Eating to junk health

To Kawamara, what people eat or don’t eat is determined by both social and economic factors. These days everyone goes out to work, including the women who were formally home keepers. Many no longer have time to cook. For Kawamara, this is giving the mmore business, which is why their orders for home deliveries have also been on an increase.

Dr. Gerald Mutungi, who heads the Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) Prevention Programme at the Ministry of Health, agrees.

He says the country is in transition and the middle class who are on the rise are in a habit of copying whatever they see in the developed counterparts. To him this poses a danger because while still in transition, we risk becoming hypertensive and diabetic – something that the country will struggle to reverse when it finally gets out of hand.

The problem seems to be existent already. The first ever NCDs Risk Factor Survey conducted in 2014 shows that 26.4% of adult Ugandans are hypertensive with the highest prevalence of 28.5% recorded in the central region, which is mostly urban.

The prevalence of pre-hypertension was also found to be high at 36.9%. Worse, of all the people found to be hypertensive, 80% didn’t know that they had a problem. Also, Ministry of Health figures of 2010 show that 61% of deaths due to NCDs occurred below the age of 70 with 1,000 of every 100,000 men and 685 of every 100,000 women dying. Over 50% of these deaths were due to diabetes and heart disease, 20% were due to cancer and 10% were due to chronic respiratory diseases.

Are you thinking deeply about what you eat? Senior Nutritionist Dr. Jacent Asiimwe says food is taken for granted that not many people think deeply about what they eat. Then they become over weight and eventually obese.Currently, 16% of the women and 4% of the men in Uganda are obese.

“Chips are too high on calories and fat. You should also know that they contain other additives that the body doesn’t need. The process of frying them alone under very high temperatures is harmful as substances similar to those found in cigarettes are created,” she says adding that most fast foods are known to be high in fat, sugar and salt, which ingredients raise the user’s risk of acquiring diet-related chronic diseases like hyper tension and heart disease.

For now, Asiimwe recommends that fast foods should be consumed sparingly, ensuring that fruits and vegetables are added to the diet, in addition to physical exercise and periodic medical checks at least once every year.

Asiimwe says deaths due to bad feeding happens to all classes of people although those in lower socio economic positions get more sick and die sooner when they have NCDs than people in higher socio-economic positions. She blames the increase in unhealthy eating on aggressive marketing, which makes them more appealing and convenient.

For instance, Hello Foods does work under the mantra of no one orders for food when they are not hungry and therefore they only partner with restaurants that are able to prepare a meal within 25 minutes. Many restaurants and food sections in super markets also win because of quick delivery of services.

For Kawamara however, all this is not a problem. For him, availability should be matched with knowledge because most of the nutrition issues are caused by ignorance. He says policy makers in the health sector need to come up with population based strategies to create awareness about hypertension, cancer and their main risk factors, as well as consequences if not controlled since there’s already a high burden of undiagnosed and uncontrolled high blood pressure.

Kirabo suggests that the government should lay out regulations and proper nutrition plans hindering the spread of fast food consumption, which might help to mitigate the problem. But, Mutungi says since eating habits are more of behavioral, they are focusing their energy on behavioral change through sensitizing the people on how to prevent these diseases other than coming up with stringent polices. To him, the challenge is in breaking certain beliefs like the general feeling ‘that the fatter the better’ and ‘eating junk is classy’.

For now, Asiimwe recommends that fast foods should be consumed sparingly, ensuring that fruits and vegetables are added to the diet, in addition to physical exercise and periodic medical checks at least once every year. She says it’s because such diseases are hard and expensive to treat that 80% of those who get these problems resort to unhelpful herbal treatments.