BECOME A HEALTHIER YOU; How to Cut Down On Your Sugar Intake

Overweight and Obesity

Overweight and obesity are risk factors for Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, some cancers and cardiovascular diseases like heart disease and stroke. 

One of the contributing factors of obesity is a diet high in calories. that mean high in fat or high in sugar. In this article, I share tips to help you cut down on sugar, especially added sugar intake, so you can achieve the recommended amount of added sugar in your meals.

For men and women, the recommended amount of sugar added to food, also known as added sugar is at most 70g and 50g, respectively. This recommendation however varies depending on your age, body size and how active you are. To know your exact recommendation, do consult a dietician or nutritionist.

For everyone

When Shopping

1. Read food labels to identify what the added sugars in a product are. They are usually shown on the labels as sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, molasses, hydrolysed starch, invert sugar, corn syrup and honey. When you see the added sugars, check how much of them are contained in the product. A food which contains 22.5g of sugar per 100g of the product is very high in sugar while anything below 5g is low.
2. Swap products with high sugar content like fizzy drinks, sweetened fruit juices, and squashes with low sugar ones like natural fruit juices and water. Because you are more likely to reach for those high sugar drinks when they are in your stores, it is a good idea to avoid stocking your food stores with them.

When preparing meals

1. For meals such as porridge, cereal and homemade drinks like ‘Sobolo’ (Bisarp, hibiscus), swap table sugar for chopped fruits and squeezed fruits juices to meet your taste preference. The fruits will not only improve the ‘taste’ of your food, but also provide you with nutrients such as Vitamin B and C. In the end, you will meet the recommendation of eating 5 portions of fruits and vegetables a day.
2. If you drink tea, coffee or chocolate drinks, gradually cut down on the sugar you add till you can drink these beverages without sugar.
3. When thirsty, reach out more for water, natural unsweetened fruit juices, and less fizzy drinks and sweetened fruit juices, which are high in sugar.
   
   
4. When looking for something to munch in between meals, grab a fruit, vegetable, or nut and avoid toffees and chocolate.
   
   
5. If you are the type who likes to eat desserts after a main meal, decide the number of times in a week or month you will take your desserts. This way you do not eat dessert every day as this is an unhealthy habit. Also when choosing your desserts, pick the ones that are low in sugar content.
   
   
6. When eating high sugar foods such as cakes, ice cream and chocolate, try to eat smaller portions.

For people who have BMI 25 and above / Overweight and Obese people

If you are overweight or obese, you need to take additional steps.

Apart from cutting down on foods high in sugar and fat, you should also do more physical activity, and  increase your consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains and nuts. Also make it a point to get enough sleep, reduce or cut out alcohol consumption and adopt a no smoking habit.

Keep in mind that a dietician or a nutritionist can design a healthy lifestyle plan for you.

For children

Obesity can occur at any age, so as much as possible, we should not introduce children to foods high in sugar. Children who are given high sugar foods at an early age develop a preference for those sugared foods and thereby increase their risk of obesity and its related problems.

A healthy lifestyle is the best investment anyone can make. We wish you the best in your journey to become a healthier you in 2015

Photo Credit: Kofimusings

About contributor

Irene Danquah, ANutr holds a BSc Biochemistry from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana and an MSc Public Health Nutrition from the University of Southampton, UK. Irene is member of the UK Association for Nutrition (AfN) and the Ghana Nutrition Association. She is on the UK Voluntary Register of Nutritionists (UKVRN) as an Associate Nutritionist. Like the World Bank, Irene also believes "Nutrition is an investment issue and improved nutrition is one of the major drivers of economic growth - World Bank, 2006". 

Read more »

How to stay healthy during the World cup- Whether your team wins, loses or draws

Three things can happen in every world cup game – Your team may win, lose or draw. Whatever happens, these outcomes bring with them anxiety, excitement, headaches, or stress, all of which may negatively affect your health. Here are tips to make sure you stay healthy throughout the Brazil 2014 tournament.

Your current state

Problem: If you are faint-hearted or have hypertension (high blood pressure) and heart diseases, it is advisable that you do not watch matches involving teams you support. The anxiety is likely to raise your blood pressure and lead to serious implications.

Solution: a) Get busy and/or sleep during the match and get the score line of the match later or b) simply record and watch it later when you already know the scores.

Eating habits

Problem: Stress, anxiety, loss and or win may lead to an unhealthy increase or decrease in appetite for food. The increase in appetite can be for comfort foods, which are mostly high in sugar, fat and salt and/or eating more food than is needed. Whether it’s an unhealthy increase or decrease in appetite for food, they all carry risks to health.

Solutions: 

a) Do not stock your refrigerator or stores with foods high in sugar, fat and salt like fizzy drinks, sweets, crisps etc but rather with more fruits and vegetables. This will make you reach out for a fruit or vegetable instead of sweets, crisps etc.

b) Eat before your team plays. This way, you will have a good appetite and be able to check the amount of food being consumed.

c) Get around and talk with family and friends but make sure they are optimists:). This will help you to forget the pain from the loss of a match and not to seek comfort from foods.

d) Be conscious of the fact that eating habits might be affected by the tournament and hence will require an extra effort to eat healthily.

Read more(fruity and vegetably healthy)

Physical activity levels

Problem: With at least three matches currently being played and telecasted each day interspersed with match analysis making at least eight hours of non-stop football, becoming sedentary is mostly likely to increase, affecting physical activity levels. That is, one is mostly likely to stay in the couch or bed or whatever it may be for close to eight hours. Sitting and/or lying down for extended periods pose risks to health.

Solution: Whether you will watch all the matches for the day or at least one a day, get up and get active (walk, dance (i.e. if your team is winning), skip, press up or whatever activity works for you) during the half-time breaks as well as the commercial breaks.

Read more:  The little things that we do

Alcohol consumption

Problem:Again stress, anxiety, loss and or win may lead to a start of drinking alcohol and/or an unhealthy increase in alcohol consumption, which poses risks to health.

Solution:Do not stock your refrigerator or stores with alcoholic beverages. Get more tips on using alcohol safely

Sleeping habits

Problem: Sleeping habits are most likely going to be affected due the fact that a) matches may be played in timezone different from yours and/or b) the desire to enjoy every single match.

Solution: For an adult, between 7 – 8 hours of sleep is required so take a nap before the match or record and watch a repeat telecast.

Smoking

Problem: Again strees and anxiety may lead to picking up smoking habits. Also depending on the anti-smoking regulations in your country, you might risk coming into contact with tobacco smoke-filled environment.

Solution: a) The healthy lifestyle guideline for smoking is no smoking. If you do, seek professional help from a health centre.

b) Avoid places, where smoking takes place as secondary smoking also poses risk

Things to remember

Do not drink and drive or drive and drink or both.

It takes 3 weeks to develop a habit (good or bad), the world cup is a month long. Let it end with developing a good habit.

 Your team has a health practitioner to make sure players are staying healthy, so why don't you also stay healthy :)?

 Any time your team is playing, they are keeping active. Why don’t you also keep active :)?

May the team that wants it most win the World Cup!

You might also like

Celebratinga victory?

I watchedhim the entire night

Reducing salt intake: 10 tips

Read more »

Diary of an international student 1

Dear Diary,

Dear Diary

After being in the queue for more than an hour to go through checks, the international student has enplaned. The long queue certainly took the excitement of his journey away but this is not the only thing stealing his excitement; the food he is leaving behind. Don’t get him wrong he is also sad about moving away from his family and friends but you know how technology has provided solutions to bring them close despite the distance. O how this student wishes, technology can help transmit food along cables. Then Fufu, Banku, Tuo Zaafi (Ghanaian dishes) would be a dial away.

Fufu and Light soup (Ghanaian dish)

With suitcases full of dried fish (koobi, Amane, Keta school boys), shito, flour (Fufu, Banku, Tuo Zaafi, okro) etc, this student hopes the first few weeks wouldn’t be difficult to deal with ‘food nostalgia’. Rumor has it he packed more food than books and clothing. It is my prayer this student meets favourable weather conditions at the land he is travelling to study. O! Diary, how I wished you could see the way the food items were packaged. You may think this student has been a ‘bookman’ (a term in Ghana for a person who ensures passengers’ luggages are well packed into buses) before. Trust me this packaging would by-pass the watchful eyes of the immigration officers at the airport. Did he hear of the predicament of this other international student who was delayed by officers due to the 20kg of local food he was carrying as they thought he was into imports and exports of local food without the proper documents (I don’t know what got him off the hook though)?  I guess he did.

Image by Google

Before boarding the plane, he made searches on Google for shops in the city where he can get local food ingredients to buy. As usual, Google was helpful to give a list of such shops. Thank God for Google. I think he should be grateful to God that, many of his countrymen live in this new country and city he is travelling to. This brings questions to mind; what would he have done if there were no such shops? Would he have packed food lasting for the period he was going to be in this new place? I believe his diet would have been like students who find themselves in this kind of situation. They only eat a particular type of food (your guess is as good as mine). I am just wondering if these students have heard about diet diversification and its importance to nutritional well-being (this is another topic for later discussion but if you are impatient to know, contact a nutritionist. Google would help but always critique what you read).

As the plane is landing at its destination airport after hours of being air bound, the only thoughts of this student are Mummy’s Ampesi and Garden eggs stew, Mama’s Banku and Okro stew, and my thoughts; how can one accept the world to be a global village when it comes to communication, business etc but can’t go global with food? Perhaps, diets would be more diversified and the benefits for health and wealth might be amazing.

Till my paparazzi and I bring you more stories on this student Diary, Cheers!
PS: Both He and she shall be used to denote the international student

Read more »