More local healthy food is regional goal
We import too much food from abroad and much of that food is bad for us. And while that’s not exactly news to anyone who’s walked the aisles of a supermarket, what is worth noting is that this week in Belize City a number of nations are getting together to try to do something about the problem. Patrick Jones reports.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
The regional workshop brings together key agencies involved in food and nutrition in the Caribbean to assess the status of a comprehensive plan to ensure a healthy population. Chief Agricultural Officer Eugene Waight says the next four days will provide a forum for dialogue involving key partners in trade, agriculture, health and nutrition.
Eugene Waight, Chief Agriculture Officer
?We?re hoping that participants go away with a greater awareness for the need and the roles that communication and information play in terms of spreading the news about food security and poverty alleviation, eating right, and what programmes we have in place too.?
But getting the information out is the easy part. Prime Minister Said Musa, who was guest speaker at the opening of the five day conference, says attitudes play a big role in making the necessary changes.
Prime Minister Said Musa
?I think it is an uphill battle, but we have to persist, we have to continue and certainly the media can play a big part with this. But what we have to understand is we are dealing with a very sophisticated penetration here of our culture in marketing. Whether it be from the multinationals who want to sell their produce to us. I mean our people get cable television which means they are bombarded with advertisements promoting unhealthy foods, or certainly imported foods. Now we have to fight against that and obviously it?s a very unequal struggle going on here.?
Eugene Waight
?We need to change our attitudes. We need to learn to appreciate the very native and cultural foods that we have. And there are so many examples that, they are very nutritious, that really we don?t need to import a lot of these canned stuff. We can produce and consume a lot of what we eat.?
Director of the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute, Dr. Fitzroy Henry opened the presentations by pointing out that proper food and nutrition practices have enormous impact on the overall development of the region
Dr. Fitzroy Henry, Director, Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute
?The major nutrition problems in the Caribbean are obesity, anaemia and persistent under nutrition. Obesity is an emerging and has emerged as major problem. We have twice as many women than men overweight or obese in the Caribbean. And numbers go from as high as forty percent to about sixty percent in women in different countries. Men are usually half. Why is that important? Because that is the forerunner of the chronic diseases of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, some cancers are directly related and stroke which are the main causes of death in the region.?
Henry says it is not sufficient just to tell people to eat healthy or to get enough exercise; it?s a question of creating the conditions under which that behavioural change will flourish.
Dr. Fitzroy Henry
?So that is why we are here. We regard it as extremely important. and one of the key things we have to do in developing the plan is make sure that we not only put all of the onus on the individual as we did in the past, the individuals because we have to create behaviour change. The individuals can only do that much. I think the individuals need an environment that can support the behaviour change. It?s not good enough to just tell the community to ok, eat this or eat that, or exercise so many times when in fact the environment that surrounds us is encouraging us to do the opposite.?
Waight says that by the end of the seminar organisers are hoping that a road map for effectively distributing relevant information on healthy eating and living will have been developed. Patrick Jones, for News 5.
This regional conference is being organised by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation in collaboration with the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute, the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute and the Belize Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.
