Fast food fanatics need to watch sugar and fat


Nowadays, it is common to see obese brothers and sisters some as young as one several years. I know that is not news but the number of people dying as a result of poor eating habits diseases like hypertension, heart disease, cancer and diabetes is increasing at an alarming rate. While I was growing up in Melbourne in late 80s and early 90s, It was considered that older people were the only victims of those diseases, but many people in their 20s have joined the bandwagon. This morning in a local restaurant,
I witnessed a teenager who is over 130 kilos. The teen was accompanied by his father and mother and what they ordered for the boy was of no help with bacon, three sausages, fried eggs to mention but a few. Lifestyle rather than genetics determine people’s susceptibility to these diseases and despite the numerous reports and awareness campaigns most people don’t care. Majority of urban dwellers especially those living in big cities, tend to consume food and beverages without bothering to establish whether they contain high amount of sugar, salt and fat, which were the main contributory factors to lifestyle diseases.

I cannot blame consumers entirely because apart from the western world, governments across the world have failed to pin down manufacturers, especially those in the fast-food and processed-food industries, to even do the least possible favor of issuing health information labels regarding the levels of sugar, salt and fat on their products yet they spend millions of dollars branding and marketing them. In places like US, UK, Western Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan, information like the product name, ingredients, weight, company name and address, production code and date, expiry date, registration number among others are a must. As I watched the teen empty the plate this morning, I asked myself what miracle can happen for people to get into the habit of eating healthily and reading processed food labels to protect their health. My lovely mother taught me food shopping standards while I was still young and I am one of those who read the product labels before determining if they are worth my coins. I also extensively read nutritional information, which details the amount of sugar, salt and fat contained in the product and this normally helps me know how much I consume per day. Just try the same and see if there will be changes in your weight but watch the salt, sugar and fat in whatever you eat.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2013: The year of mobile photography

Today is the 366th day of 2012 and as we wind up, millions of pictures will be taken and shared on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter by people across the world. Young and old alike will take more photographs than any new year celebration before and I bet big that traditional camera makers will miss out on a bigger share of the love. The latest research has found smartphone as one of the two popular devices used for taking pictures together with traditional cameras and is considered to be a bigger motivator for amateur photographers irrespective of the age and gender. Some studies have been quoted as saying that eight in every ten smartphone users take at least one picture a week on their phone, while less than half who use a point-and-shoot camera take pictures at the same frequency.This year, analysts believe that majority of people take pictures with a smartphone with less than a third taking pictures with a digital single lens reflex while a quarter of i...
Read more

Telecoms in East Africa should look to data for mobile growth

Mobile network operators in East Africa should look to data traffic growth and increased data prices as a means of arresting voice revenue decline in one of the fastest growing mobile market in sub Saharan Africa. Over the last few months, a couple of operators have been sending pricing signals to customers to help manage this finite resource. Unlike two years ago, there is a clear movement towards data usage among users in the four member states of East African community namely Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda where customers are using less mobile voice and SMS services. The loss of SMS service business is fatal to mobile operators and is highly attributed to the rise of over the top apps such as WhatsApp and iMessage that have become a hit with mobile subscribers in the region. Such apps have provided rich communications over a data connection, allowing customers to forgo SMS use. Customers have an economic incentive to use over the top apps...
Read more

Diabetes rising among Africa’s young adults

A group of software developers in Africa are developing mobile health apps among them application that will help monitor diabetic patients. Their interest in diabetes monitoring apps came after Doctors in Africa warned several years back that diabetes is on the rise among young people in the continent, attributable largely to sedentary urban lifestyles and increasingly high levels of obesity. An estimated 29 percent in urban areas and 14 percent in rural areas suffers from the disease, most of them young adults, while 36 percent are at high risk of getting it, according to a study conducted last year. That figure is up from estimates of 2.4 percent in 1989 and 0.6 percent in 1979. The study also showed that Kinshasa, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos, Cairo and Dar Es Salaam had the highest prevalence of obesity in the continent, with 51 percent of the 1,000 men and women in the 22 -35 age range surveyed falling under that category. Doctors blame the high level of diabetes in the capital a...
Read more