Friday 8 July 2016

Poor food choices pose huge risk to healthcare

By IMMACULATE WAIRIMU
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The country’s health system could grind to a halt in the not-too-distant future due to a sharp increase in the number of diabetics, thanks largely to the excessive consumption of sugar in the country.
Addressing the African Food Manufacturing and Safety Summit in Nairobi last month, Mr Bimal Shah, the director of Broadways Bakery Ltd, said the looming crisis in the healthcare system is attributable to poor food choices.
  “More than five per cent of 25-year-old Kenyans are developing diabetes, a lifelong condition that causes kidney failure, loss of limbs, comas and a range of debilitating and life-threatening complications triggered profoundly by excessive sugar consumption,” he said, quoting a World Health Organisation report on diabetes in Kenya.
 According to the WHO, Kenyans consume twice as much sugar as Tanzanians, and more than all other Africans, with the exception South Africans and Swazis. Kenyans consume 60gms of sugar per day, compared to Tanzanians’ typical 23gm, 5gm for Indians, and an average of just over 15gm a day for the Chinese.http://www.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/DN2/-/957860/3282088/-/riiphsz/-/index.html

The country’s health system could grind to a