How to eat healthy during the festive season

Healthy nutrition is a daily requirement. However, during festive seasons such as Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year, people have a penchant for eating certain foods, or try to ‘spoil themselves a little’ by eating a whole lot of things and even overdoing it. A dietician, Mrs Sarah Abagi, has advised people to be cautious […]

Healthy nutrition is a daily requirement.

However, during festive seasons such as Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year, people have a penchant for eating certain foods, or try to ‘spoil themselves a little’ by eating a whole lot of things and even overdoing it.

A dietician, Mrs Sarah Abagi, has advised people to be cautious of what they eat and how they eat during this festive season in order not to endanger their health. According to her, the key word is moderation.

People commonly eat pastries such as Christmas cake, ice cream, chips, and chin-chin as accompaniment for rice, chicken and carbonated drinks during the season.

Abagi who is also the Head, Dietetics Department at the National Hospital, Abuja, said the period should not be about cooking white rice and stew as is commonly done in many households in the country but that people should try to have more vegetables in their diet during the festive season. 

“We expect vegetables as the major component of the Christmas and New Year meal,” she said.

The expert said there was need for people to take the carbonated drinks, sweeteners and pastries in moderation.

She said carbonated drinks contain a lot of sugar, and the end result will be the generation of lipid profile that can subject a person to strokes or high blood pressure among others.

She said taking natural fruit juices was a better option. “For instance, you can make orange juice. You can also make pineapple juice by getting pineapples and you probably get some lemon and ginger and add to the juice and you already have a unique drink that is natural. That is the kind of drink that should be used during the Christmas, and New Year celebration,” Abagi said. 

The dietician said hibiscus drink, (zobo) and kunu were also good options but cautioned against adding too much sugar to the drinks.

“By the time you add too much sugar, it is like you have spoiled everything. We know how many cubes of sugar are in carbonated drinks so when we say moderation, we want to believe that you know the same amount of sugar should not be added to the kunu or the zobo,” she said.

Abagi also advised people to avoid the use of sweeteners saying a variety of sweeteners were sold in sachets in markets during the season. She said sugar was a lesser evil if used in moderation than sweeteners.

She said some people also engaged in high consumption of alcoholic drinks during festive seasons which is inimical to the consumer’s health.

Mrs Abagi said some of those who do so already have hypertension and diabetes thereby complicating their conditions. 

The dietician said when people with diabetes take copious amounts of alcohol, it leads to “deranged metabolism. Their lipid profile will so be deranged that there was high amount of triglycerides and bad cholesterol. 

With that the stage is set for other complications such as heart disease, stroke to mention a few,” she cautioned.