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10th February, 2010
SIPITANG: A thorough research should be conducted to study how Sabahans keep diabetes at bay as the finding could be vital in helping the rest of the country avoid the disease.
Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob in suggesting this yesterday, said Sabahans are less prone to diabetes as compared to other Malaysians, probably due their healthier diet and lifestyle.
Speaking at the Reduce Sugar Intake Campaign here, he pointed out that only 4.9 percent of the population in Sabah is diabetic, a figure which is less than a third as compared to the national diabetes prevalence of 14.9 percent.
“I think a study is needed to identify how the people in Sabah managed to keep such a percentage. This can be used as an example and shared by other Malaysian in preventing the disease,” he said.
The figure in Sabah, he added can be further decreased if the population here is more aware of how diabetes occur and further reduced their daily sugar intake.
He noted that there were about 1.2 million patients suffering from diabetes in Malaysia and the figure continue to rise every year with WHO estimating there would be 2.5 million diabetics in the country by 2030.
The Malaysian Diabetes Association (MDA), according to Sabri, predicted even higher number and estimated there could be up 5.0 million Malaysians contracting diabetes in 20 years from now.
He said sugar consumption among Malaysian is very high and worrying.
Last year alone, Malaysians consumed 806,318 metric ton of sugar, placing us the eight in the world in term of sugar consumption rate.
Consumer Association of Penang (CAP) in their recent report claimed that Malaysians consume about 1,000 canned soft drinks every minute.
A can of a soft drink contains between seven to nine tablespoons of sugar.
CAP also reported that Malaysians consume an average of 26 tablespoons of sugar daily, almost triple the healthy amount of 10 table spoon recommended by WHO.
“Excessive sugar consumption is bad for health and linked to various chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and kidney failure.”
“Sugar consumption is also linked with high obesity rate among teenagers as well as tooth decay and hyperactivity among children,” he said.
Citing a Canadian research conducted in 2004, he said obese children with bad physical fitness were found to have high sugar consumption and they were also having short attention span problem, hyperactive, anxious and showing other behavioral problem.
Sabri said the ministry has received suggestion including from CAP and MDA to abolish sugar subsidy as a way to encourage lower consumption of the silent poison but there was concern that a hike in sugar price would burden the consumer.
“Probably the awareness level is not there yet and the people are not ready to pay more for sugar and so we will continue the subsidy.”
“But we must realize that by subsiding sugar we are also indirectly causing us to subsidize more for other things, especially in the healthcare.”
More people consuming too much sugar means more people get sick and we have to pay more for their treatment.
More importantly an unhealthy society is a hindrance for development for we need healthy people to effectively develop the country,” he said, noting that Malaysian government spent nearly RM1.0 billion to subsidize sugar.
Sipitang is the only district to have its own district level sugar awareness campaign.
In other states, the nationwide campaign aimed at creating awareness on the hazardous effect of over consumption of sugar, were launch at state level.
Also present at the launch were Sipitang Member of Parliament Sapawi Hj Ahmad and Sipitang district officer Abd Wahab And Hamid.
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