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Healthy eating
for a healthy life
National Food Awareness Week
kicks off today with the 'Give me five!' message to encourage
everyone, especially children, to eat five portions of fruit
and vegetables every day.
Building on last year's Northern
Ireland Healthy Eating Campaign, 'Eat
well to keep well', the aim of the week is to highlight
the importance of eating more fruit and vegetables and to
encourage children and young people to develop healthy eating
patterns.
Angela McComb, Nutrition Programme
Manager with the Health Promotion Agency for Northern Ireland
said: "We know that what we eat has an important effect on
our health. By eating five or more portions of fruit and vegetables,
we can significantly reduce the risk of developing serious
illnesses such as cancer and heart disease.
"Research shows that eating patterns
during childhood have a major impact on health in adulthood.
Eating more fruit and vegetables is therefore very important
for children.
"Recent research, however, has
shown that almost one in five young people in Northern Ireland
rarely or never eat vegetables and one in ten rarely or never
eat fruit".
"We are using National food Awareness
Week to again highlight the importance of eating plenty of
fruit and vegetables. They do not have to be fresh - frozen,
canned, dried or juiced fruit and vegetables all count towards
the five portions.
There are lots of simple ways
to eat more, for instance, including dried fruits, such as
apricots, or fresh apples, mandarin oranges and grapes in
packed lunches.
"Creating colourful fruit or
vegetable kebabs, making faces or shapes out of vegetables,
such as melon boats or broccoli trees, are other ways of encouraging
children to eat more," she said.
The leaflet, Eat
well to keep well, shows how we can
easily eat the recommended five portions a day and is available
from all local health boards throughout Northern Ireland.
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