The new course on diabetes comes against the backdrop of Mr Lee’s National Day Rally speech, where he highlighted the chronic ailment as a health crisis. Two new one-day courses…

The new course on diabetes comes against the backdrop of Mr Lee’s National Day Rally speech, where he highlighted the chronic ailment as a health crisis.

Two new one-day courses on nutrition have been launched by Temasek Polytechnic (TP), reinforcing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s rallying call for Singaporeans to take care of their health and make lifestyle changes.

Dr Kalpana Bhaskaran, domain lead for applied nutrition and glycaemic index research at TP, stated that the course will help educate the public to adopt healthy eating in preventing of diabetes and other chronic diseases.

The new course on diabetes comes against the backdrop of Mr Lee’s National Day Rally speech, where he highlighted the chronic ailment as a health crisis. In his speech, he advised Singaporeans to get their health checked, exercise more and watch what they eat, so as to reduce their diabetes risk.

Roughly 400,000 Singapore residents have diabetes, and a significant proportion of them do not even know it. Diabetes also becomes more prevalent as people age, and is estimated to affect nearly a third of Singaporeans aged over 60.

The other short course offered by TP – titled nutrition for optimum health – covers basic nutrition, weight management and menu planning strategies, and provides recommendations to optimise exercise performance.