Poor diet causes more disease than inactivity, smoking and alcohol
THERE were 2.28-million cases of diabetes in SA in 2015 when more than 57,000 people died of the disease.These numbers can be likened to those for people with HIV/AIDS in the late 1990s, when our government failed to take act to prevent and treat HIV and pharmaceutical companies put profits before lives.Similarly for diabetes: in 2012, 41% of women and 11% of men in SA were obese. Of children aged 2-14 years, 16.5% of girls were overweight and 11.5% were obese while 7.1% of boys were overweight and 4.7% were obese.Why are we, as a country, buckling under our own weight and the weight of noncommunicable diseases? Well, there are various reasons but there is strong evidence that the consumption of sugar is linked to obesity, diabetes and other noncommunicable diseases.The World Health Organisation has found that a high intake of sugar (in particular free sugar, or sugar without other nutrition — as is found in sugar-sweetened beverages) is associated with obesity and noncommunicable d...
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