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Sweets Week Off to a good start:'Make healthy choices'

Sweets Week Off to a good start: Make healthy choices

What about your candy behavior during the corona crisis? Do you drink more than before corona? That is one of the reasons that the Candy Week has started to focus attention on choosing healthy alternatives.

The current lockdown with mandatory working from home does not help with a healthier diet either. Dan Schapendonk, one of the initiators of the Candy Week:“Because of working from home, we are constantly confronted with the food in the cupboard. At work you often have a fixed pattern with which you live. That pattern disappears when you get home. Your regular eating moments turn into a big snack feast”, according to Schapendonk.

During this corona crisis, 18 percent more sweets and snacking; cookies, chocolate and pretzels or chips are especially popular. In addition, 7 percent find it difficult to choose healthy food at all. Over the entire corona period, 17 percent have gained weight and 5 percent have gained weight, but have returned to the old weight.” This is apparent from figures from a study by the Nutrition Center into our eating behavior in corona time.

Read also: 'Candy without going too far:how?'

Sugar

Figures from the RIVM also show that 1,846,199 kilos of sweets are eaten in the Netherlands every week. Every year a Dutch person consumes an amount of sugar that amounts to about 10,000 sugar cubes. We eat more than three quarters of the added sugars at home.

More than 84 percent of the Dutch also eat less than the recommended amount of fruit and 94 percent eat too little vegetables every day, according to figures from the NAFG

This can lead to serious health problems.

Healthy Variations

That is why the initiators of the Week of Candy Good want more conscious choices to be made when it comes to sweets and snacks. The focus is mainly on young generations, because if you offer them healthy variations now, they will soon be a matter of course.

Schapendonk:“We want to make clear to consumers what they should pay attention to. What is healthy and how can you make your diet healthier with small steps. By linking a specific date to the Week of Candy Good, it is easier for people to stick to the good intention.”

Do you want to participate in the Sweet Candy Week? Sign up via Weekvansnoepgoed.nl.