Can Bajans have their cake and keep their legs too?

| Your Breakfast Cinnamon Roll Won’t Cost You An Arm But Definitely A Leg |

It’s 7:30 am on a bustling Monday morning. Your colleagues are slowly trickling into the office one by one, each hungrier than the next. What should you do about this all consuming hunger? The time trails on slowly. Your shift is about to begin and your hope is burning through it’s last embers. You are going to have to work the early shift hungry, this is going to be a----

--Honk! The bread van is here and with him, glorious salvation. Salvation comes in many shapes and sizes, but most importantly, in many different flavours. A meat roll is the safe choice, there’s meat and there’s flour. But perhaps today you are craving something more, something that is going to scratch a deeper itch. A ham cutter perhaps? A slice of cake? A rockcake? So many options, so little time. And then there she is, in all of her glistening glory, the cinnamon roll.

And that is your pick. One cinnamon roll, and perhaps a sprite or coke to wash it down with. And you are good for the morning. You are saved. The cinnamon roll? Oh it’s delicious! All of that sugary sweetness stains your lips and your fingers. You lick them clean because you just can’t get enough.

“How could something be so good!”, you wonder aloud.

At the same time, your body works to compute this same cinnamon roll and it is of a very different opinion. Your body is worried about this massive spike in blood sugar levels. Can your pancreas keep up, can it produce enough insulin to manage all of this sugary sweetness? Your pancreas for their part is pissed. It’s only 8:30 and they are working the hardest shift of their life, all on their own. One cinnamon roll and a bottle of coke is a familiar foe but a challenging one nonetheless. Your brain isn’t fairing much better. All the happiness from cinnamon’s sugar rush has your brain drugged up like an alcoholic drowning in his next bottle of Jack. Your brain is high. That’s why your mood is so good. But only for the time being. Because what goes up must come down. And in that downward spiral not only will your mood plummet but so will your energy. Lethargy and sleepiness will consume you soon as you fight to stay conscious at work.

Your brain is baffled.

“How could something be so bad!” it wonders silently.

“Amputation capital of the world” is a horrifying reputation for an island state so small. And yet Barbadians continue to take the steps to embolden this reputation everyday. From bread vans to soft drnks to fast food restaurants, the average Barbadian is making choies that lead down a singular road. Diabetes, hypertension, amputation and an early grave.

That may sound like an exagerration on face. But the statistics never lie. An unbelievable 89% of diabetes related hospital admissions in Barbados involve foot complications. These complicatons are largely thought to be preventable through decent diet and exercise.

How shocked would you be that the majority of the illnesses that we face in the modern age can be solved through diet and motion? Does that logic entice you or does it fill you with dread?

The truth is, is that we all know the food that we eat is killing us. Everyone knows that eating a cinnamon roll or a rock cake or 3 donuts for breakfast is not doing their body any favors. And yet still we opt for these options. The drive-thru line at Chefette is never not full, with droves of cars all lining up to purchase the same roti that is so much smaller than it used to be, or the snackbox that never fails to give you acid reflux the same day (or the next day if you are lucky).

Every desk on the island is littered with the same snacks, a snickers bar, an Oh-Henry and the more recently popular caramel popcorn. There is no Barbadian that beleives an pack of oreos is good for them. And yet we still chose them every single day. We can’t seem to put them down.

Why? Is it destiny?

Marketing seems like the more sensible answer. The reality is, is that these products are designed to make us addicted. Studies on rodents have shown that sugar can be as addictive, if not more addictive than substances like cocaine and heroin. So when you struggle to make the right choices know that you aren’t just fighting your own willpower, you are fighting your very own biology. While also fighting the hundreds of million dollar companies that are using that very same genetic make up to exploit you.

However, as any MBA student would tell you. Marketing at best is an illusion, at worse it is a misdirection, a lie. So let’s lay out the truth.

Sugar is a drug. Barbados is a nation of addicts. Excessive consumption of a diet high in processed foods, high in processed sugar will kill you. Barbadians, everyday, are making the active choice to kill themselves.

With every drop of pricessed sugar they ingest into their blood. A slow but sure march to death is in motion. Or at the very least, early amputation. And note I said early. Because for Barbadians amputation has become less of an anomaly and more of a predictable event. A natural part of the Bajan’s coming of age. You do the common entrance at 10 or 11 years old, You leave school with however many CXC’s at 15 or 16 years old, You have a child in your early to late twenties and you get your foot amputated as you age into your late forties and early 50s.

This is the destiny imposed on the Barbadian.

One that we have seemingly accepted with our eyes closed and our mouths open. From slave state to republic, sugar remains Barbados’s true master, and Barbadians still play the part of the eternal man in chains. The only difference between the “good ole days” and now, is that the Bajan slaves of the past knew full well they were not free. Their eyes washed over oppressive rows of plantation field, past the sugar cane, past the land, to a future where they could chose their own destiny.

We, the modern Bajan, free to chose, free to live, now freely give our money to the substance that is wrapping itself around our hearts like a thick red liquic noose. We smile as it chokes us. We grin as it kills us. First a leg, and then perhaps an eye and finally a heart. We walk into the prison of our own making each day without protest. A willing slave makes the perfect slave.

Barbados has blossomed into a nation enslaved still, with cinnamon rolls wrapped around our fingers and sugary sweet blood shackling our health.

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