M Alamgir Hossain :
Soft drinks, sports drinks, fruit juices, etc., are popular but they are making us fat. What a different world we live in today. Every year, about 1,000 new beverages like diet soft drinks, ice teas, fruit juices, coolers…come onto the market, targeting our rising income and our innate fondness for anything sweet. There is a noticeable concern among the citizens that with the rise in the mercury, the sale of spurious soft drinks, juices and bottled water has increased in the capital, resulting in spread of various diseases among the citizens. Majority of manufacturers of such drinks purchase used bottles of soft drinks and mineral water, which the consumers throw in garbage. These bottles are collected by garbage collectors to sell to the manufacturers of spurious soft drinks.
These bottles include both disposable plastic bottles as well as glass bottles. Our citizens have no awareness regarding the issue while the government is not taking up the problem seriously. Manufacturers of adulterated and spurious soft drinks, juices and mineral water use untreated tap water, which is not fit for drinking. Administration officials have opined that over 40 percent soft drinks, juices and mineral water bottles being sold in the city are adulterated and spurious. Many vendors have set up stalls along roadsides and sell spurious drinks.
According to specialists, soft drinks contain excessive amount of sugar, fake stains, caffeine, high concentrated acidity and salts which create fatal diseases in human body. Scientific studies have shown how as few as one or two soft drinks a day can increase one’s risk for numerous health problems. Some of these health problems are obesity, diabetes, tooth decay, osteoporosis, nutritional deficiencies, heart disease, and many neurological disorders. Soft drinks mostly consist of filtered water and refined sugars.
Salt, at the levels present in the diets of most people around the world, is probably the single most harmful substance in the food supply. Salt is used liberally in many processed drinks and with some beverages containing far more than a day’s worth of sodium. Other additives, such as monosodium glutamate (known as tasting salt) and sodium benzoate, contribute additional sodium.
Salt serves many purposes in beverages, such as acting as a preservative, adding a salty flavor, masking bitter flavors, and fostering expected texture or other property. Synthetic additive is chemically related to fructose, but is poorly absorbed by the body. That’s why it yields only about one-third as many calories and why large amounts cause diarrhoea, nausea, and flatulence.
In one study, 20 grams (about five teaspoons) caused nausea. Scientific studies have proved that consuming 1 to 1.5 litres of soft drinks a day can increase an individual’s susceptibility to numerous health problems.
Vital organs of human body like liver, heart, kidney, pancrease, stomach, teeth and bones can be easily out of order. Various kinds of additives and flavours that are mixed with the active ingredients harm the mainstream of human body. Moreover, there is severe side effect on human body due to excessive use of tea and coffee.
Though carbonated drinks are very popular, it is necessary that as consumers we be aware of the ill effects of indiscriminate use of such deleterious beverages.We also need to be careful as the caffeine in these drinks are addictive and can hook us for life. Many children and also a number of adults experience a strong craving for a drink but are unaware that they are being addicted to a dangerous habit.
Smoking and alcohol are the most popular addictive and potentially harmful habits but this silent poison called soft drinks catches many of us unaware. Nevertheless, we are not only indifferent towards soft drinks but also behave idiosyncratically.
Capitalising on our intimacy with the drinks, the local and multinational companies are doing their business profitably.
They are expanding their business tremendously because of the consumers’ careless responses to their attractive advertisements. Soft drinks are deemed as precious and as dear to the general people since amazing advertisements are on the air always. Nevertheless, creative persons and artists who are involved in focusing these attractive advertisements know well that these advertisements do not express the truth, rather they induce people to fall a victim to potential health hazards.
Traders’ money has defeated our creative persons and artists. As a result, soft drinks have been indispensable on marriage ceremonies, office-courts, educational institutions, hospitality and social programmes.
It is a bad news for a nation. It is a concern for us that mobile court is not regulating against these spurious and harmful drinks. To swoop down on the illegal cold drink manufacturing units, special teams comprising doctors, food inspectors and police officers should be constituted.
Concerned authorities should make sure that the soft drinks marketed in Bangladesh are harmless and hygienic. If the soft drinks prove hazardous for health, it will be moral responsibility for the government to ban these drinks for the sake of saving public health. We hope the government will take appropriate steps in saving us from the enticing so called soft drinks which are detrimental to human health.
The writer is the Assistant Director, NID election commission secretariat. emil: [email protected].
