So, what’s the point in living?

Once upon a time in Hollywood, smoking was considered the height of sophistication. Glamorous girls puffed daintily on Virginia Slims, while tough dudes smoked Sportsman.

In fact in the ‘80s, the most popular advert both on TV and the Kenya Newsreel in the film theatres was the one of a couple in a red Mustang who sped out to some picturesque countryside and played chess, then as the sun set over the savannah, they smoothly lit their Embassy Kings.

In 2010, it is impossible to find such an advertisement in Kenya.Health warnings

‘Cigarettes are harmful to your health’ campaigns became ‘Smoking kills’, complete with warnings on the packets. And I feel sure we’re moving in the direction of the USA where the warnings on cigarette packets are so many (‘Smoking this pack will distort your Mitochondria and you’ll give birth to a two-headed Mongoloid with five arms’) it is hard to tell what brand it is.

‘Two and-a-half million people die from smoking every year globally’ is the official figure. But did you know smoking is also associated with chronic low back pain among younger adults? I didn’t, until last week, when I read an article by Dr Shiri of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.

Drinking beer — and eating roast goat — causes gout, and liquor finishes your liver and kills you. So does sex, one of the most pleasurable past-times known to man, bird, animal and beast. You cannot even take comfort in gastronomic delights. Chips and chocolates will literally ‘fatten you for the kill’ through obesity and then heart attack. Red meat is also supposedly bad for your health, so you need to eat like an herbivore.

Coffee has caffeine, so it is supposedly just like a liquid cigarette, and tea has something or the other that messes up your dopamine levels. And if you thought you could take refuge in water, drink too much and you get hyper-gly-something, but too little means you’re dehydrated.

Gloom and doom

White bread lowers your immunity levels while eggs over-protein-ise the system and makes you vulnerable to a number of maladies. If you don’t exercise, you will die, but if one over-exercises, one could collapse like a cardiac house of cards.

Even the additives that add ‘spice to life’ are bad for your health. Sugar leads to diabetes, salt makes one prone to strokes, and so on and so forth.

In New York restaurants, the city health authorities are now asking that the number of calories in each sugar packet be printed on them. As for ‘fat-free’ products, this is all the fad, and the fuss has spread all the way to Kenya where everything is ‘herbal’.

Now our own authorities have joined the "Kenyan Kill Joy Boys’ Choir,’ (KKJBC) and decided that too much noise is harmful to our health. Excited young Kenyans now cannot ride in matatus and listen to the ‘boom-twaff’ that is the joy of youth. The matatu touts cannot shout, so how does one know where their vehicles are headed? We can’t read, you know!

Last straw

But what finally broke this camel’s was a recent news item from some US journal which informed us that "every hour spent sitting in front of the TV raises a person’s risk of death from cardiovascular disease by 18 per cent, and the risk of cancer by nine per cent."

The long and short of it? To live long, one cannot drink, smoke, have sex, eat chips, chocolates, nyama choma, drink too much or too little water, let alone tea or coffee, eat white bread or eggs, exercise or not at all, listen to music, watch TV, etc, etc!

What is the point of living?

As a colleague glumly concludes, "Waking up in 2010 could be harmful to your health." And by the very act of being born, don’t babies already sign up to something that says, "Living will be hazardous to your health" and at some point, will certainly end in death?

By Tony Mochama