Your eating habits might lead to your last breath - experts
DELICIOUS: Such foodstuff could be nice when being eaten but the after-effects could be drastic to the consumer. PHOTO BY JOSEPH KIGGUNDU
What you need to know:
What you should not consume in large amounts
Soda – An average can of soda has 10 teaspoons of sugar, 150 calories, 30 to 55 mg of caffeine, artificial food colours and sulphites. Diet sodas have the even-more-unhealthy artificial sweeteners.
A major part of the problem is that sodas have become a staple in many people’s diets. A study in the American journal, Pediatrics, found that 56 percent to 85 percent of children consume at least one soft drink a day, and 20 percent of adolescent males drink four or more sodas a day.
Potato chips and French fries – These popular snack foods contain acrylamide, a known carcinogen and neurotoxin that is formed when foods are baked or fried at high temperatures. Doctors estimate that acrylamide causes several thousand cancers per year in Americans worldwide.
Doughnuts – Tasty, yes. But break a doughnut down and you’ll find nothing more than refined sugar and flour, artificial flavours and partially hydrogenated oil that’s loaded with trans fats. They have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
White Bread – Foods made of mostly white flour are just empty calories and carbohydrates. Don’t be fooled by wheat bread, either. You should be looking for whole wheat bread.
Coffee – Need a pick-me-up in the morning? Studies show that a fresh apple and a glass of water can actually do this in a more healthy, natural way. Let your poor adrenal glands get some rest by laying off the coffee.
Sugar – One could write a book about the unhealthy side effects of a diet high in sugar. It is hidden is many processed foods so the last thing you should do is keep extra sugar on the table. Use it very sparingly, in fact.
Salt – Excess sodium is no good for you, so take a stand and banish salt from your table. There are healthy alternatives to spicing up bland food.
Malnutrition is often viewed in Uganda as deficiency of essential foods in the body. But flip the coin to the other side and there is the seldom discussed side of malnutrition; more than enough food in the body. Benon Herbert Oluka dissects a new report on the changing nutrition situation in Uganda and ponders how it should be addressed as a policy issue: -
To burn 200 calories, the units of energy contained in every 500 millilitre bottle of soda that you take, experts recommend a 30-35 minute walk, jogging for 25-30 minutes, moderate cycling for 28-33 minutes, swimming for 22-25 minutes or skipping a rope for 12-15 minutes.
But with the average working Ugandan driving out of their gate in the morning to work, sitting in office all day and having at least three meals, sodas, alcohol and several snacks in between, and yet finding little time to exercise, many are taking in more energy than they actually spend.
This situation, according to Dr Robert Mwadime, is breeding an increasingly common situation in Uganda called over-nutrition. The latest statistics show that children in Uganda who are over-weight or obese grew more than two-fold in a decade from 7 per cent in 1995 to 16 per cent in 2006 while the percentage of over-weight women grew from 8 per cent in 1995 to 17 per cent in 2006.
Too much is bad
Dr Mwadime, the regional senior nutrition adviser at the Academy for Education Development/Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance II (FANTA-2) project, says while the recommended amount of calories – about 2,000 calories per day for an adult – is good for the body to produce enough energy for its normal functioning, accumulation of too many calories can be dangerous in the long run.
“What is increasingly happening in Uganda is that as we become a little bit more affluent in this country, people stop working and start employing others. When they get a little bit of money, working becomes inferior so employing servants becomes like a fashion,” he says.
Idle energy
“But then the person is left idle in most cases and it increases the chances that they don’t spend the energy that they eat. Then, with the little money they get, people spend a lot of it on sugars, oils and alcohol. All the things that actually increase energy in the body that is stored as fat,” he adds.
Dr Mwadime says the increase in cases of over-nutrition brings up the ‘double-burden’ of a malnutrition situation where high levels of under-nutrition co-exist with a growing prevalence of overweight and obesity.
FANTA-2, which is headed by Dr Mwadime, last month released a report titled, The Analysis of the Nutrition Situation in Uganda. The 91-page report says the prevalence of overweight children and women increased significantly, especially in urban areas, while the proportion of Ugandans unable to access adequate calories fell from 23 per cent in 1997 to 15 per cent in 2006.
“Malnutrition in all its forms remains largely a ‘hidden problem’ since a majority of children affected are moderately malnourished and identifying malnutrition in these children without regular assessments is difficult,” said the report. “Increasingly, Uganda is experiencing the double burden of malnutrition; high levels of under-nutrition co-exist with a growing prevalence of overweight and obesity,” the report adds.
Overweight dangerous
Among Ugandan women, the report says overweight is increasingly becoming a health problem. It explains that as of 2006, the prevalence of overweight was higher than that of chronic energy deficiency; it says 17 per cent of women in Uganda are overweight compared to 12 per cent with chronic energy deficiency.
By region, central Uganda has the highest proportion of women with 26 per cent compared to 22 per cent in the western region, 7.5 per cent in east and 6.3 per cent in the north.
“The prevalence of overweight children has been highest in western region (mainly in south-western region, where in 2006 prevalence of overweight was reported at 13 per cent compared with 4 per cent in the western region),” says the report, which further indicates that the prevalence in the west is nearly twice the average in the central, northern and eastern regions.
The FANTA-2 report says the consequences of malnutrition (both under nutrition and over-nutrition) are short and long term; it quotes a Uganda Child Survival Strategy estimate that malnutrition contributes, directly and indirectly, to up to 60 per cent of child mortality, making it one of the most significant contributors to child mortality in the country.
“Estimated projections suggest that over 520,000 children will die as a consequence of underweight alone between 2006 and 2015 if the status quo is maintained,” argues the report, adding that reducing malnutrition is critical to saving lives and achieving Millennium Development Goal 4.
The report adds that malnutrition also carries significant adverse consequences for income poverty. “Several studies have estimated that a 1 per cent reduction in stunting is associated with a 1.4 per cent increase in wages. Malnutrition hurts development in terms of education and productivity. Stunting and micronutrient malnutrition impede cognitive development in children, undermining school performance and longterm human productivity.”
“It is estimated that a 1 per cent loss in height is associated with a 1.4 per cent loss in productivity in adults,” explains the report.
Medical workers also say over-weight invites at least 20 diseases and conditions like diabetes, cancer, congestive heart failure, enlarged heart, fatty liver disease, hernia, erectile dysfunction, chronic renal failure, stroke, gout, cellulitis and gall bladder disease.
“To treat those situations is a very expensive undertaking. Unfortunately, our health systems are not prepared for those kinds of sicknesses. So the question is; why don’t we just prevent those problems?” asked Dr Mwadime.
Nutritionists who have studied Uganda’s situation say the over-weight problems that are increasingly evident as the number of affluent people rises are closely linked to the under-weight issues that they faced during the infant stage.
According to Dr Mwadime, underweight during infancy and stunting in childhood are risk factors of overweight and obesity. He adds that a stunted child has a 2-8 times likelihood of being obese in teenage/adulthood compared to an un-stunted child so “today’s malnourished children will be overweight/obese in future.”
“There is something in our system that tells us that because I was denied something when I was young, immediately I am given the body wants to keep it and store it because it does not know when I will be given again,” said Dr Mwadime.
The nutrition situation report attempts to solve this nutrition transition paradox with findings showing that there are now more cases of stunting and over-weight that co-exist on the same individual. This, according to Dr Mwadime, is down to the theory that linear growth and weight gain do no happen at the same time.
“The speed of nutrition transition is increasing the likelihood of stunting and over-nutrition existing in the same households,” he said.
With under nutrition affecting more than two million children in Uganda who are under five, according to the nutrition situation analysis, it implies that the country could in future suffer even more cases of over weight adults.
Nutritionists therefore advise that in order to combat malnutrition and its subsequent longer term effects, efforts should be made to improve the nutrition of the child even before its mother conceives through proper feeding and other healthy practices. The situation analysis says that about 11 per cent of children are born already stunted and about 16 per cent are likely to be wasted at birth.
Dr Mwadime says nutrition is a lifestyle issue, meaning ordinary Ugandans should start to monitor the way they eat and live their lives at an individual level.
“It does not mean we should not eat,” he said. “It only means we moderate what we eat. It means you must bear in mind that whatever you eat has energy and you must eat. It means you must go to the gym, walk up the stairs rather than use a lift, and instead of sitting all day you must do a few activities.”
However, while the government cannot directly monitor how Ugandans live their lives, it can put in place the kind of policies that help ordinary Ugandans to eat healthy. Uganda already has a nutrition policy, but Dr Mwadime calls on the government to do more.
“What we need now is to start this thing as early as possible from schools. We need to make physical education a very important subject. We need to teach it in our subjects that malnutrition and over nutrition is risky.”
“We have been talking a little bit about underweight but we need to talk about overweight and how it comes about so that our children can learn it from an early age because most of the idleness starts with children from early age. It should not be during sports days that children learn to run but it should be routine they are taught it is very important for their health and for their future,” he said.
The Chairman of the National Planning Authority, Dr Kisamba Mugerwa, says the interventions that the government plans to make in the nutrition sector over the next five years are spelt out in the National Development Plan (NDP), which was launched early this year. While presenting a paper at a workshop on nutrilisation of agriculture in Uganda last month, Dr Mugerwa said the government will not be the only one involved.
Duty apportioned
“The nutrition sub sector in the NDP is treated as a cross cutting issue and therefore a responsibility of non-governmental organisations, CBOs, the private sector and government ministries, departments and agencies, including the ministries of agriculture, health, education and gender,” he said. “There is therefore a need to develop guidelines on how to integrate nutrition in all the relevant sector plans.”
Dr Mugerwa said on the part of the government, it will enhance the nutritional status of the population by implementing the specific NDP interventions in economic growth and equity, agriculture and trade, population, environment and natural resources, improving household food security, protecting consumers through improved quality and safety, promoting appropriate diets and healthy lifestyles, as well as preventing and managing infectious diseases.
