Everyone likes a cuddly, chubby baby. Parents or to be more specific, mothers would want their children to grow up that way. No wonder that advertising of health drinks and milk products always feature youngsters that are in no obvious need of nutrition. It goes pear shaped when young girls in their teens fall in love with the concept of lean and thin and head in the salad direction.
Driven by sport and fitness interests, the young boys head for the playing field or gyms; those, that is, who can break free of the almost insane tendency of imitating the Facebook logo.
Once life overtakes fancy dreams something gives way. One out of four persons will become obese in the next decade. By itself this is enough to send shudders through establishments of the looming and gloomy economics of treating disease.
Most diseases are the outcome of lifestyles that take out the natural propensity of the body to challenge the environment to exist. The shift from organic to modified through genetically modified food to organic again has left the magnificent structure, the human body, vulnerable.
More food is wasted through a combination of feasting, garnishing and pure overloading of plates. And as apprehensions grow about obesity, equitable distribution and the increasing number of hungry just don't get the importance deserved. Advertising and promotion is all about increasing consumption (thereby healthier bottom lines) but nowhere near the scale of concern that ought to be there about the hungry.
Leftovers and unsold food products with short-shelf lives are almost embarrassing collateral spillage. Collected from the world, these could go a huge way in addressing the nutritional needs of the shrivelled, skeleton-like faces that feature only when the world needs sensationalism or aid agencies need to fund their activities.
The fast food culture and sedentary pursuits are worrying physicians about the generation next. That malnourishment is as big if not bigger threat to the citizens of tomorrow are getting glossed over. In the eighties there were a number of campaigns run about how the natural nutrients are cheap, available and wholesome. And these cover a whole host of ailment concerns ranging from lack of vitamins to eyesight.
Somehow, over-abundance rather than the lack of balanced nutrition is making headlines. As ever, this role seems to have been reserved for non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Guilt used to play a part of such unacceptable existence but living skeletons are sensational only in so far as a bigger tragedy occurs.
Willingness to spend an arm and a leg to make a personal occasion fashionable, encouraged by non-productive consumer credit so readily available, is part of the problem. As long as there is wide-scale want the role of donation will exist in all the form of negativity imaginable. Sustainability in development is as important in poverty alleviation. Donations have come to resemble the feed strewn for chickens and the word 'alleviate' sounds dark.
Zakat and donations won't result in any 'eggs' being laid till someone or some organisation applies funds scientifically and pragmatically. Poverty can't be done away with overnight. It has to be planned, in a way similar to how it was created in the first place.
