It was excellent to see a better turnout at our first Level 2 meeting this year. 27 members and 3 guests present.
President Hugh welcomed all and ran through a list of club notices prior to introducing our guests. Our first guest was Vinod Sareen. Vinod is our Assistant District Governor who is a member of the Sommerville Rotary Club and this was his first visit to our club. Apart from taking the opportunity to introduce himself to the club, he also took the opportunity to update us on where Rotary is at in regards to the "End Polio Now" campaign, and the District Polio fund raising project, "Tag On Tag Off". Standby to hear more about this project and how you will be able to participate.Thanks again for taking the time to visit Vinod, and St Johns Rotary looks forward to working with you over the year ahead.
David Hartstone then updated us on where we are with next years St. Johns Rotary Golf Tournament. Unfortunately our principal sponsor, Freightways, have advised us that they will not be in a position to sponsor the tournament again next year. We thank Freightways for their past support and ask all members to contact David with the names of any businesses who they think may be interested in picking up the sponsorship of this very important fundraising event for our club.
Our next speaker on the day was Dr. Bodo Lang, (seated on Peter B's left), from the Department of Marketing at the University of Auckland. His subject was, "How Sweet It Is - Dr. Bo Knows Best".Over the next 30 minutes all members very quietly listened to the good Dr. who shared with us a range of statistics and information on how much sugar many of us consume and how bad it is for us.
We are all well aware of this, but it was good to be reminded - some of the sound bites from his presentation were;
- Sugar is known under 61 different names,
- The maximum amount of sugars that should be consumed daily shouldn't exceed; Child - 3 teaspoons, adult female - 6 teaspoons and adult male - 9 teaspoons. (There are 4 grams of sugar in every teaspoon),
- In New Zealand we each consume on average 37 teaspoons per day,
- New Zealand ranks 3rd for obesity among 40 highest income countries,
- In NZL, $686 million dollars is currently spent annually on health care for obesity, and this cost is climbing,
- 74% of all packaged foods contain added sugars,
- Fruit Juices are a major contributor of sugar intake,
- Some good news; 440 mls of beer contain only 0.8 teaspoons of sugar and 104 mls of Dry Red Wine contains zero sugar,
So what can we do to reduce our sugar intake?
- Reduce juice consumption,
- Increase intake of water, tea and coffee,
- Avoid the likes of; muesli bars, flavoured yogurts, packaged cereals,
- and the list goes on......
A very interesting presentation - thank you Dr. Bodo!
Our official photographer was once again circulating in the meeting room looking for candid shots. A couple of these appear below;
