Ministry to instil healthy eating habits in office workers

Star: KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry will launch a campaign where office cafeterias prepare food with recommended calorie content to ensure Malaysians do not exceed their daily dietary needs.
Minister Datuk Liow Tiong Lai said that the Health Cafeteria campaign would begin at such outlets in Kuala Lumpur.
“It will not be a choose-what-you-like method.
“We will give you the menu where food is prepared with specific calorie count and balanced diet content,” he told reporters after launching the “Greens for Life” campaign by Wellness Concept Sdn Bhd.
“We would like to encourage eateries to serve healthy food. A lot of people go for tasty food.
“All this goreng (fried) food has high content of fats that is unhealthy for the body,” he said.
He said that the necessary information would be provided to cafeteria operators to calculate the calorie content when preparing food.
He urged parents to “guide” their children to eat more vegetables because it was an important food category.
“Parents do not know how to guide their children to eat greens. You have to start them from young,” he said.
The ministry’s Adult Nutrition Survey five years ago indicated that only about 40% of Malaysian adults ate green leafy vegetables on a daily basis.
Liow said that there had been had a slight increase in the number of adult Malaysians who exercised 20 minutes three times weekly, from 11.6% in 1996 to 14.4% in 2003.
In his speech, Liow said that the ministry had multi-pronged strategies that focused not only on individual “nutritional case management” at its facilities but also on health and nutrition promotion activities.
This included publishing and disseminating the Malaysian Dietary Guidelines, conducting public awareness campaigns on healthy eating, and promoting the availability of healthy food choices through specialised training for food caterers and handlers.