Pretoria - South Africa has been named among the world’s unhealthiest and unequal societies by stakeholders and experts who commemorated World Health Day last week.
Health and wellness expert Tracey Rowles said it was important for the country to make plans to build a healthier nation, despite having an unequal economy.
“As a nation we are overweight, and if things continue like this, by the year 2035, one in three South Africans will be classified not as overweight, but as obese.
In the country, close to 68% of women are obese, and 40% of men are classified as obese or overweight.
“What we are seeing is alarming. Seeing the statistics among children is frightening. The growing percentage of children being reported as overweight is of concern.”
Given the alarming rate of overweight children – and some being obese – parents and guardians need to be provided with information about nutrition and healthy eating, so that they can teach their children about it.”
A report published on the Eat Well Live Well website stated that one of many possible reasons why parents are not able to impart this knowledge to their children is because they are often too busy, they lack the understanding themselves, or are unable to lead by example due to finances.
“Children need to develop a healthy eating habit from a young age, as it takes time for adults to adjust to healthy eating.”
Rowles said children being overweight could be due to various reasons such as non communicable diseases and not having the necessary education about nutritional health.
She advised that people take note of what they eat, be it sugar or carbohydrates.“People need to know how much energy their body needs, so that they can make healthier choices.”
Dr Arthur Ramoroka said that in a developing country, the nutrition or health landscape and the perception towards healthy eating depends on socio-economic factors. “It includes people’s income status and where they live. It all comes down to access and affordability to healthy food,” he said.
People often prioritise feeding their cravings instead of eating healthy food: “On the other hand, despite knowing the nutritional information, they sacrifice nutrition at the moment they look at the taste and value for money rather than the nutritional benefits.”
Ramoroka said most people did not have a full understanding of nutrition, and both he and Rowles advised people to eat when they were supposed to, so that they did not starve themselves.
They said the body would crave high fat or high sugar content because of being starved.
“It comes down to balanced eating, it can be expensive to eat healthy. However, there are ways to curb it and eat healthy,” said Rowles.
While looking at eating healthy one should not forget to drink water. It is advised that one should drink one glass of water for every 10kg of their body weight.
Pretoria News