Take some time and reflect on your latest food choices. That plate of food that you last ordered in the restaurant or the stock of food resting on the shelves of your home kitchen. Would you love to change mind about what you are eating? I think you should free yourself from malnutrition by making good food choices.
Food choices are good investment. They yield positive returns in the form of good health and progressive economic outcomes. On the flip side, poor food choices may contribute to incidences such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, growth retardation in early life and chronic neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. Diabetes, for example, with a burden of 347 million people worldwide having it has been linked to unhealthy diets that are high in Carbohydrates, fats and sugars; and low in vegetables and physical activity. The global economic burden of treating diabetes has been increasing exponentially from US$1.3 trillion in 2015 and it’s projected to rise to an estimated US$2.1 to US$2.5 trillion by 2030. Poor nutrition causes morbidity and mortality which attracts a financial burden. Bethany Frankel notes that your diet is a bank account and good food choices are good investments.
The increase in number of eateries selling fast foods and processed foods, known to be high in sugar and saturated fats which have a negative effect to the body has contributed to unhealthy choices. Poor maternal nutrition, which plays a key role in determining infant outcomes, has also scaled up malnutrition. While malnutrition is an unprecedented pandemic in Africa, few people seek nutrition intervention and there’s limited interest from the population to learn about it. We are duty bound to understand what we eat and what it does to our bodies. Taking a personal initiative to read about food, consult with a nutritionist and making radical changes to our recipes and menu should be our starting point. The same way we plan with our time and money, let us also plan our diet. I recommend the Mediterranean diet for starters in this journey of investing through good food choices.
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