The cheap cocaine of the masses

DR. A C OBHOLZER WRITES:

The number one addiction worldwide is sugar in food and drinks. This is a legacy of Afro-American slavery with sugar cane in Brazil and the West Indies, in the 19th Century.

With sugar, you need a recharge hit every three hours. This is great for turnover and profits. The average American adult consumes 36kg of sugar per year.

You become an obese micro feeder. Sugar and salt in fake, fast, junk foods make you hungry and thirsty. Sugar is the cheap cocaine of the masses.

With obesity your health grinds to a halt. You become diabetic and hypertensive, and your capillary blood vessel filters, narrow and block. Your health disintegrates. In addition you snore (suffocate), reflux, your joints wear and tear, your fertility is damaged and cancer risk is increased.

Your productivity drops and your medical expenses rise. Sugar is a slow, cumulative, compound, relentless, progressive killer over decades. It bankrupts you and your medical aid.

Tobacco and alcohol (fermented sugar) attract excise duty and VAT Tax, with a warning. This is sin, damage, disincentive tax.

Based on science (physiology/pathology) with 40 years, lifestyle experience, I recommend to the National Assembly legislation chamber:

Smoking, alcohol and sugar abuse is dangerous to your health (warning label).

Indicate teaspoons of sugar on labels.

Tax 10% plus 15% VAT on sugar/drinks.

Smoking, alcohol and sugar abuse often starts in the antenatal clinical period with lifelong memory (the bad and the ugly).

If sugar gives you go – whereto?

Sugar is an appetite stimulant – hunger.

Fat is a dense energy appetite suppressant. Cholesterol is not the problem.

Reward the people by exempting good foods/drinks from 15% VAT.

VAT exempt – Good, healthy, affordable choices:

Milk (we are mammals – Omaere)

Eggs (total food)

Brown bread (already VAT exempt)

Unsifted, vitamin enriched and mineral fortified maize meal (already VAT exempt)

Meatma

Tripe (matangara)

Soup bones

Organ meat

Dripping

Cabbage, carrots, onions for a nutritious stew

Pilchards

Apples (an apple a day keeps the doctor away)

Vaginal menstrual pads – to prevent girls losing school time

By actuarial analysis the sugar tax will cover the exemptions by cross subsidy – no cost to treasury.

Namibia is the land of the brave. Decolonize from “sugar daddy” addiction.

America is the land of herd obesity due to junk foods. The USA has 4% of the world population but 20% of the Covid deaths, due to diabetic obesity.

Aim for an abdominal/umbilical circumference of half your height, and keep body and mind moving for Vision 2030 (peace, prosperity and health).

Become a promotive, preventive lifestyle leader in Africa.

My services were terminated at a political level, as my recommendations were too progressive, I was told “we may lose votes”.

Some politicians think only as far as the next election. As a medical practitioner I think of the next generation, 18 years – informed choice voting age.

As an afterthought, switch from China tobacco in the Zambezi region to sugar cane – employment, ferment sugar to Ethanol as fuel additive (biofuel) and save on forex. See Zimbabwe and Brazil.

K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Sustainable)