SHE KILLED HIM?

SHE KILLED HIM?

I walked in on my neighbors arguing about how long we live, and why people die so young in our generation. There was a gloomy atmosphere because we just lost one of our neighbors. He just got married and hadn’t been with his wife for up to three years, worst still, her belly bump was just appearing and we have been congratulating him.

He had been married for more than two years and as is our custom of making other people’s privacy our business, we had taken interest when after six months there was no sign of pregnancy. His wife was beautiful, gorgeous and had this aura around her that made us all attracted to her… and she was soft spoken with a voice that was always pleasant to the ears and had the innocence of a child. You can see, with all these sterling qualities, we had great interest in seeing babies run around their home. Many of my neighbors would always tell her to hurry up and get them a female child so they can get their sons betrothed to her girls. We had all been expectant.

Oh, I didn’t tell you that she was a great cook as well. We were always captivated by the aroma from her kitchen. She would fry almost everything she cooked and the aroma would fill the air making us all to salivate. Many times, the single neighbors would drop into her apartment at “the nick of time” on Sunday afternoons. It was always easy to guess when the food would be ready so one would be invited to join the table. Almost everyone expected her meals on festive days.

Now, my neighbors were arguing the cause of early death among young adults, and wondered why people no longer live as long as our ancestors. One of them said humans are supposed to be living for close to a millennium like Adam, Methuselah, Noah and the like when I joined the discussion.

“Remember” I told them “that during that era, the Julian calendar was not being used and time is not counted as we count it today,  that means the 500 years you hear may just be seventy years by our calendar. Was it not a few centuries ago that we started using the Julian calendar?” I could see the awe in their eyes so I continued “ You know April 1^st used to be the beginning of the year at a time, and if you compare our calendar with the Chinese and the Arabs, you will see that there are various differences in dates, so don’t just jump into conclusions. However, it is true that they lived longer than us.” I concluded.

Well, one of the reasons why they had longer lifespan was because they were eating mostly natural foods. Their vegetables were planted by them and they had to qualms in getting whatever they needed from their farms. Recall that they were greatly dependent on subsistence farming and there was minimal interference by industrialization.

Now, things have changed and we have evolved new ways of cooking. We like to eat fried foods because it tastes better. However, it is important to note that there was very little or no frying of foods till the 19^th century. Little wonder those guys lived long and had minimal terminal diseases.

Cooking oils used to fry foods is made up of saturated fat and trans fat. They can easily permeate into foods and that is the reason why fried foods take shorter time to cook when they are fried. I wish to reiterate that eating fried foods has an adverse effect on health. Deep fried foods can contain acrylamide which is a carcinogen, and as is the practice, there is a very high tendency to reuse the oil that was used to fry, the reused oil may cause vascular hypertrophy and has the potential to increase blood pressure.

What more can I say, eating fried foods causes high cholesterol level (which is a prerequisite for many heart diseases), obesity, diabetes and heart attack (remember that high cholesterol can lead to many heart diseases which can ultimately culminate in a heart attack). Worst still it increases the risk for various cancers, especially prostate cancer (men, please take note of this). To add salt to injury, frying of foods causes a drastic reduction in the nutritional value of the food. So what really is the advantage of frying food when it has all these negative effects? I mean, what other effect beside the sweet taste?

Now, could it be the tasty and aromatic foods which are mostly fried that killed my neighbor? I wondered, but I can’t tell because I am not about performing an autopsy. Could it be the reason for the sudden death syndrome that is presently happening in Ebonyi State of Nigeria? Where young men “just die” like with the snap of a finger… I can’t say.

However, there is something I know I can say, it is better to eat foods that are not fried. It is better to eat natural foods and keep away from the industrially packaged ones.

Let us strive to live healthier lives, and pay more attention to our health… especially with the way we make our foods so that we would not, in our bid to satisfy our taste buds end up consuming poison.

Thank you.