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RASC wrote:I heard San Fernando general has some of the highest rates of men with ED and Impotency.
j.o.e wrote:Ministers could talk too much crap. It's all our fault, that the hospitals full. Proper management and facilities have no bearing. Only in Trinidad you can talk such faeces without a shred of evaluation of the issue.
All public institutions are failures police service, licensing, most utilities, roads, drainage, education but this idiot who's responsible for improving healthcare shifts the blame away from himself and the public servants below him. Wtf does really go on in this place?!!
uncle sam wrote:3 doubles is my entire calorie intake for the day.. lol
j.o.e wrote:^^^^^^ such a scientific analysis. Lifestyle diseases didn't rampage the country overnight. We have been plagued with inadequate facilities for years. But at least now we know that we'll have to wait for ppl to start living healthy for things to improve.
sharkman121 wrote:uncle sam wrote:3 doubles is my entire calorie intake for the day.. lol
something is dreadfully wrong with your math if 1035 is yr daily calorific intake
uncle sam wrote:sharkman121 wrote:uncle sam wrote:3 doubles is my entire calorie intake for the day.. lol
something is dreadfully wrong with your math if 1035 is yr daily calorific intake
Idiot it was an exaggeration
sharkman121 wrote:uncle sam wrote:sharkman121 wrote:uncle sam wrote:3 doubles is my entire calorie intake for the day.. lol
something is dreadfully wrong with your math if 1035 is yr daily calorific intake
Idiot it was an exaggeration
no it was stupidity, backpedal ftl
sharkman121 wrote:doh froth up arredy bredz.... alyuh too easy yes
pugboy wrote:the two best places to see obese people are pricesmart and the vendor strip in the savannah
the hospitals need to start asking people if they are bonafide citizens and show a copy of their last tax return, that will cut out a lot of illegal patients
pugboy wrote:the two best places to see obese people are pricesmart and the vendor strip in the savannah
the hospitals need to start asking people if they are bonafide citizens and show a copy of their last tax return, that will cut out a lot of illegal patients
teems1 wrote:j.o.e wrote:Ministers could talk too much crap. It's all our fault, that the hospitals full. Proper management and facilities have no bearing. Only in Trinidad you can talk such faeces without a shred of evaluation of the issue.
All public institutions are failures police service, licensing, most utilities, roads, drainage, education but this idiot who's responsible for improving healthcare shifts the blame away from himself and the public servants below him. Wtf does really go on in this place?!!
Even though his statement may irk some people, there is some truth to it.
Go look at any KFC, Royal Castle, Japs, Trini Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Pizza Boys, Dominos, Papa Johns, Wendy's, Subway, Burger King, McDonalds, Pollo Tropical, doubles, souse, punch, pie, burger, bbq vendors, Indian delicacies vendors, Chinese restaurants, food court etc etc etc.
You will see a long line with customers. Also it is often repeat customers, and not those who want a treat for themselves once every 1-2 weeks.
Also every month it appears some new unhealthy American chain is opening up a branch in Trinidad. Cinnabon, Auntie Anne's Pretzels, Haagen Dazs etc.
Now go look at any major supermarket checkout, and see what people are buying. Often processed/sugary/salty/fat laden imported junk.
Now go look at any major field, like the Savannah, Aranguez, Eddy Hart, Pierre Road, UWI, Edinburgh etc. There are often some people playing football while some walking/jogging, but still not enough when compared to the number of people who live around it.
Face the facts. Trinidad and Tobago has a very high rate of lifestyle diseases. Heart disease and diabetes are rampant to the point where everyone can think of someone in their family who suffers from it. People work hard and save their entire life to just give it all away to private doctors in the end.
He may have said some harsh truths, but it's what the population needs to hear before things get even more out of control.
RASC wrote:Flour and Oil
And Kamala and she crew wanna give this as a present.
The sheep were quite happy.
Not a peep on this forum in protest.
desifemlove wrote:Still think fast food should be banned. we ent need it and it killing we!!
desifemlove wrote: Yeah, we still eat provisions and callalloo and stuff,
shogun wrote:desifemlove wrote:Still think fast food should be banned. we ent need it and it killing we!!
^I disagree. I'm always for freedom of choice. Besides, it helps with population control.
There is enough blame to go around on both sides. Past and present administrations for not making the health care sector a priority. And a public that likes their food like everything else... Cheap and Now.
Them multinationals realize that food domination is the next frontier, so things are going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. Funny though that most of the people that own those fast food establishments, don't eat their own sh!t.
New_SPECIES wrote:desifemlove wrote:Look at we diet though:
- Roti
- Doubles
- Saheena
- Pies
- KFC
- Global fast food (I does see Wendy's here now)
Yeah, we still eat provisions and callalloo and stuff, but then given how we eat, Dr. Khan has a point
And rum, Carib, White Oak, Puncheon, etc. well yuh de idea.
I think we need to have large scale yam, dasheen, plantain, etc. fields. And perhaps put a tax on fried food products.
People will flame me, but it's my honest belief that in the next few decades countries globally will ban fried foods.
That will never happen!
How then will those mega drug and medicine providers will make money?
Drugs to "reduce the symptoms" rather than cure!
Allyuh need to see the bigger picture here... is not just a Trinidad ting.
Bad Diet causes:
Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure, High Cholesterol, Diabetes, Cancer, Blindness etc etc...
All of which are supported by Billion Dollar medicine industries!
Why would they want to "drop" the price of un-healthy foods?
Especially since most of the times it is only the poorer more uneducated part of the population that are allowing themselves to get over-weight.
They encourage these people to choose a un-healthy lifestyle to pump regulatory drugs in them and keep the business making millions!
T&T’s burgeoning obesity epidemic is costing taxpayers $5 billion a year in medical costs and that figure is set to rise unless people make serious lifestyle changes. So said Health Minister Dr Fuad Khan yesterday as he expressed displeasure over the increasing number of patients suffering from the complications of non-communicable diseases. That, he said, was contributing to overcrowding at public health institutions.
He added: “When people are unhealthy they end up increasing the hospital space and bed use. So right now the cost to the country is more than $5 billion a year because the private sector...we do not even count that. “The health sector is geared towards treating these people who are basically unhealthy as a result of their diet habits and as a result of their lifestyle and if I try and equate what happens to the private sector, the overall thing might be over $5 billion and more,” Khan said.
Khan, in an interview with the T&T Guardian yesterday, made no apologies for calling citizens “lazy” and saying that they were creating the crisis in which the hospitals are packed to capacity. He made the statements in a Trinidad Express article yesterday in which he said people were making themselves sick. The Health Minister told the T&T Guardian the situation was “bad.” “That is why I decided to make that utterance. Who do not like it, well, too bad, that is their business. Who find I too blunt, well, that is their business.
“We have to take the bull by the horns and deal with it. There is all these admissions. They want more beds, they want more beds to lie down on it because you not eating healthy, you are creating this problem. “Stop creating this problem,” Khan said. The minister said a number of the cases in hospitals that take up the medical beds and the medical wards “can all be prevented or decreased to 90 per cent if people take care of themselves, take care of a healthy lifestyle.”
He said the obesity epidemic was creating a strain on the national budget every year and had an impact, not only on the health sector but social services as well. He added: “Not only are you treating them, they cannot work, so they are not contributing to the economy. They are sending their families into poverty so the State has to mind the poor families because the breadwinner is suffering from a non-communicable disease and cannot work. So it puts a strain on the social services.”
As a nation, Khan said, T&T had to face the obesity epidemic, which was not only affecting adults but children as well. Khan said T&T registered a 65 per cent overall increase in obesity in the last 15 years while children registered a 55 per cent increase. “That is the biggest epidemic that is facing us but people are tolerating it because they figure that this is what happens as a result of onward living but that is not so,” he said.
Khan declined to label the ministry’s “Fight the Fat” campaign as unsuccessful and said this year the campaign would be aggressively pursued under the theme “Love Yourself”. The aim, he said, was to get citizens to eat healthily, exercise regularly, eat more vegetables and know their numbers—blood pressure and sugar figures. Through that, he said, citizens could prevent any complications taking place.
“If people do this as a lifestyle change,rather than expecting the hospitals to fix them when they have their indulgences (like) eating processed foods, sugars, oils, carbohydrates in abundance, then you will end up with a group of individuals who do not end up in hospitals every two days,” he said. Khan added: “I am supposed to be the minister of health not the minister of sickness.”
Co-ordinated effort needed
Paediatrician and T&T Guardian columnist Dr David Bratt says it was unfair of Khan to blame the public for the health crisis. He said a government has a responsibility to educate its population on critical health issues and take an active role in ensuring public health. Bratt, speaking with the T&T Guardian in a telephone interview yesterday, said:
“Dr Khan has been talking about education for a number of years now but I am yet to see a sustained public health educational campaign in T&T telling people about how to make the changes to their lifestyle.” While Bratt agreed to some extent that people had to take some blame for their health, he said the Government had to take a strategic approach to deal with obesity and non-communicable diseases.
Bratt said a co-ordinated approach was needed to help people make key lifestyle changes and there must be partnerships with professional organisations, such as nutritionists, dietitians, medical professionals, to develop a plan to attack the problem.
“There are things the Government can do that I do not think they are doing. I think it is easy to talk and blame people and they will like to blame people for everything but they have to take some action. It is a national problem and it needs the Government to address it,” he said. Bratt suggested tax incentives for companies that bought gym equipment or promoted exercise in the workplace, increased support for farmers and promoting breast-feeding by increasing the cost of infant formula.
“We know that breast milk is linked with less obesity. If you breastfeed your child for the first year of life the child has much less chance of becoming obese and therefore developing heart disease and all those long-term things, like stroke and blood pressure,” he added.
One big issue with so-called fat taxes is that they may infringe on personal freedoms. The other big issue is that such levies could prove effective.
Mexico last month approved a tax of one peso, or about eight cents, on every liter of sugary drinks sold as it tries to battle the country's rapidly expanding waistlines. Mexico is just the latest government entity to move – or contemplate moving – against the food industry to combat an obesity epidemic sweeping the globe.
In a sideshow to Mexico's move that is probably illustrative of America's love of soda drinks, concern immediately mounted that Coca-Cola would be forced to switch to much cheaper high-fructose corn syrup from the cane sugar it uses to make "Mexicoke," which has gained a cult following in the United States, the world's biggest consumer of sugary drinks.
But Mexico is more concerned about what's happening in its own borders.
"Mexico is a high consumer of sugary beverages and has a very high prevalence of diabetes," says Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, a professor of medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California at San Francisco. "They are just one of many cities, states and countries considering such measures to curb the rising tide of diabetes globally."
Do sugar taxes really work?
Bibbins-Domingo is one of the authors of an influential study – released last year – concluding that a 10% reduction in US sugar consumption would avert 240,000 diabetes cases annually, as well as preventing heart attacks and other health-related deaths.
Imposing sugar taxes, however, has proven difficult in some places. Denmark, for example, last year backed off on its sugar tax, saying its citizens – actually far more svelte, on average, than those in the United States and Britain – were skipping, if not lumbering, across the border to get what they needed.
In New York, the courts struck down the plan by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to ban super-sized sugary drinks. The newly elected city chief, Bill de Blasio, said he plans to continue to press the issue, but he will be up against the deep pockets and creative campaigns of the food industry.
At one point in the battle against Bloomberg, an industry group doctored a photo, dressing the mayor in a decidedly frumpish frock, while chiding him for running a "nanny state."
Evidence in favor of taxes builds
Still, a growing body of studies suggests that fat taxes might work, despite the loud protests to the contrary. Slapping a 20% tax on sugary drinks would pare Britain's growing obesity rate by 1.3%, helping some 180,000 people to tread much lighter on their scales, according to recent research from Oxford and Reading universities.
"The greatest effects may occur in young people, with no significant differences between income groups," according to the study published in the journal BJM. "Both effects warrant further exploration. Taxation of sugar sweetened drinks is a promising population measure to target population obesity, particularly among younger adults."
Two-thirds of US adults and one-third of children are overweight or obese, according to the Harvard School of public health, and the country spends $190bn per year treating obesity. On average, Americans each buy a whopping 170 liters of soda every year, more than their counterparts in every other country and 16% more than then next biggest soda consumer, Mexico.
"Sugary beverages are the single most important source of sugar in the US diet, accounting for 10% of sugar in the diet," according to Bibbins-Domingo. "Liquid calories are particularly problematic from an obesity perspective because when they are consumed, they don't turn off the body's satiety censors, so their consumption is linked to higher caloric intake generally.
Is there a better way?
Jason Block, an assistant professor at the Harvard Medical School's obesity prevention program in Boston, agrees that big taxes are needed but – like many other experts – agrees it isn't the only way to tackle the problem. (Soda companies also often make this point in complaints that they are being unfairly singled out.)
Taxes should be seen as "a small part of a comprehensive strategy to address obesity, which includes school-based interventions, community redesign initiatives, promoting the medical treatment of obesity, decreasing marketing of unhealthy foods to children and working with the food industry to lower calorie content of foods," Block says.
Food companies chafe at the idea that government regulation is needed, instead claiming the industry can be self-regulating. "There's ample evidence to suggest that taxing soft drinks won't curb obesity, not least because its causes are far more complex than this simplistic approach implies," according to a British Soft Drinks Association statement.
But others argue that regulation is the only way to constrain global food giants, which benefit greatly from the subsidized American agricultural sector and its massive harvest of corn, now widely used to make relatively cheap high fructose corn syrup.
High-profile food writer and blogger Marion Nestle, for instance, says that it's paramount for governments to crack down on an industry that, perhaps like the general populace, isn't great at self-control. "Well I happen to be believer in regulation," she said in a recent speech. "I think that food companies, even if they want to, cannot voluntarily stop marketing to children, stop selling junk food or stop selling anything."
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