IT is surprising how fast we have adopted meals that were completely foreign to us.
Whiles some of these meals lack adequate nutrients, others are replete with excess fats and oils, thereby posing a danger to human health.
It is therefore not surprising that nutritionists are beginning to urge Ghanaians to go back to their roots – ‘Sankofa’ – and bring back the local foods, which were once the preferred meals in our homes and food joints.
The nutrition experts are particularly touting indigenous foods as a solution to child malnutrition.
According to them, Ghana has enough indigenous foods that have the recommended combination of nutrients to support the growth of children.
These meals are prepared with food items, like moringa, beans, agushi, smoked fish and spinach, which have been found to be rich in nutrients that the body needs for proper growth.
It is in the light of this that the Ghana Health Service (GHS) collaborated with Women in Agric Development from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) to demonstrate some of the nutritious meals that we can prepare for children using local foodstuffs.
Nutrition officers and public health nurses drawn from the regional and district levels took part in the activity to enable learn and replicate it in their respective areas.
When I got to the venue, the participants were trying their hands on the various meals and yours truly could certainly not resist a bite or two of ‘kosei’, whiles trying to keep my concentration on the story.
Some of the meals that were prepared included Tuubani, Dawadawa Jollof, Apapransa or yankikal-li (in Dagbani), Wakye, Moringa soup and porridge made from a combination of flour from millet, soya beans and groundnuts.
The Daily Graphic learnt that the promotion of indigenous meals is a key component of the implementation of the Nutrition and Malaria Control for Child Survival Project (NMCCSP) being spearheaded by the Ministry of Health and GHS.
The US$25million project is under the funding of the World Bank and it is aimed at utilising some selected community-based health and nutrition services for children under the age of two and pregnant women in selected districts.
The project commenced in September 2007 and is expected to span a period of five years, by which time all districts in the Northern Region, Upper West, Upper East, Central and Volta regions would have been covered.
The five regions were chosen to benefit from the project due the high prevalence of under-five mortality in those areas, which has been attributed to the high rate of malnutrition and malaria among children in those regions.
In an interview with the Programme Manager of the project, Mrs Hannah Adjei, she indicated that the nutrition officers and public health nurses were expected to replicate these demonstrations in their operational communities.
“They would involve community volunteers and mothers in these demonstrations to ensure that these lessons trickle down to the grassroots,” she said.
She noted that the volunteers were so critical to the programme because they helped the community nurses to teach women, particularly pregnant and lactating mothers, how to prepare these nutritious meals.
Madam Adjei expressed regret over the fact that governments and private sector were not willing to give adequate support to nutrition initiatives simply because the benefits of nutrition could not be instantly quantified or measured.
She mentioned that supporting nutrition efforts would contribute to higher productivity because people who get the right nutrition from childhood grow up to be more productive because they are mentally-sharp and physically stronger.
The nutritionist mentioned that poor nutrition resulted in poor growth, which could result in people looking younger than their age and not showing much brilliance and immunity from diseases as they should.
She also noted that poor nutrition contributes to poverty because stunted children mostly tend not to do well in life and this prevents them from making enough income to get out of the poverty range.
“If we can prevent stunting within the first two years, it would have far-reaching benefits for the child as he or she grows up,” she stressed.
With this project ongoing, one can only hope that these efforts could be sustained and expanded to ensure that Ghanaians really go back for their local meals so as the ensure that the future generation grows more properly.
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