I drove to a hospital in Deira the other day for a test and near the waiting room was a shiny, tall vending machine that was attracting children.

The children stood there looking through the window of the machine at the goodies all stacked up inside and one girl started pleading with her mother for a chocolate bar. A tiny boy was trying to get the attention of his mother by tugging at her skirt as he pointed to the machine.

It was 11 am and I had eaten breakfast early and wondered whether I should get a bag of nachos while I waited for the doctor to be free, as my stomach was starting to growl.

Then I realised that this was a hospital and most hospitals today fortunately, have a coffee shop where you can order a milky white, sweet coffee with caramel-flavour drizzle topping and a muffin while you chat with your bariatric surgeon about your next abdominal procedure.

Unfortunately, the coffee shop was on the ground floor and I was on the sixth floor, and I did not wish to miss my turn to see the doctor, a very busy gastroenterologist, so I dropped my dirham in the machine and pressed the button for a bag of nachos.

I munched on the corn chips and realised the crunching noise had attracted the boy who watched me with big, wide eyes, maybe wondering how my mother allowed me to eat this bag food in a hospital.

Since my BlackBerry was acting up and I did not have anything to read, I checked the bag’s contents and found that it had 30 per cent of sodium, or salt; 35 per cent of saturated fat and total fat was 25 per cent. That was too much information for me; but I knew that salt was bad for my anxious spells that spring up from time to time.

Fortunately, the nachos also had Vitamin B6, calcium, iron, Vitamin A. That’s nice, I thought to myself, I get all these super vitamins; my doctor will be proud of me.

My gastroenterologist is apparently a very busy person: people were signing up to see him even on a holiday. I expected the waiting room to be full of burping, elderly people, but everyone was young, but had pained expressions on their faces.

My phone came back to life so I looked up an expatriate website and found this advice: The natural remedy for bloating and constipation is cider vinegar. Mix with 250 ml of water and drink; it will help give you relief.

Tracking my route

Later that evening I changed into my track pants ready to go for my daily walk and jog routine. I had downloaded a free app called Endomondo that has GPS and tracks my route. The route usually looks like an ant had fallen into a sugary syrup and had got high and wandered around happily. As I was checking my progress, I saw something unusual on the side of the walking track. It was a brightly lit fizzy, drink vending machine. Two young men were kicking it on its back for some reason but they stopped when a security guard passed by on his bicycle. Further on, near the swimming pool, there was another machine.

I wondered if my gastroenterologist had anything to do with these soda-vending machines popping up all over the place. He must be paying these soda guys to scout around and see where are the vulnerable areas in the society, I thought to myself.

Later that evening I saw an advert hoarding of a soft drink company on Shaikh Zayed Road that said it had changed. From a dumpy looking can, it now comes in slim, tall cans.