Dr Ballayram, a food economist at the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute (CFNI), has warned of the likelihood, literally, of a bloating of Jamaica with the explosion of diet-related, non-communicable diseases.

People will get, or, are becoming, fat and ill because of what they eat, he says. And there are two primary reasons for this, he argues, according to a report in this newspaper yesterday.

One reason, he says, is because people are poor. The other is because the Jamaican Government has made a hash of educating people about good nutrition.

We believe that Dr Ballayram is on to something, but wonder whether he has got the whole thing right. In other words, it appears that the effect of the sound bite has been both to short-change the efforts of the Jamaican administration and to miss an opportunity to engage a useful debate on a complex issue.

Hopefully, it is still not too late for that. Perhaps Dr Ballayram, and the organisation for which he works, having started an engagement will continue an accessible public discourse on this matter.

Some facts about Jamaica are relevant to any such discussion, not least the findings of the Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ) of a growing problem of obesity in the country, particularly among women. More than 30 per cent of females and a quarter of teens are overweight, the MAJ says.

The medical repercussions of obesity are relatively well-known: hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases. This, of course, is a growing public health problem that demands a substantial bill for treatment.

Of course, as Dr Ballayam says, poverty contributes to how people eat and the poor nutritional values that bring on these illnesses. The Jamaica Survey of Living Conditions 2006, which uses consumption as a proxy for wealth, puts poverty in the island at 14.3 per cent of population.

That is a sharp decline from the 45 per cent of 17 years ago, when these surveys were first done, but still represents a substantial portion of the country. Moreover, many people are not far over the poverty line and large numbers rely on remittances from abroad to afford basic necessities. It is not surprising that many people, although they might not be hungry, have poor diets.

Statistics such as these pose difficult challenges, but it is unfair, we feel, to argue that Jamaica has not sought to, or has utterly failed at confronting them. Indeed, that would be to dismiss the intent and efforts of the National Health Fund in financing drugs for the treatment of and education to prevent lifestyle diseases.

Yet, as anyone involved in these matters will be aware, the problems associated with these diseases are not the result of ignorance, but are shaped, in part, by a changed media, cultural and global economic circumstance - the effect of globalisation.

Another part of the equation, of course, is the failure of economic policy. It is difficult to build food security in an environment of poverty and the absence of growth. It is easier to import cheap food than, say, protect domestic agriculture to ensure a sufficiency of local output.