This is a true story I never tire of.
It was 1973, and I was hanging out baby diapers. Suddenly, this old woman bounded up the hill. She had a cigarette dangling from her lips. She pulled my laundry off the line and told me that I didn’t know how to wash, and quickly began rewashing the diapers.
I stood there, looking at her. She was quite wrinkled, yet she moved like a teenager.
Aunt Maggie was glaring. I said nothing, for in minutes my diapers were on the line, far cleaner.
Miss Maggie called me. When I came, ( and I’m translating the patwa) she said I was not to talk to this woman “as she was the scandal of the district.”
This scandal, was about fifteen yards away, heard what Miss Maggie had said and responded; (again translating) “Why was she a scandal?”
Cutting to the chase, picking through the argument, the old woman with a cigarette was 99 years old and her boyfriend, (a ‘young boy’ as Aunt Maggie put it) was only 69.
The Scandal replied that she couldn’t find any man her age to ‘service‘ her.
Today, 2017, few people live to be 99 as they did forty five years ago. This is due directly to what people ate then, what they eat today.
In 1973 there was no hypertension, heart disease, diabetes. Jamaicans died because someone killed them.
Average people used to eat what we call ‘food’; that is a lot of ground provisions and very little meat. Further, the meat they ate came from animals they knew personally.
The amount of meat the average person ate in a week would be no more than perhaps two ounces.
In the mid 1980s most people had never eaten a burger or KFC, and if they went to a restaurant, they would have a large plate with yam, banana, dumpling, etc, and a piece of meat the size of two cigarettes in a kind of stew.
A lot of people, had, however, switched to rice from ‘food’ and began eating more meat.
Being 99 usually means a zombie in an old age home. Certainly not able to bound up a steep hill, grab diapers off a line, wash them and get them back up in minutes.
This is due to diet.
In the 1970s, most people smoked. Then came the Smoking is Bad For You campaign. This caused a lot of people to quit. They quit and made up the ‘need’ with face stuffing. Those I knew in 1970 who are still alive have diabetes, hypertension, stroke, and look very old.
This is due to diet.
This is not to say cigarettes aren’t bad for you, they are just less bad than the junk you are eating.
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For medical complications, people are at risk to die related to smoking and obesity. Lifestyle is also the biggest factor. It can be modified to stay fit as a fiddle. The modifiable lifestyle is commonly advised to patients who have serious medical conditions. If they continue such unmodified lifestyle, then suffer the consequences.
People are not focusing on the dangers of bad diet, obesity. If they pushed as hard, half as hard, as they did in 'anti-smoking' it would be a good thing.
I think , when one is industrious , doing a lot of houseworks that can be considered exercise, sheor he will get obese. It is the lack of activities along with eating too much of everything that makes one obese.
Obesity is what really makes one have a lot of sicknesses, like diabetes , hypertension to name a few. Once obese, the person even have rhe difficulty to move anymore because they pant when they do succeeding household works. Thus, they get more obese and sicker.
Thus, everyone is enjoined to eat in moderation and see to it that they exercise or do activities that can jiggle any fat that maybe forming in one's body.
Exercise is very significant, but the bad diet has got to change.
Correction on my comment , for the first sentence it should be " she or he will NOT get obese. Thank you.