How Healthy Is Your Consumption?

By Putri NV Laoli.          

Nutrition sufficiency and public health depend on the quality of consumption. The globalization era led to changes in lifestyle and diet so that Indonesian people face multiple nutritional problems. On one hand, malnutrition problems are generally caused by poverty, lack of food supplies, or low understanding of nutrition. On the other hand, they can be ignited by an economic factor at certain levels of society but not balanced with knowledge about nutrition with a balanced menu, so they ignore their consumption to fulfill their desires. People daily consumption tend to consume risky foods for their health, such as high levels of sugar, salt, and fat and minimal elements of vegetables and fruit.

This consumption pattern also threatens students during the pandemic because many online activities from boarding houses or homes so outdoor activities are reduced. The phenomenon that occurs is that the longer people are in a pandemic situation, the level of 'laziness' or lazy to move is increasing. Indirectly, this condition affects careless eating patterns, irregular rest time, and inappropriate nutritional intake for the body's needs. Students frequently complain of stomach pain, acid reflux, obesity, and malnutrition.

Understanding healthy living behavior by paying attention to consumption patterns is a crucial point to know. In the Energy and Environment program: Responsible consumption and production, Stube HEMAT Yogyakarta initiated the discussion activity 'Revealing consumption patterns of young people, physical activity and obesity during a pandemic' with Ir. Ferry Fredy Karwur, M.Sc., Ph.D., as the resource person. The discussion participants were students with various study backgrounds, from Education, Governance, Engineering, Management, Communication, and Theology, they found enlightenment and enrichment of knowledge related to consumption patterns of young people (5/3/2022) at Wisma Pojok Indah, Condongcatur. He started the session with exercise to campaign the importance of the body burning fat and morning sun exposure. This outdoor activity made participants feel tired, and relaxed body, some were sweating and some did not. He revealed that the pandemic made students fall asleep in the room without activity and neglected nutritional intake. The current health threat is that food tends to contain high sugar. Hence, the accumulation of glucose in the body potentially causes health problems from obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

The data on cases of death due to Covid-19 are dominated by those over 46 years of age. From other data, patients dying from Covid-19 accompanied by comorbidities, hypertension, diabetes, heart, kidney, and lungs are in the top five highest cases. It seems that the younger age group is more 'safe' from the impact of being exposed to Covid-19, but keep in mind that comorbidities that aggravate Covid-19 cases are diseases caused by the accumulation of someone's unhealthy lifestyle. So, if someone cannot manage nutritional intake and a healthy lifestyle since young, degenerative diseases will attack.

One threat that cannot be considered 'trivial' is obesity among young people, which is influenced by age, eating in excessive portions, wrong consumption patterns such as eating out of meal times, minimum physical activity, heredity, disturbances in the body's heat production due to wrong sleep patterns due to being more active in cyberspace, also due to increased stress.

The Director of Stube HEMAT said, "After getting new knowledge of controlling a quality lifestyle, you should start making changes as a sign that you all have learned." In closing the discussion, the participants stated that this training made their understanding more open and observant to the reality of observing every daily behavior and attitude in terms of more responsible consumption and production.***