By Awa Sowe
Healthy foods refer to foods that are safe for consumption, fine in quality and are nutritious in meeting the principle for sustainability of health. Recently consumption of healthy food has emerged as alternative approach for preventing form obesity and chronic diseases, that affecting Africans with high threat, in which unhealthy food consumption is now the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in low and middle-income social classes.
Good nutrition prolongs independence by maintaining physical strength, mobility, endurance, hearing, vision, and cognitive abilities. Eighty-seven percent of older Africans have one or more chronic diseases that can be improved by nutrition therapy, including cancer, chronic lung disease, heart disease, dementia, diabetes mellitus, high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, obesity and overweight, and failure to thrive. Food consumption pattern refers to the amounts, proportions, variety and frequency withwhich different foods and beverages are habitually consumed in diets. It is an important aspect of household welfare, living standard and economic performance of countries.
Changes in food consumption pattern can be influenced by factors such as income levels, price levels, food service supply, consumption habits, cultural and traditional beliefs
Nutrition education set guidelines of learning experiences designed to facilitate the voluntary adoption of eating and other nutrition-related behaviors conducive to health and well-being. It also helps in understanding the availability and consumption of different food groups, such as dairy products, cooked food, animal products, fish, fruits, and vegetables. The analysis of food consumption patterns can be done using techniques like analysis of variance. Understanding food consumption patterns is crucial for promoting healthy diets, increasing life expectancy, reducing morbidity and mortality, and achieving food security and nutrition security.
To further understand the value of healthy consumption patterns, the Head of Nutrition Unit, Ministry of Health (MOH) Mrs Fatou Darboe was engaged. She highlighted that health eating habits help to create positive attitudes toward good nutrition and physical activity, as well as provide motivation for improved nutrition and lifestyle practices conducive to promoting and maintaining the best attainable level of wellness for an individual.
She said it can also provide adequate knowledge and skills necessary for critical thinking regarding diet and health so that the individual can make healthy food choices from an increasingly complex food supply, assist the individual to identify resources for continuing access to sound food and nutrition information.
“A healthy food, which is primarily about dietary diversity, is essential to meet energy and nutrient requirements in our body. Consumption of a wide range of whole foods, especially vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains and nuts, is particularly essential,” she noted
Ms Darboe went to explain that consumption patterns refer to the behavior of individuals and households when they make decisions to consume the product using their available resources continuously. The lack of healthy food consumption, she pointed out, has led to various NCD among African consumers.
In The Gambia, unhealthy eating pattern and under-nutrition continues to be a major public health problem exacerbated by poverty, food deficit, rural-urban migration, environmental degradation, poor dietary habits, low literacy level, poor sanitation, infections, and a high population growth rate.
The seasonal agricultural pattern also contributes to acute food shortages in the rainy season often referred to as the “hungry season” (July to September), as households exhaust their food supply before the harvest period. The low purchasing power of poor urban and rural households also has serious nutrition and health implications.
According to Mrs Darboe,The Gambia is experiencing the ‘double burden of poor eating habits and malnutrition’ with the emergence of diet-related Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, obesity and some forms of cancers. NCDs are on the increase in The Gambia, especially in the urban areas.
Factors such as change of diet and lifestyle, specifically among the affluent, have contributed to the increased prevalence of these diseases.
Darboe explained that with infectious diseases being a major public health burden, the increase in prevalence of diet-related diseases poses the challenge for difficult decisions on the allocation of scarce resources and is exerting immense pressure on an already over-stretched health budget.
The findings of an assessment recently published by FAO under the Gambia Food System profile, concluded that Gambia’s food systems require more nutrition-sensitive interventions to improve food security. In particular, it highlighted a need to mainstream food and nutrition into sectoral policies and plans, as well as create nutrition-sensitive interventions. Other measures such as nutrition-based processing in value addition systems were also encouraged. Equally, scaling up nutrition-focused homegrown school feeding programmes as well as nutrition campaigns to promote behavioral changes were suggested.
Additionally, The Gambia has already made progress through policy measures to improve nutrition. Specifically, the EU-funded Food Fortification Project has helped make significant gains in that area.The launch of the Food Fortification Regulation on 7 July 2021, making it mandatory to fortify wheat flour, edible fats, oils, and salt is a huge step in ensuring the nutritious level of foods.
Similarly, through the coordination of The Gambia Standards Bureau, new standards were implemented for fortified wheat flour, fortified edible oils and fats and iodized salt. Furthermore, bio -fortified maize, orange-fleshed sweet potato, cassava and iron-rich cowpea were successfully piloted in selected communities where over 10 000 beneficiaries including women of reproductive age, children under five years and adolescent girls and boys benefitted from these bios fortified crops.
