Cheers to more veggies, less beer

It’s the stuff newspaper headline writers love if they’re looking for humour: South Africans spend more of their household budgets each month on beer than they do on vegetables.

But it really is no laughing matter that, on average, 2.1% of our home expenses goes on beer, compared with only 1.9% on vegetables.

For a start, that sort of skewed expenditure is one of the pointers to a generally physically unhealthy society.

South Africans, even those who can afford to, do not eat well from a nutrition standpoint. More veggies in your diet will make you a healthier person. Fact.

Then there is the more frightening reality that our spending on booze of all sorts (and not just beer) is one of the reasons that alcohol abuse is one of our top health and societal problems.

We have babies handicapped from the start of their lives by foetal alcohol syndrome; rising family abuse and public violence brought about by drunkenness and, finally, the ongoing slaughter on our roads caused by the macho South African belief that being sloshed is no reason not to get behind the wheel of a vehicle.

We need to look at these figures and hang our collective heads in shame.