Agriculture, food and nutrition for a healthy life

Good food it is necessary for a person to grow well, work hard and stay healthy! Many common diseases arise from hunger and poor nutrition. Not having enough nutritious food weakens the body’s ability to resist all types of diseases, especially infections. Nutritious food helps the body prevent and fight disease and stay healthy. Anyone who eats a good mix of foods, including eggs, vegetables, fruits, and so on, gets the nutrients their body needs. It is always better to eat well than to buy vitamin pills, injections, syrups or tonics.

According to the health manual, “Where there is no doctor” written by David Werner, “To stay healthy, our body needs plenty of good food. The food we eat must satisfy many needs. First, it should provide energy to keep us active and strong. Furthermore, it must help build, repairAND protect the different parts of our body. To do all this we need to eat a combination of foods every day.”

However, it is important to note that there is a difference between not eating enough (malnutrition) and not eating well (malnutrition). A person who is weak or sick because he does not eat enough food of any kind is said to be suffering from malnutrition or general undernutrition, while a person who is weak or sick because he does not eat the right kinds of foods that his body needs, is said to suffer from specific types of malnutrition. There are also people who get sick from eating too much of certain foods, such as processed and “junk” foods.. People who eat a lot of these foods are more likely to have high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, gallstones, diabetes and some types of cancer.

There are many different reasons for hunger and poor nutrition. One of the main reasons is poverty. In many parts of the world, a few people own most of the wealth and land. They can grow crops such as coffee or tobacco, which they sell to make money, but which have no food value. Or the poor may cultivate small plots of borrowed land, while the owners take a large share of the harvest. The problem of hunger, food insecurity and poor nutrition will continue to exist until people learn to share resources equally with each other.

There are also many different ways to address the problem of hunger and poor nutrition, as many different things contribute to it. Some of the things people can do to meet their needs for better, low-cost nutrition include: creating family gardens; improve land use through crop rotation; soil irrigation; use of natural fertilizers; better food preservation; pisciculture; choose to have smaller families through family planning; and so on. Some actions bring quick results. Others work for a longer period of time.

Furthermore, when money is limited, it is important to use it wisely. This means cooperation and looking to the future. A poor family can usually be better fed if they grow or purchase plant foods such as beans, peas, lentils, and peanuts along with a staple such as corn or rice, rather than purchasing expensive animal foods such as meat and fish. It is good to eat a variety of plant foods. Different plants provide the body with different proteins, vitamins and minerals. For example, beans and corn together satisfy the body’s needs much better than beans or corn alone. And if you add other vegetables or fruit it’s even better. However, where family finances and local customs allow, it is wise to eat food from animals whenever possible. This is because even high-protein plants often don’t have all the different proteins the body needs.

Furthermore, keeping in mind that eating behaviors during adolescence contribute to the creation of lifelong eating patterns, food-related educational programs, such as nutrition education, should be incorporated into school curricula. Schools are ideal environments for nutrition education because they reach most young people and nutrition falls under several thematic areas, including health, science and science/consumer education. Nutrition education programs in schools should aim to improve students’ knowledge, skills and behaviors, in line with dietary guidelines. Proper nutrition education can help young people acquire the knowledge and skills needed to make good food choices and develop healthy eating patterns throughout their lives. Furthermore, nutrition education programs should not be limited to health-related aspects of food consumption. There is also a need to educate students, or more generally, consumers, on agriculture and food systems issues involving: food production, processing, packaging, distribution, retail, consumption and food waste.

However, as long as the current human governance system lasts, hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition will continue to exist. They cannot be permanently eradicated from any form of human government or from any economic or social system. The historical documentation confirms this. Over the millennia of human history, every type of government and every type of economic and social system has been tried, but the problems of hunger, food insecurity and poor nutrition still remain with us.

Mr Daniel Ighakpe,

FESTAC City, Lagos

[email protected]; (+234) (0) 913-739-3829