to disarm the Government of Trinidad and Tobago?

I have examined the list of fundamental human rights and freedoms enshrined in the national Constitution. Sadly missing is the right to healthy living. Freedom of the Press is listed which allows me to write this article and petition for health to be specifically incorporated to correct an imbalance. A protocol of protection should reflect a healthy sign post or benchmark for guiding the nation. Paramount should be a clause deeming it unlawful for the State to engage in acts to endanger or erode freedom of citizens from enjoying and enduring reasonably good health.

Nutritionists usually recommend brown bread (whole wheat or grain) for patients-yet cheaper white bread is standard fare at hospitals. We live and die officially via amazing deeds and misdeeds. Brown bread should be extricated from the negative list at medical institution unless the patient is allergic to whole wheat and other whole grain bread. Should sugar and flour packages carry health warnings? How can alcohol be sold at fancy shops at State-operated National Petroleum gas stations? It is an open invitation to drink and drive or go in reverse driving and drinking.  Put up the red flag on white flour and white sugar. Government missed a twin golden opportunity to eliminate promotion of distress to body and soul in mishandling the dispersal and disposal of  money-absorbing Caroni Limited and the retooling of National Flour Mills.

Cutting down on sugar and keeping rum in Caroni will still see the State maintaining its killing field health-wise. Caroni should have been taken out of  sugar-producing canes and a new entity established to bolster production of nutritional food and fruit crops. Money-losing Caroni is viewed as a welfare state enterprise in which citizens and the Treasury are not faring well. Money-spinning NFM is constantly grinding out millions of dollars in profit whether wheat price rises or not. Good health lost out to monetary wealth. in that white flour is still in power.

Government decision-makers has obviously opted for dollars instead of health sense. They took the dead-beat simplistic stance of Flour Mills raking in macho profits to be spent on hospital equipment and medicine for folks weakened by consuming and spending on flour. Government is ensuring that the populace stay loyal Trinis to the calcium-deficientbone and oxygen-starved heart. Get off the unhealthy scene, save lives!