GOOD FOOD CAN KILL
 

I came across a lady walking along the road today and the only thing that came to my mind was "good food can kill!"

If your friend or family is getting married and you are rich enough, don't get them any of the usual presents. Don't look at their wish-list. Get them a treadmill.

The occurrence of cancer in Nigeria has recently gone up. It's all over the place now. In the church I go to, there is an ever-growing list of people seeking diving healing for all types of cancer.

On the one hand, as someone I know said, we've always had the disease, but since in Nigeria there is a social stigma attached to anyone who is "sick", people keep there ills and pains private and die quietly. But with improvement in medicine, technology and the civilization (or literacy?), more people are able to say what is wrong with them. In places such as America you can get statistics on such diseases e.g., how many people with the disease are Afro-Americans, who has which type, which is more prevalent, which is more aggressive etc. In Nigeria only two things kill us: brief illness and motor accidents. Anyone who wasn't killed by an accident definitely died after a brief illness. In fact someone should take a statistics of death causes in Nigeria.

Going back to "good food can kill". Yeah, the treadmill. Hopefully, after it's been lying around for awhile, they will put it to good use. You could help out by calling every two weeks asking about how they are enjoying the gift and how the one you have in your own house is doing wonders for your health etc. But be careful you may be walking in dangerous grounds. Someone once said that there are 3 things you don't ask an American about: Marriage, weight and age.

It is clear from all the overweight people of all ages wandering around major cities that we are witnessing something akin to the situation in places such as the U.S.
Our diet (which wasn't ok before) has changed for the worse. People at least ate some vegetables and lots of carbohydrates before. Now everyone is eating fries and meals loaded with fat. We will soon be having more heart-attack victims and hypertensive people. Coupled with this is the fact that we get almost no exercise in the fast lane in which we live and work nowadays. Neurological disorders will also soon increase with people working ever-longer hours and the threat of losing jobs hanging over there heads constantly like the sword of Damocles.

Women seems to be a little more resilient than men when it comes to dying from such things as heart-attacks. Though it is probably true that the diseases that afflict both sexes are divided roughly half and half. There is breast, cervix cancers for the women. Prostrate, colon cancer for the men. Osteoporosis for the women. Heart-attack for the men ....

It seems that in the past (not since meals have been Westernized) people in places such as Japan lived to old ripe and agile ages. Some have suggested that this is partly due to their diets. Japanese tends to eat lots of vegetables and uncooked fish while shunning things such as chicken and pork way back then. Though to me uncooked fish is itself suspect - Ok, that's from a taste-bud point of view as I am sure the dieticians will talk of all the anti-oxidants and other beneficial constituents of such a meal. People from my end of the world don't believe in rare or medium-rare; they like all food "well-done" :-)

Nowadays everyone is up for a burger dripping with fillings. No one wants to crack chicken bones anymore when you can sink your teeth into a 2-month old steroid-grown chicken with fat insulation between its skin and flesh.

How many people do you see today taking pap or gaari without sugar?


 

This is totally unrelated to the topic above. Some asked me (or should ask me) what a dream girl should be/look like.

I would go for a kungfu-fighting ass-kicking afro-asian lady with a face like a goddess, a body to die for and character like gold.
 

Stop dreaming pardner. Hey, wishes do come true.
So if you come across someone matching the above description, send me her address or better still bring her to me!

 

19/06/2005