South Pacific Island Looks To Ban All Imported Junk Food

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One way for dieters to lose weight is by throwing away all the junk food in their refrigerators and cupboards to avoid being tempted. But for those who really want to live temptation-free, there’s a country in the South Pacific that plans to ban junk food entirely. Torba Province, an island in the Republic of Vanuatu, wants to improve the health of its citizens by banning all junk-food imports and, instead, rely on all-local, organic diet.

According to community leader Father Luc Dini, the ban should drastically improve the health of the islands 10,000 residents. “At the moment, we have an infiltration of junk food from overseas,” Dini told The Guardian. “It is easy to boil noodles or rice, but they have almost no nutritional value and there is no need to eat imported food when we have so much local food grown organically on our islands.” Instead, islanders will swicth to diets compirsed entirely of locally-sourced fish, crabs, shellfish, taro, yams, paw paw, and pineapple.

“We are Vanuatu’s most isolated province and so far our health has stayed pretty good because of that, but we want to continue to be healthy,” Dini said. “In other provinces that have adopted western diets you see pretty young girls but when they smile they have rotten teeth, because the sugar has broken down their teeth. We don’t want that to happen here and we don’t want to develop the illnesses that come with a western junk food diet.” Local legislators plan to introduce a ban on all foreign-imported foods within two years.