We all eat, but it is sad tale of opportunity to eat badly – Anna Thomas
You don’t need silver fork to eat good food – Paul Prudhomme
Nutrition is the process of providing or obtaining the food necessary for growth and health. The quality and quantity of food consumed at a particular point in time, to a larger extent, determines the status of growth and health of individuals. Nutrition is a concern from the embryonic stage in the womb to old age. This typifies the fact that the diseases suffered by individuals could be controlled or checked if we are meticulous enough about the quantity and quality of food we eat and the time we eat them.
The growth of a child is the function of the quality and quantity of the food the child takes in. This to a large extent determines the disease suffered by the child. A malnourished child is susceptible to varied diseases. The place of appropriate nutrition in the growth of a child can therefore not be overemphasised.
Worthy of note is the fact that appropriate nutrition for the growth and health of children is more economical and effective than spending scarce resources on drugs and treatment when they suffer any of the childhood diseases often caused by malnutrition.
In contemporary times, the increasing rate of Nigerians coming down with hypertension, diabetes, kidney diseases and cancer leaves much to be desired. About 20 or 30 years before now, cases of hypertension, diabetes and kidney diseases were not as rampant. This piece however recognizes the slant that there was poor public awareness in the past as a result people were not checking the numbers and technology was not as advanced as we have presently.
It is against this backdrop that this piece is proposing that as a preventive approach, an extensive advocacy program by way of visits and sensitisation to major, if not all, hospitality industries by personnel from the statutory health institutions like the Federal Ministry of Health or NPHCDA to review their various menu list by replacing or alternating junk foods like the Meat pies, samosa, fish roll, spring rolls they normally serve as breakfast with organic foods like okpa, kose/moi moi i.e bean cake with oat meal or masa.
Year in, year out, Nigerian universities churn out thousands of agric economists and extension graduates that are unemployed. Those employed seem to be shirking their responsibility. The federal and states’ ministries of agriculture should have extension workers to guide rural farmers on the application of pesticides.
A healthy nation is a wealthy nation!
Remi Adeleke writes from PDP Quarters, Suleja, Niger State
