Eating habits: Expert recommends access to nutrition information
NAN-HG-8
Nutrition
By Talatu Maiwada
Abuja, Nov. 30, 2016 (NAN) Mrs Sarah Abagai, Head of Department, Dietetics, National Hospital, Abuja, has advised Nigerians to access culturally relevant nutritional information that would help sanitise their food habits.
Abagai, the Author of the launched book, titled “Basic Concepts of Healthy Nutrition, the Secrets of Eating to Live’’, made the recommendation on Wednesday in Abuja.
The author said food was recognised as the most important aspect of man’s lifestyle, adding that food is the source that sustains or shortens life.
“The motivation to write this book came when I discovered a wide gap in the flow of nutritional information that Nigerians can relate to.
“It takes awareness for people to develop and practice healthy eating habits.
“No information is as critical as the type of information that can enable us live physically vigorous, mentally and emotionally healthy,’’ she said.
According to the author, people who engage in unwholesome dietary practices are waging war against their own health.
She stressed that those poor dietary habits results in disease conditions that develop slowly without the knowledge and realisation of the harm it does to the body.
“If our dietary choices, designed to nourish and sustain our bodies, begin to make us ill, then we must re-evaluate and strive to improve our knowledge of nutrition and our health.
“When diseases begin to manifest, such people will be compelled to imbibe healthy eating to treat diseases rather than healthy eating to keep healthy.
“We don’t have to be compelled by diseases to eat right we can go the preventive way, so that we eat healthy, keep healthy and live long lives,’’ Abagai said.
The expert, therefore, urged the Federal Government to employ dieticians at the primary health care level, saying that most dieticians are mainly in urban centres and tertiary health facilities.
She said trained dieticians at the primary healthcare level would help disseminate information on nutritional education in rural areas as well as guide the people into the right eating habits. (NAN)
TIM/MST/MST
Edited by Muhammad Suleiman Tola