Demonically Hypnotic, Deceptively Tolerant.

CEBU, Philippines - Rarely is self-will associated with healthy lifestyles, more rarely even is self-will associated with how a person purposely feeds himself. Worldly advertising is a devourer of self will. So menacingly powerful is advertising that it can repudiate the will of self to have healthy lifestyles. So demonically hypnotizing can advertising become it promotes acceptable images of women drinking hard liquor or images of fun and promiscuity when having a bottle of brandy. So materialistic and consumerist has advertising become that even advertising a certain brand of noodles evokes sexual images in the way a man sips the pasta.

It is not just advertisements. Of what use is it to warn people that food indulgence kills when there are eat-all-you-can restaurants where ever you go? Even if big hotels and restaurants offer shamefully exorbitant eat-all-you-can meals, people are still willing to patronize these because it evokes elitist image and reputation. Of what use is it for the Department of Health to launch extensive campaigns on "Wastong Pagkain" promoting high fiber, low sugar, low fat and low-salt diet when value meals offered by fastfood giants are fiber-deprived and value meals like fried chicken and potato fries are high in fat and salts and the inclusion of soft drinks is high in sugar? DOH warned that diet high in calories and fats increases risks of atherosclerosis leading to cardiovascular diseases while excessive intake of salt and salty foods result to the accumulation of sodium in the body's tissues causing swelling and increased blood pressure. Meanwhile a diet low in fiber and complex carbohydrates increase the risk for cancers and diabetes.

Ironically, as the Department of Health is good in saying that cardiovascular diseases are the most common causes of deaths worldwide and that heart diseases account for 17.6 percent and vascular system diseases account for 12.8 percent of total deaths. Still the Department of Health is slow to regulate value meal diets in fastfood chains. Worse they don't regulate deceptively tolerant value meal advertisements that prey on children encouraging them to eat value meal food that are low in fiber but high in salt, sugar and fats.

So alarmingly deceived are people to the beguiling ways of indulgence that they are enslaved to their own self-will. Health practitioners have found that the chronic nature of lifestyle diseases leads to high levels of long term disability and weighs an economic burden on families for years. Yet on self-will, people spend so much for eat-all-can meals, liquor, softdrinks or on fat, sugar and salt-laden value meals without thinking about the exorbitant hospital bills or doctors fees and consequent disabilities and death that may entail after giving in to the indulgence of food, especially the wrong food.

After being bombarded with unhealthy, demonically hypnotic advertisements and healthy lifestyle campaigns that turn out to be deceptively tolerant, if the only way to a healthy self is your WILL, will you do it?