Junk food and the rise of acute coronary syndrome in Africa

摘要

I know as well as the next person that junk food is aptly namedfor the low quality nutrition it provides and also that consuming it will almost certainly turn your internal organs into, well,junk. Personally, I tend to eat all sorts of rubbish when I study,especially when I am home alone. Being nearly forty, male andemployed in a high stress occupation I understand that I havean above average risk of developing acute coronary syndrome(ACS) in my lifetime. Should I choose to keep up my nastystudy-snack habit I am extremely likely to aid a cardiologistsomewhere in the near future to pay off their luxury yacht,car or house. Employed in a profession looked up to by societyfor being a squeaky clean representative for everything healthyand wholesome, it beggars even my own belief that I wouldpersist in this bad eating habit. Funnily enough this is not justmy vice. In a society where you can make a purchase of almostanything that catches your fancy at pretty much any time ofthe day, or can send a message to another person in the blinkof an eye, an instant-gratification-culture has become the newnorm. Why should I grow my own vegetables if I can buy themfresh from the shop? Or better yet, why buy fresh vegetables ifI can get them already cooked (and greased) from the localtake-away down the road? With more people than ever livingin cities, longer and longer working hours becoming the normand the rock-bottom prices of junk food, it is little wonder thatin Africa non-communicable diseases (which include ACS) aretouted to be a bigger killer than HIV and TB combined withinthe next few decades.