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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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Can Nutrition Guidelines Help Children Switch To Healthy Diet? Eating right from young age is very important in fighting off chronic diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers as it is believed that these diseases are strongly connected to diet and lifestyle. What goes into children’s mouth will ultimately build up their profiles of risk factors, like obesity, high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure, which could lead to abovementioned diseases in adulthood. In Singapore, heart disease is still the number 2 killer after cancer, even though various surveys show that heart disease fatalities and the number of those with high cholesterol and high blood pressure have all come down. Statistics also indicated that number of people suffering heart attack among those aged 35 to 64 jumped 31 percent (from 1,287 to 1,690) between 1991 and 2001, and number of people hospitalized for heart failure jumped 68 percent between 1991 and 2003.
Survey carried out by the Health Promotion Board (HPB) in Singapore also found that only 1 in 4 teenagers in Singapore eats enough fruit and vegetables, and more than half the polled 3,844 secondary school students eats deep-fried foods more than twice a week. These frightening health figures have prompted HPB to publish a handbook of comprehensive nutrition guidelines. These handbooks are printed in Chinese, English, Malay and Tamil and they are available at all general practitioners, pediatricians, polyclinics and public hospitals, and of course at the HPB’s information Centre. Copy of the guideline can also be downloaded online at HPB’s website. Among the guidelines are that preschoolers should eat a serving of fruit a day from age 3; those between the ages of 7 and 12 should have 2 servings daily. The guidelines were drawn up in consultation with 13 medical and health professionals specializing in pediatrics, developmental medicine and psychiatry. It may be possible to control children’s diets at home, for example, a father has trained his 2 children to stay away from unhealthy foods and to eat only those he approves of. Nevertheless, when the children are out or in schools, there is very little that parents can do. Although most educators admit that there is little support for healthy eating in schools, one school strives to build healthy eating habits by serving fried food only once a week, and encouraging the students to ask for less oil. The principal of the school will introduce the HPB’s nutrition guidelines to its students. Nevertheless, whether the young ones will strictly follow these healthy guidelines may be another matter. Just look at what a 12-year-old girl, lover of potato chips and chocolates, confessed: “I would feel so sad if I cannot eat my favorite potato chips any more…I prefer potato chips to my health!” The answer is rather simple: children want good-tasting stuffs all the time. Fried food tastes good but not for healthy foods. Therefore, even with the nutrition guidelines, it appears it will still require a great deal of effort from parents, schools and authorities concerned to help children switch to healthy diet.
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