Family medicine specialist Dr Trevor Babwah said while a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages may have some effect on the consumption of soft drinks in Trinidad and Tobago, the population needs a lifestyle change to reduce the incidence of non-communicable diseases.
Babwah said in his practice, he saw many people with undiagnosed illnesses who did not realise they were ill.
“We see people who come in overweight, and they either have diabetes and co-related conditions such as heart disease, or diabetes and hypertension, or hypertension alone, or they may be on the way to developing diabetes, which we call pre-diabetes.
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"People are walking around and they may not know what they have because they don’t necessarily test to see. So they come in thinking they’re very healthy, but they’re just having a little shortness of breath when they walk, or they’ll be obese, or they may just be generally not well.”
He said the population ate too much of the wrong types of foods, as well as drinking too many sweetened beverages.
“We eat a lot of calories during periods of time when we have very little activity. Many people eat their major meals in the night and then go to sleep one hour later, and then during the day we have a relatively lesser diet.
"If we have to target obesity, we have to target portion sizes, we have to start to target calorie count, sugar content, salt content, to do it.
He warned that of many juices sold here, "When you look at the contents, they are two to three per cent juice and the rest is water and sugar to make it taste nice.
[caption id="attachment_918612" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The population eats too much of the wrong types of foods, as well as drinking too many sweetened beverages, says family medicine specialist Dr Trevor Babwah. -[/caption]
"Nobody squeezes juice again, oranges and so on, because we’ve become so industrialised.
"We eat a lot of sweets and desserts, that’s just our palate. The Caribbean palate is: the food must be tasting good, if the salt is too low you can’t eat it, if there’s not enough sugar it’s not good enough.”
TT has the highest rate of consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages in the region. The cost of treating non-communicable diseases associated with this consumption is US$23 million.
Babwah said the unavailability of fresh juices was another factor in the overconsumption of sugar-sweetened drinks in TT.
“One-hundred-per-cent natural fruit drinks are not readily available, and when they are, they’re costly, from $10 up, compared to a three-per-cent orange juice, which might be $2 or $3.
[caption id="attachment_918611" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Trinidad and Tobago has the highest rate of consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages in the region. -[/caption]
"It’s recommended now that we should not have added sugar in the, diet, so a bottle of water might be just as effective in quenching your thirst as one of these fruit drinks.”
He said people needed to l
