Editor, RE: "Explain the dangers of fast foods” (The New Times, August 21).

I usually don’t agree with Davy, especially as regards neocolonialists’ continuing hold on too many of our peoples’ minds, but on this issue I am fully in agreement with him.

Changes in our traditional diets and the associated lifestyles that either lead to or derive from them will also bring with them an explosion of deadly consequences, such as cancers, diabetes, heart diseases, and other killer maladies that were up to now rare in our society.

In a way, these lifestyle changes can also be laid at the feet of our continued mental enslavement; the perpetuation of a complex which holds that products (food and others) consumed in the West are best. Thus, Western-style consumption—including or rather especially of nutrient-poor junk ‘food’—is seen as an indication that we ‘have arrived’!

Our medical fraternity and our media need to work closely together to warn our people of the dangers of adopting Western-style diets. This is an urgent public health issue.

Mwene Kalinda