H

ealth scientists recently reiterated the benefits of the Mediterranean diet. It is a diet high in fresh vegetables (salads), fish, bread, olive oil and wine. In fact, the benefits of wine go beyond hearts and into brains, those frequent drinkers having a significantly reduced risk of senility and hanging onto their marbles way beyond what might be deemed respectable.

Beneficial diets are the very opposite of Indonesians diets, which have few salad dishes, are high in carbohydrates and fats and due to its ridiculous costs and prescientific belief systems, the absence of wine. Consequently, when I visit Indonesia I am impressed not by the number of junkies, unless the number of Dunkin'€™ Donuts is taken into account, but at the obesity epidemic: large bellies and posteriors rolling by, people gasping on stairs behind me, almost audibly creaking joints (not the type one rolls to be clear).

As far as Islam and Arabic nations go, some would say that the Arabic language has 1,000 words for wine while the more conservative would say merely 250. That indicates at least a linguistic (and if one goes to Bangkok airport one can see among our robed brethren a very earthly dedication to wine, if not all forms of booze).

I have been fortunate enough to travel in Islamic nations like Turkey where I was invited by academics and scientists to celebrate Idul Fitri with wonderful and copious Turkish wine.

Turkey grows more grapes than almost any nation on earth and between 100 and 500 varieties were used to make wine. At that time, Turkey was producing some of the best vintages in the area and it was a major export. If Indonesia is in thrall to the fanatics and literalists who live back in the dark ages, go ahead, but let'€™s dispense with the feeble lies about health.

They are comparable to the lies about the drug crisis. Currently, the biggest threats to Indonesian'€™s health are bad food, tobacco, sedentary lifestyles and motorcycles.  

The inconvenient truth is that reducing the price of wine and raising the price of cigarettes and motorcycles by 50 percent would make a greater contribution to improving Indonesia'€™s health profile and the people'€™s overall disposition, than all this rather embarrassing lying.

Melody Kemp
Laos