Science and technology have a big contribution in making today’s world a comfortable place to live in, but it all comes with a heavy price. Gadgets bring the world right to our fingertips and we have machinery that have replaced certain jobs altogether. We have vehicles that have made travel easy and comfortable — and these are only a few of the conveniences that the modern world can boast. Let’s not forget that we are spoilt for choice with a variety of foods that have improved our palates over the years.
However, these modern-day comforts come at the cost of having achieved the bizarre paradox of being simultaneously hyperactive and sedentary in our lifestyles. We are surrounded by the noise of emails and gadgets, surviving on an avalanche of fatty, heavily salted processed food coupled with increasing pollution, overcrowding and stress. This has aided in the advent of a host of modern-day disease rates climbing.
Industrialisation has contributed to chemical substances intentionally added to foods to modify flavour, colour, stability, texture and cost. This is coupled with those that unintentionally make their way into our food in the form of food packing materials, processing aides, pesticide residue and the drugs and hormones given to animals.
It takes a simple mindset to use this technological revolution wisely: Fast foods, canned foods and processed foods are just a reach away, but is the time ‘lost’ in cooking up a healthy meal worth the risks associated with too much ready-made foods?
We need to utilise science and technology to find and eradicate the root causes of various diseases. Efforts to better communicate about carcinogenic hazards should help the public make better decisions by keeping the risks in perspective. For the sake of our future generations, we need to ban products that contain carcinogens before we find ourselves in another epidemic.
— The reader is an Indian homemaker based in Dubai
