Qatar Foundation’s Food and Nutrition Services Department held a ‘Nutrition Awareness Month’ campaign aimed at educating staff and students about how a healthy lifestyle can combat hypertension. 

‘Yes for a Healthier Life’ focused on underlying causes, prevention and the role of salt in relation to high blood pressure.

High blood pressure is responsible for 12.8% of all deaths around the world, which amounts to 7.5mn people annually. About 32.9% of Qataris suffer from hypertension, with over a third ignoring their diagnosis.

The awareness campaign was part of an ongoing commitment by QF to provide employees and students at Education City with various initiatives to improve their lifestyle for a better future.

Joelle Hamamji Seyoury, food and nutrition services manager at the QF Support Services Directorate, said: “In support of Qatar National Vision 2030, it’s our mission to address community development issues. By raising social awareness through this campaign, we aim to highlight the importance of leading a healthier lifestyle.

“This year, we chose to address the subject of hypertension and the role that salt plays. Through various activities, our objective is to empower our participants by reducing their sodium intake and improving their health. All of our activities cater to Qatar Foundation’s students and employees. They represent a microcosm of the larger Qatari society and therefore, the health challenges faced by the nation are also being experienced by our small community.”

With the help of Qatar Biobank, a database has been created to quantify the number of people that suffer, or may suffer, from hypertension in the future. By visiting 11 different locations within Qatar Foundation, data was collected from 300 participants.

Activities during ‘Nutritional Awareness Month’ were led in part by Pascale Hadchiti Richa, nutrition services supervisor the Food and Nutrition Services. Among the initiatives organised were workshops, healthy cooking sessions and smart food shopping, as studies indicate that high salt consumption is due to canned or processed food and not because of home cooking.

“Through our healthy cooking classes, participants were shown how they could lower their salt intake during meal preparation,” said Hadchiti. “To coincide with this was a smart food shopping excursion led by nutrition and cooking expert Peggy Cotsopoulos from the US. Selecting low sodium items, Peggy showed participants how to read nutritional stickers on different products. She also presented various dietary habits, where salt intake is often ignored.”

In addition, a workshop was organised in co-operation with the Supreme Council of Health, Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, Aspire Zone Foundation and Hamad Medical Corporation. Three behavioural attitudes - smoking, lack of physical activity and unhealthy diets – which are linked to hypertension were discussed.

To support these findings, statistics show that 14.7% of Qatari adults smoke regularly while a whopping 71.3% are not physically active while 91.1% of Qatari adults eat less than the recommended level of five portions of fruits or vegetables daily.

At each activity, a collection of brochures and booklets were distributed to explain the importance of reducing salt intake, while addressing dietary myths.  A 21-day plan was also incorporated with healthy and delicious alternatives to help reduce sodium intake.

As part of their ongoing commitment to health and nutrition, the Food and Nutrition Services Department offers year-long awareness campaigns that target different age categories.

A team of three nutrition specialists supervise a clinic that provides free health and nutrition consultations to QF students, employees and their families. The department also oversees all food services provided at QF institutions.

 

 

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