2010–2011 · lebanondiet.org archive

LANFS e-newsletter, issue 1

The only issue of the association’s electronic newsletter that the archive preserves, published around the turn of 2010–2011. It is the richest single page of the old site — about three thousand words — and is condensed here item by item.

Welcome from the president

The opening letter restated the association’s identity — founded in 1970, around 400 members, an adhering body of IUNS and MENANA and a member of FANS — and its goal of health promotion and disease prevention through conferences, exhibitions and public sessions. It invited readers to become active members and promised “exposure to innovative studies and practices in nutrition and food sciences”.

Studies reveal Lebanese are getting fatter

Two national obesity surveys carried out by AUB, in 1997 and 2008, through the Nutrition and Food Science Department and the Faculty of Health Sciences, showed an alarming rise in overweight. In 1997, 53 per cent of people over 20 were overweight, and the figure kept growing; among the elderly the prevalence doubled between 1997 and 2008, and among 6- to 19-year-olds overweight rose from 20 to 35 per cent, with obesity rates doubling.

The surveys attributed the trend mainly to dietary practices — a high-fat diet and soft drinks — and found that the least educated and married adults were most prone to overweight, while the least physically active adolescents and children had the highest rates. The conclusion was a call for mobilisation of government, international agencies and communities, and for prevention through education, public-health campaigns and intervention programmes.

Dean Nahla Hwalla named Fellow of the IUNS

The association’s president was elected a Fellow of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences — the first member from the Middle East to receive the recognition. The IUNS, established in 1968, had 79 full members at the time; LANFS had been one of them since 1993. The fellowship was granted in recognition of scientific publications, the establishment of nutrition centres, national projects and the formulation of national nutrition policies and programmes.

Policy brief: Scaling Up Nutrition

The newsletter presented “Scaling Up Nutrition: A Framework for Action”, a brief produced by the World Bank, UNICEF, WHO, WFP and FAO with a wide range of partners, and financed among others by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Government of Japan and DFID. The framework called for nutrition to become central to food security, agriculture, health and social protection strategies and for a scale-up of cost-effective nutrition interventions. LANFS joined about sixty organisations worldwide in endorsing it; the brief was published in the March 2010 Food and Nutrition Bulletin.

Coffee in moderation: a lecture at AUB

On 7 January 2010 a corporate nutritionist and AUB graduate gave a lecture titled “Demystifying Coffee”, organised by the Nutrition and Food Sciences Department with LANFS. Its message: for moderate drinkers, defined as under five cups a day, coffee brings antioxidants, fibre and few calories; instant coffee keeps the bean’s antioxidant properties; and, contrary to common belief, moderate consumption was not linked to heart problems or ulcers — though coffee was not recommended for people who already had heart or stomach conditions.

Training workshop on the new WHO Child Growth Standards

From 8 to 11 June 2010 the WHO headquarters in Geneva, the WHO Collaborating Center at AUB’s Nutrition and Food Sciences Department and LANFS ran an international training workshop at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Hamra, Beirut. Twenty-one health professionals — instructors, dietitians and nurses from universities, hospitals and the Ministry of Public Health — were invited.

The new WHO charts describe how children should grow — a prescriptive standard rather than a reference of how children are growing — and apply to all children regardless of ethnicity, socio-economic status or type of feeding. The workshop’s purpose was to create the first trained professionals in Lebanon who would go on to train others, at a time when childhood obesity was becoming a concern in the country.

Nutrition and Diet Center news: Lean Camp

On 15 June 2010, under the patronage of the First Lady, the Nutrition and Diet Center launched “The Lean Camp”, presented as the first diet and health programme in Lebanon and the Middle East to address overweight and obesity among children aged 10 to 17. Developed with Peaks Resort, it combined twelve-day sessions of hiking, climbing, archery, aerobics, zumba and team games with nutrition and cooking classes. Participants were followed up afterwards and joined the 10 km fun run of the Beirut Marathon on 7 November 2010.

Research abstracts

Two abstracts from department researchers closed the issue. The first, a total diet study of an adult urban Lebanese population (Nasreddine, Nashalian, Naja, Itani, Parent-Massin, Nabhani-Zeidan and Hwalla), analysed 1,215 individual foods to estimate intakes of cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, nickel and zinc and exposure to cadmium and lead. Average intakes met nutritional recommendations and stayed below toxicological reference values, except manganese in men and iron in women; iron intake appeared inadequate for 63 per cent of adult women.

The second, on adolescent obesity in Syria (Nasreddine, Mehio-Sibai, Mrayati, Adra and Hwalla), surveyed 776 students aged 15–18 in six secondary schools in Damascus and estimated overweight at 18.9 per cent and obesity at 8.6 per cent, with higher carbohydrate and saturated fat intakes among the overweight and obese.

Conferences announced in the issue

• 6th International Symposium on Diabetes and Pregnancy — Salzburg, Austria, 24–26 March 2011.
• 4th International Congress on Prediabetes and the Metabolic Syndrome — Madrid, Spain, 6–9 April 2011.

Original addresses on lebanondiet.org

The content above was published on the old site at the following addresses, which now redirect here — /newsletter/issue1/ — Restored from the Internet Archive on 20 September 2026; text condensed and edited for readability, facts and dates kept as published.

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