Dr Marc Kwame Dzradosi, Head of Pharmaceutical Services at the International Maritime Hospital (IMaH) has cautioned parents and guardians against forcing children to eat sizeable portions of food.
Dr Dzradosi, who is also a Clinical Lecturer at the Central University, and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) said forcing children to eat beyond what their stomach could contain could lead to obesity and its associated health issues.
Speaking on the topic: “Obesity” Dr Dzradosi said because their stomachs were small, they accepted and digested the quantity it could take leaving the rest to form into fat deposits in the body.
The IMaH Pharmacist gave the caution when together with Ms Ama Hienne Amoako, a Dietician at IMaH spoke at the weekly “Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility,” a Ghana News Agency Tema Regional Office initiative aimed at promoting communication on health-related and setting the medium for the propagation of health information to influence personal health choices by improving health literacy.
“Now we see children aged between four and five, but their weight is like that of a 10-year-old,” he said adding that “we are also seeing children with heart burns since the stomach rejects the excess food which then rushes upwards, others are also having stomach problems.”
He added that children as young as 10 years were having Type Two Diabetes due to obesity, stressing that when parents give their children high calories foods and forced them to overeat, they would become obese and grow into adults with obesity.
Dr Dzradosi said obesity was on the rise in Ghana, indicating that some of the effects of being obese included hypertension, stroke, diabetes, depression, mental illness, joint problem, cancers, and cardiovascular diseases, among others.
“The heart handles a certain weight of your body, so the more weight you gain, the more pressure you put on your heart,” he stressed.
Source: Ghana News Agency