Ugandans need to understand food values better -Nutritionists

Kampala, Uganda  | THE INDEPENDENT | Ugandans have been urged to take a keen interest in the kind of food they are consuming, amid an increasing burden of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDS).

Dr Mary Nalubega, a nutritionist based at Kampala Hospital says increasingly, people with chronic illness such as high blood pressure, sickle cell anaemia and heart diseases are being duped into abandoning some foods and promoting others without research-based evidence.

She said, as a result, many find themselves depriving themselves of the nutritional value of the foods that they abandon especially with common stereotypes associated with some meals.

In an interview with Uganda Radio Network, another nutrition expert Dr Paul Kasenene said many people won’t pay attention to the kind of food they eat until they fall sick, that’s why many food advertisers are now focusing on people with chronic illnesses who are found to be in desperate situations.

He said that the key issue people need to understand is that the body needs 90 percent of plant meals.

Research shows that a plant-based diet cuts out unhealthy items like added sugars and refined grains and is linked to several health benefits, including reducing the risk of heart disease, certain cancers, obesity, diabetes and cognitive decline.

Dr Kasenene says that unlike Plant-based foods, animal source food goes bad quickly getting stuck in the colon.

He says the bad food crisis has hit villages too where there’s a variety of plants that people are selling their produce so they can buy cooking oil and sugar.

Both experts argue that the public remains largely unguided amidst unfiltered and wrong information on feeding habits going without check through the media. However, while it was long proposed that the National Drug Authority (NDA) starts regulating food too, nothing has ever been done.

According to Fredrick Ssekyana, the spokesperson of the National Drug Authority, they are still pushing through parliament that they are turned into a Drug and Food Authority following cabinet approval in 2014.

Once changed, he says they will now have a mandate to ensure there are food safety systems that guide people through healthy eating.

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