Junkism – The oblivious sin!

A few years back there was an opportunity at our church in Bangalore to present on stage a theme from life, with Bible as the backdrop. The event was called TechnoFest. We had a group at the church, of young working professionals named Santhome Professionals Forum. We decided to do a skit with the theme of ‘addictions’. Our skit touched upon all types of traditional and modern addictions ranging from alcoholism to mobile addiction. The performance was well received and we were quite happy to have presented a socially relevant topic in front of the entire parish.

Years down the line if we were to recreate the skit, I would like to include a unique kind of addiction, which unlike others, is rarely noticed by the world around us. It is a sin committed in the form and shape of a regular grocery purchase. This is an act that is never condemned by the society as taboo. You will never be looked down upon by anyone since it is slower than slow poison. What you buy is poison cleverly disguised as food! ‘Junk food’ is the villain here in this picture.

Let us accept it. Many of us born after 1980 are in one way or other addicted to junk. The degree of addiction for sure varies. A glance at the brightly lit bakery display, a hand that reaches out to that extra sweet confectionery, the chocolate that smiles at you which discreetly finds it’s way into your shopping cart, the fried and oily poison that you gulp down in the form of food are all but various forms of junk. The list can be endless.

If you are blessed to have a childhood in early 80s you might remember the evening snacks that your mom would have prepared for you. Unlike us, the parents of young kids today, they rarely reached out to a biscuit tin which had a bakery item stored.

They spent time and effort in making a healthy alternative which had natural ingredients that appealed to our taste buds. These included all those traditional snacks you could think of ranging from banana leaf covered jackfruit snack to rice flour delicacy stuffed with coconut and jaggery.

The question for us parents today is, are we putting even half the efforts that our parents took to keep us away from junk food? Of course they had the advantage of reduced accessibility to junk those days that they were almost forced to feed us with good food, as ironic as it may sound!

So what’s the best way to check if we are addicted to junkism? The easiest method is to first make a list of all possible junk you include in your regular grocery shopping or off hand purchases. Then figure out the frequency of your consumption of these items. If any of the items in your list appears in your consumption pattern in a week, you can be pretty sure that you are addicted to junk. It is as simple as that.

Is there a way to get over this addiction? The good news is yes! An even better news is that the withdrawal symptoms are far less intense than traditional addictions. But what is more challenging with junkism is that you need a very strong intent and a super strong self motivation to get out of the habit. This is quite critical since unlike other addictions there won’t be any external factors that restrict the availability of these items such as restrictions by law or social taboos etc. Hence you define your destiny!

One of the ways to get over the addiction is to declare in public your intent to abstain from one or multiple items in your junk list. Try this for a certain period and check if you could make that lifestyle change permanent.

If you are one with quite a disciplined lifestyle who have not been in the clutches of junkism, God bless you! For the rest of us, may we get the courage to accept the fact that we are addicted. May we also be blessed with the strength to take the first step to get over junkism before it is too late for us and more importantly for the people who love us!