A dietician with Trust Hospital and Clinics has said the intake of sugar does not cause diabetes but a failure in the body’s system.

Wise Letsa explained that it’s the inability of the body system to process and use up the end product of energy given foods we take in, is what amounts to diabetes.

 “The fact is that it is not the mere intake of sugar that will give you diabetes. But then when you are diabetic, because the body is not able to absorb or take up the sugar, if you eat a table a table sugar, your blood level can rise.”

“So no matter where the sugar is coming from, whether as a breakdown product of the food you eat or from the fruit or from the table, that should not be the cause of diabetes,” he told Nortey Duah on Joy FM's Ultimate Health, Sunday.

Notwithstanding, Mr Letsa advised non-diabetics to limit their intake of sugar since a high intake of sugar can indirectly lead to glucose intolerance which will then lead to diabetes.

“We are aware that too much sugar can make you store the excess of fat and that can indirectly lead to glucose intolerance and diabetes,” he stated.

Mr Letsa said although the system needs the starchy foods such kenkey, fufu, etc “it is all about working the right proportions and also about eating them with some roughage and fibre.”

Clarifying what he meant by sugar in his expression, said, “a lot more education should be done on the situation so that people get to know that sugar is a chemical component but then that is the name we give to the one we put in food...but then the fact is that, when we eat out kenkey, our fufu and all that, they are broken down to become sugar that is what the body actually uses through other processes to energise itself."