AFRICAN NEWS FLASH

Do you feel tired, hungry and excessively thirsty all the time? Do you experience blurred vision or a tingling in the feet? Have you lost weight, frequently visited the toilet to urinate? If the answer to these is yes then you could be suffering from diabetes. Diabetes occurs when your body is unable to break down glucose into energy. This is because there is either not enough of the hormone insulin (produced by the pancreas) to break down the glucose, or the insulin produced does not work properly. Diabetes is a non-communicable disease but can be hereditary and can lead to other medical complications if not well managed. In 2017, statistics from the World Health Organsation indicates that about 8.8 per cent of the global population had diabetes. That is over 450 million people diagnosed with the disease. Unfortunately, the figure is projected to rise to 9.9 per cent by 2045 making diabetes one of the fastest growing chronic non-communicable diseases in the world. Diabetes ha...

If you're partial to the odd bowl of fresh, home-made guacamole or would rather spend your cash on avocado on toast than get yourself on the property ladder, then you really ought to be washing the peel before you cut up and tuck in. Now, I always live by the rule that unless you're eating the skin or peel then it doesn't need to be washed, but a study by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has found that I'm talking out of my arse (again) and that people should be washing the peel of avocados before cutting. In a two-year-long assessment the FDA found that avocado peels can contain nasty bacteria, including listeria and salmonella. The study tested 1,615 avocados and found 17 percent tested positive for listeria on the skins and just under one percent of the avocado skins were found to be tainted with salmonella. However when it came to find the bacteria on the flesh of the fruit, it was much lower - only the flesh of three out of 1,254 tested positive...