Rishi Sunak has been banging his drum about banning smoking, but it all feels too much like Big Brother. Where will it end? Forced broccoli eating, compulsory sit-ups and mandatory hugging?
Achieving health is multidimensional and the damage smoking does has been hammered home over the past 50 years.
It seems out of balance to over-focus on smoking now while we are spending our days bombarded by noxious food advertising messages and surrounded by sugar dens that are hiding in plain sight up and down our high streets.
Our cafes, supermarkets and restaurants have morphed into shrines to the sweet and highly refined. We have been suckered into binging on unnatural sustenance so much that it’s now the norm and we have slowly forgotten what normal food is meant to look and taste like.
Our inherent physiological and psychological weaknesses have been exploited to the max as healthy food has been deemed a harder sell.
Our bodies are designed to work in balance, like a see-saw that keeps righting itself to the horizon. The drip, drip, drip of sugar and highly refined foods slowly leave their mark on every cell in the body from our brain to our tootsies.
Our cafes, supermarkets and restaurants have morphed into shrines to the sweet and highly refined. We have been suckered into binging on unnatural sustenance so much that it’s now the norm and we have slowly forgotten what normal food is meant to look and taste like
A poor diet alters the millions of finely tuned body processes to such an extent that the body is unable to find its equilibrium and the scales are compelled towards an unhealthy state where disease starts to develop.
The changes to our health due to a sugar-laden refined diet are almost imperceptibly slow, often taking years before we feel, see, hear, smell or taste that something has gone badly wrong with a body part.
Sometimes disease takes decades before it’s noticeable, so we generally fail to connect that what we are absentmindedly eating has anything to do with the aches and pains.
Overall, it’s hard to believe that something that tastes so mouth-watering and yummy can end up causing us pain and suffering. The adverts certainly avoid connecting the dots, and many times it’s easy to incorrectly presume that most other people appear to be eating just as much sugar without experiencing undesirable effects.
Changing habits is always more effective when the individual drives it. We can tip the scales of our health for the better by adopting a healthier diet.
The question remains, should governments legislate to force the issue?
