This Island Is Banning All Junk Food

When people are trying to cut back on junk food, often then take it all our of their house. In the case of Torba, a province of Vanuatu, they're taking it out of the entire island. The Guardian reports that the island wants to put restrictions on western food imports in favour of locals and tourists alike enjoying the produce and resources already available. "At the moment we have an infiltration of junk food from overseas," Father Luc Dini, head of the local tourism council, told The Guardian. This restriction would apply to sweets, but also things like rice, noodles, biscuits, and tinned fish and meat. Instead, they hope the ban encourages the 10,000 people to take advantage of the locally grown fish, shellfish, taro, yams, and paw paw, to name a few. "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," Dini explained. While the locals of Torba are relatively healthy, Dini hopes this will encourage them to keep up the habit. "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," he told The Guardian. "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." And this is just the beginning. By 2020, Torbas hopes to be Vanuatu's first organic province. That's some serious self-control.