Hunger demands nothing less than total satisfaction but what you choose to eat and how much, can make you sick.
TASTE BUDS which are tantalised by sweet, creamy desserts, foods too high in saturated and trans fats and salt, set up their owners for a long list of chronic nutrition-related diseases (CNRDs). These conditions include, according to nutritionist Dr. Joy Callendar, type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular
disease, cancer and
osteoporosis.
Thrown into the mix of CNRDs and the sickness and death associated with these conditions, are risk factors such as obesity, hypertension and too much fat in the blood which Dr. Callendar said, at the Medical Association of Jamaica's symposium, can be staved off or at least delayed by a more careful attention to diet and lifestyle.
But maybe, it's not only the choices made as an adult that puts one on the fast track for the chronic diseases, but those made by your mother when you were still being nurtured in the womb. Emerging data suggest that maternal malnutrition, especially with poor mothers, actually programmes the foetus for some of the chronic nutrition-related diseases later in life.
"Low birth weight babies will later on have a much greater chance of developing at least some of the chronic diseases, certainly hypertension, impaired glucose tolerance and coronary heart disease," said Dr. Callendar pointing to a prospective study by Thame et al (University of the West Indies) which actually made a link between birth weight and blood pressure.
She continued that: "at the other
end of the scale we look at chronic
diseases as they emerge in later life. There, we are more concerned with obesity and existing risk factors and their ability to predict the chronic
diseases."
