Nutrition and healthy lifestyle; Moderation is the recommendation
Arku Jasmine
Features
Have you ever been told by your doctor or dietician that you can eat everything but it must be in moderation?
At certain stages in our lives, we become obsessed with what we consume. We worry over what to eat and what not to drink in order to stay healthy. Well, the expert advice is not to over indulge when it comes to eating and drinking.
This point was highlighted a fortnight ago at the first Lady Julia Osei-Tutu Annual Nutrition Forum held in Kumasi to draw Ghanaians’ attention to the defaults in our nutrition, as well as lifestyles and how we can correct them to stay healthy and well. At the forum, a panel made up of doctors, a nutritionist and psychologists all spoke from the same basket. They emphasised the relevance of eating well but in moderation and making room for plenty of exercises. That sounded familiar, I thought.
In her opening address, Lady Julia Osei-Tutu, the brain behind the nutrition forum which is going to be an annual affair, said eating right and in moderation was now a global concern. That concern was the reason why she had thought it necessary to bring the habit of good nutrition and healthy lifestyles on the front burner for a continued public discussion via a nutrition forum.
With lifestyle diseases now on the increase, Lady Julia stressed that since a healthy people made a healthy nation, Ghanaians were to return to the days of their parents and grandparents, where they ate fresh foods from the backyard garden or the farm.
She pointed out that the practice of better cooking habits such as boiling, grilling and baking did a lot of good for our grandparents and they lived lives free from the killer lifestyle diseases of today. She intimated that luckily, those fruits and vegetables are still with us in abundance today and since they were budget savers, we should endeavour to include them in our family menus.
Refreshingly, the expert panellists at the forum were unanimous about the fact that the body mirrored whatever went into it, coupled with the kind of lifestyles we indulge in. They, therefore, placed emphasis on eating well in the right quantities and active after eating.
According to the experts, the excess food we consume and which are not burnt stores up as fat in our bodies and end up giving us health challenges. According to them, when we exercise, we do not only burn fat but the exercise also serves as shock absorbers for the body.
Going by the notion that we eat to live and not live to eat, the message about eating in moderation could not have been emphasised adequately here. Our lifestyles today betray us as a people who care very little about moderation. We go into excesses until when diseases threaten, we begin to wake up. Sometimes, it gets a little too late.
Sadly, huge colourful posters and banners announcing the sudden departures of friends and family members have become fashionable lately. Posters with the words “Gone too soon”, “What a shock” “Bidding farewell”, “Damrifa Due”, are becoming too many too often these days. Deaths of younger people are occurring more than before.
Are the changes in our diet, our lifestyles and over indulgence, factors we should worry about? Maybe yes. The pressures of work, working too late and eating too late, staying in endless traffic, demands from family and friends, very little time to eat properly, lack of relaxation and exercises are daily challenges that people grapple with. Many more people are skipping breakfast, said to be the most important meal of the day, because of time.
According to statistics released on World Health Day by the National Cardiothoracic Centre of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital a few weeks back, more than eight per cent of adults in Ghana are currently hypertensive and diabetic as a result of increased adoption of unhealthy lifestyles. We are told further that one in every three Ghanaian is hypertensive. These are worrying statistics.
The advice stressed by the experts was the need to increase our physical activities, take more healthy diets with lots of vegetables and fruits and generally consume everything in moderation. As one psychologist said, moderation worked on the mind and we should refuse to use food to respond to our emotions as some people did when depressed or under stress.
Admittedly, the problem with our nutritional intake is always with the size of the carbohydrates that we tend to pile on our plates. Yet, it is explained that the human heart is only the size of one’s fist. If that is so, then really, one does not need to eat in large quantities and end up with unnecessary pressure on the heart.
The annual nutrition forum introduced by Lady Julia Osei-Tutu is a laudable initiative, especially where it aims to reawaken nutritional and lifestyle changes in us. Judging from the questions and answers at the first forum a couple of weeks ago, people are interested in their well-being and would like more discussions on the way forward.
The nutrition forum and other such open discussions, if for nothing at all, remind us that eating and drinking in moderation with plenty of exercises, including walking, are good pointers to a healthy life.
By Vicky Andoh/Daily Graphic/Ghana
[email protected]
At certain stages in our lives, we become obsessed with what we consume. We worry over what to eat and what not to drink in order to stay healthy. Well, the expert advice is not to over indulge when it comes to eating and drinking.
This point was highlighted a fortnight ago at the first Lady Julia Osei-Tutu Annual Nutrition Forum held in Kumasi to draw Ghanaians’ attention to the defaults in our nutrition, as well as lifestyles and how we can correct them to stay healthy and well. At the forum, a panel made up of doctors, a nutritionist and psychologists all spoke from the same basket. They emphasised the relevance of eating well but in moderation and making room for plenty of exercises. That sounded familiar, I thought.
In her opening address, Lady Julia Osei-Tutu, the brain behind the nutrition forum which is going to be an annual affair, said eating right and in moderation was now a global concern. That concern was the reason why she had thought it necessary to bring the habit of good nutrition and healthy lifestyles on the front burner for a continued public discussion via a nutrition forum.
With lifestyle diseases now on the increase, Lady Julia stressed that since a healthy people made a healthy nation, Ghanaians were to return to the days of their parents and grandparents, where they ate fresh foods from the backyard garden or the farm.
She pointed out that the practice of better cooking habits such as boiling, grilling and baking did a lot of good for our grandparents and they lived lives free from the killer lifestyle diseases of today. She intimated that luckily, those fruits and vegetables are still with us in abundance today and since they were budget savers, we should endeavour to include them in our family menus.
Refreshingly, the expert panellists at the forum were unanimous about the fact that the body mirrored whatever went into it, coupled with the kind of lifestyles we indulge in. They, therefore, placed emphasis on eating well in the right quantities and active after eating.
According to the experts, the excess food we consume and which are not burnt stores up as fat in our bodies and end up giving us health challenges. According to them, when we exercise, we do not only burn fat but the exercise also serves as shock absorbers for the body.
Going by the notion that we eat to live and not live to eat, the message about eating in moderation could not have been emphasised adequately here. Our lifestyles today betray us as a people who care very little about moderation. We go into excesses until when diseases threaten, we begin to wake up. Sometimes, it gets a little too late.
Sadly, huge colourful posters and banners announcing the sudden departures of friends and family members have become fashionable lately. Posters with the words “Gone too soon”, “What a shock” “Bidding farewell”, “Damrifa Due”, are becoming too many too often these days. Deaths of younger people are occurring more than before.
Are the changes in our diet, our lifestyles and over indulgence, factors we should worry about? Maybe yes. The pressures of work, working too late and eating too late, staying in endless traffic, demands from family and friends, very little time to eat properly, lack of relaxation and exercises are daily challenges that people grapple with. Many more people are skipping breakfast, said to be the most important meal of the day, because of time.
According to statistics released on World Health Day by the National Cardiothoracic Centre of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital a few weeks back, more than eight per cent of adults in Ghana are currently hypertensive and diabetic as a result of increased adoption of unhealthy lifestyles. We are told further that one in every three Ghanaian is hypertensive. These are worrying statistics.
The advice stressed by the experts was the need to increase our physical activities, take more healthy diets with lots of vegetables and fruits and generally consume everything in moderation. As one psychologist said, moderation worked on the mind and we should refuse to use food to respond to our emotions as some people did when depressed or under stress.
Admittedly, the problem with our nutritional intake is always with the size of the carbohydrates that we tend to pile on our plates. Yet, it is explained that the human heart is only the size of one’s fist. If that is so, then really, one does not need to eat in large quantities and end up with unnecessary pressure on the heart.
The annual nutrition forum introduced by Lady Julia Osei-Tutu is a laudable initiative, especially where it aims to reawaken nutritional and lifestyle changes in us. Judging from the questions and answers at the first forum a couple of weeks ago, people are interested in their well-being and would like more discussions on the way forward.
The nutrition forum and other such open discussions, if for nothing at all, remind us that eating and drinking in moderation with plenty of exercises, including walking, are good pointers to a healthy life.
By Vicky Andoh/Daily Graphic/Ghana
[email protected]