"Him need to eat some fish head!" It seemed like a pretty simple solution to Asafa Powell's falling slightly short when it counts most. Fish head, it was explained, made people more aggressive. As I pondered whether they would soon add 'fish head' to the list of contraband, and start testing for it, she added, "and breadfruit makes you timid".

Who would have thought all the solution to our problems are not to be found in strategic plans, focus group, economic, social or financial policy, it is sitting right there on the dinner plate. Our prominent hoteliers seem to be involved in a smear campaign that would make any grown man blush, it was almost laughable to begin with but then it just got plain ugly. The menu choices for the next JHTA gala dinner clearly need to include a few breadfruit options!

Eating fish head recently

Audley Shaw has been eating fish head recently, all he needs to do now is feed some to his auditors so that they can actually substantiate his claims and start collecting from those (few?) poor indignant businessmen who cry foul, but are actually guilty as sin! I guess the honeymoon is well and truly over!

There is no doubt that we need to forget cassava and start to grow breadfruit. Line the streets of the garrisons with beautiful breadfruit trees; see what that does for crime. The police could do with a little breadfruit, just to calm things down. The legislators, on the other hand, could do with some fish head, lots of it; they could throw in some coffee, too, because long hours are in order.

Jamaicans are known as an aggressive people, but often that aggression just never seems to present itself at the right moment. For example, government employees seem utterly complacent on the job and seem to get by each day with the mantra of do the bare minimum, but get down to wage negotiations and you'd bet your last dollar they had fish heads for lunch!

You are what you eat

If only our problems could be solved so simply. A Rastafarian recently informed me that he would never eat a lot of cassava, people who eat a lot of cassava soon go a "little funny in the head"; but since we done gone mad, that should not really have much of an impact on things. Mangoes, I am told, also heighten aggression, and papaya could have a profound affect on population control. Okra does something as well, but it tastes so bad who really cares?

At times when we feel our reality is out of our control, we grasp at superstitions to provide solutions and answers. We have all had a lucky pair of socks, or a lucky routine. Now it seems that with a shortage of real solutions to the problems that face us that we may as well resort to the ridiculous. After all, if you think of all the strategies that were expounded and highly touted in the last two decades, with very little positive result, who is to say that breadfruit for breakfast may well not be the answer!