Adodo-Anselm 
We Africans have a wrong conception of development. We have been brainwashed to think of development only in terms of ‘catching up with the West.’ The problem is not in catching up, but in the fact that we seem to be catching up only with the wrong things: consuming western goods, western products, western culture, western food, western cloths, western theories, while throwing away ours.
Take the case of fast-food joints and the fast rate at which they are springing up everywhere. These food joints sell processed foods loaded with artificial spices and sweeteners. Even in the semi-rural areas, trees are being cut down to make space for the building of fast-food joints. Houses that were once inhabited by human beings are being turned to shops for selling soft drinks, biscuits, snacks, bread, juices, etc. These products have one thing in common: they are products made from wheat flour and sugar. The variety of juice drinks are enormous.
They come in various bottle shapes and sizes, colour and flavour, all made of water, sugar, colouring and flavours. Parents prepare their children for school by loading their school bags with these snacks: canned or bottled drinks, chin-chin, biscuits, bread, etc.
It is strange that no one in the government circle is talking about the health risks of these new trends, which people associate with ‘development.’ The Nigerian government does not even have an agency (or is there any in existence?) that certifies the hygiene, safety and quality of these foods, neither are there agencies that inspect the environment and kitchen conditions of the countless restaurants and fastfood joints springing up every day, which is the practice in the so-called developed countries that we are trying to imitate.
I was discussing this with a medical officer recently and he argued that people are free to eat anything they like; that it is part of human freedom, and that what matters is to have a good healthcare system in place to cure people when they fall sick.
It is Okay for an individual to hold such a personal opinion. The danger is that if such a person gets to be appointed to a position of authority or become a policy maker, which my medical officer friend may well become someday, then the danger is enormous.
Some people may argue that there is nothing wrong with eating bread, after all, the popular Lagos Agege bread has been a regular delicacy in Lagos State for man years, and many who ate it every day are not sick. A very important point to raise and an opportunity to make a very important clarification, however, is that the Agege bread of 20 years ago is not made from the same flour as we have today. In the past twenty years, modern science has altered the genetic structure of wheat, in the bid to make then grow easily and more commercially viable.
This species of wheat has now been introduced into all processed foods. The Agege bread of the 1960s and 1970s till the 1980s was made from a healthier species of wheat, while the current strains are products of genetic alteration. They have a very adverse effect on your health: It is no wonder that cases of diabetes, cancer and hypertension abound today in our society, both in the cities and in the villages. Well, that is the price we pay for ‘development.’ Let me warn you, if you are diabetic, wheat and wheat products are the most dangerous food you can ever eat. Stay away from them.
