Nutritional Science: What's New

Topic 1: Staying Healthy During Social Distancing

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting every aspect of our lives from virtual classrooms to telecommuting, restaurant closures, and outright quarantines.  As public health measures are put in place to reduce the spread of the virus, protecting and improving the health of individuals should be maintained while practicing social distancing. Adopting a healthy lifestyle consisting of a healthy diet, exercise, and good sleep behaviors - all needed for sustaining a robust immune system – is an easy measure to implement.

Details Click Here: Nutrition and the COVID-19

Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHaP) launched the National Nutrition Guidelines (1.95 MB, PDF in Arabic) to serve as a unified national reference on food and nutrition education in the UAE’s community and health institutions. The guideline aims to:

• Improve the nutritional status of the UAE’s community and raise awareness about healthy eating behaviour and lifestyle-related diseases
• Reduce the prevalence of chronic and malnutrition diseases such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, anemia, osteoporosis and vitamin deficiency
• Scale down non-communicable diseases and mortality rates
• Encourage individuals to engage in physical activities for better health.

Coronaviruses, like the one that causes COVID-19, are thought to spread mostly person-to-person through respiratory droplets when someone coughs, sneezes, or talks. It is possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object, including food or food packaging, that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes. However, this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.

Read more: Food and Coronavirus Disease