Warning over eating habits

 By LEAH OMAE

FATTY foods and bad eating habits are among major factors contributing to increasing lifestyle disease in the country,” health sister Aida Puek says.

“More people are struggling with lifestyle diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure or hypertension because they don’t care about what they eat and how well the food has been prepared,” she said. 

“The only time they realise it, is when they are diagnosed with the disease,” Puek said after helping  Holiday Inn staff and members of the public during a health expo in Port Moresby on Monday and Tuesday.

She confirmed that when she took sugar levels and body masses (height and weight) of employees and members of the public.

She said most of the workers were under the categories of overweight and obesity that related to food and eating habits.

National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop  raised concern about bad eating habits during the national health conference a month ago, highlighting that people were losing true ways of preparing food and enjoying it.

Parkop said people either became too lazy or too busy with others things in life or just ignorant in buying fast food from outlets, restaurants and roadside markets without considering their health 

values. “As true citizens of Papua New Guinea, we must uphold our values of preparing the food well and eating the right food and continue practising the original ways of preparing food that our ancestors used in the past,” he said.

“We must start to change our mindset and get people to practise basic healthcare. 

Health business must become individual’s business and primary responsibility now to have a healthy life,” Parkop said.