Accra, July 24, GNA – Dr Samuel V. Duh, a Ghanaian Physician and novelist has advised Ghanaians to eat more healthy fruits, vegetables, and local foods coupled with exercises to prevent non-communicable (cardiovascular) diseases.
Dr Vuh said cardiovascular diseases like heart attacks, strokes, cancers and diabetes could be prevented if people ate healthy local dishes that were hygienically prepared.
He gave the advice at the launch of his book in Accra titled:” Killing Ourselves Slowly with What We Eat”.
The 177 paged-book has 13 chapters including ‘what do we eat’, ‘why do we eat’, ‘what shall we eat’, ‘obesity is a disease’, among others.
The Author said the book detailed a comprehensive analysis of what we eat and how it affected ourselves and what we needed to do to avoid bad eating.
In Ghana, cardiovascular diseases are responsible for 43 per cent cause of death.
In view of this, he emphasised the need to eat healthy diet so as to increase the lifespan of people.
He said energy input should be balanced by exercise to maintain normal healthy weight.
“When food intake exceeds exercise, the result is weight gain and when exercise exceeds food intake, the result is weight loss,” he said.
Dr Vuh debunked the assertion that people live good when they ate heavy fast food with fried chicken and sugary drinks.
“The combination of eating high fat foods and heavy meal without exercise is a slow match to your grave,” he said.
He said issues with obesity was previously associated with the developed countries, but it was prevalent in developing countries because Africans learnt blindly the lifestyles of the western world.
Research by the United Nations show that more than 300 million people in the world are obese and more than one billion people are overweight.
This means that more than one billion people in the world eat too much food, or too much of wrong types of food and do not get enough of exercise.
Dr Samuel Kojo Frempong, the Technical and Economic Adviser, Office of the Vice President, advised Ghanaians to buy the book and spent time to read and practice the contents.
He said the book came at the right time, especially where many people can change their lifestyles, stressing that the piece would help educate the populace on good eating habits.
Madam Yaa Attefuah, the Acting Administrator, Copyright, advised Ghanaians to take individual responsibilities for ourselves in relation to eating habits, adding that the book was a contribution to lessening the burden of diseases in the country.
GNA