Traditional food good for children
The light grey dawn of every weekday morning finds Mary Wambui preparing breakfast for her two children and husband. Once the family is fed, she packs her children’s favourite snacks, which include mandazi, sausages, and queencakes along with ready-to- drink artificial fruit juice and sends them to school.
At school, the teachers are concerned that Mary’s children only eat the snacks they carry-avoiding school meals. This has prompted one of the teachers to summon Mary to the school so that they could discuss her children’s affinity to junk food at the expense of the more nutritious school meals.
When Mary responds to the teacher’s summons, she is advised to limit her children’s intake of junk and to instead pack for them healthier snacks, which should include traditional food.
A report by an international food foundation suggests that incorporating traditional food in the children’s menu is the most important aspect of providing them with a nutritious diet. Such a plan requires skillful balance to maintain variety in the diet, taking into consideration the children’s nutritional needs.
A study published in the East African Journal of Public Health that evaluated eating trends of children in Kenya’s urban areas reveals that fewer than 25 per cent of children surveyed took a healthy diet. And as countries continue to develop, processed, fatty, salty, and sugary foods are gradually replacing traditional food.
Modern foods Vs traditional African foods
So, why is traditional African food preferred to the modern, highly-processed and highly-refined foods that are taking the bigger part of the menu in most homes?
The seeds of unhealthy eating are sown in childhood, when many children consume and get used to junk foods. The modern diet is a far cry from the foods that our parents and our grandparents ate when they were growing up. Their dietary needs were met primarily by indigenous fruits, vegetables, roots, nuts, seeds and legumes. People bought fresh food directly from the farm.
True, technological advancement has made food supply abundant, and feeding ourselves and our children has become easier. But the modern lifestyle hardly allows time for preparing balanced meals. So, we do the next best thing, run into the store and grab the most convenient thing to prepare or better still, sit on a high stool in a fast food joint and gobble a ready meal.
In choosing convenience, we sacrifice good nutrition. Between the source and the time the food finally gets into our body, it has been processed, refined, prepared and packaged, losing its nutritional value. And this should not be your child’s diet. We must look for practical alternatives, for the key to an optimal diet is good whole foods, which happen to be the locally available traditional African foods.
Importance of feeding children on traditional African foods
Good nutrition during childhood will help lay the protective groundwork for immediate and future wellbeing. Traditional African foods provide nutrients that are not found in the ‘modern’ foods we eat. Ironically, our children’s nutritional needs are being neglected at this all important stage of their life.
Traditional African foods for your children’s nutrition
To create and maintain a strong body in childhood, good nutrition is essential. Adequate amounts of carbohydrates, lipids/sterols, proteins, minerals, vitamins and enzymes must be consumed. Without these nutrients, body cells become ‘sluggish’. Traditional carbohydrate-rich foods such as millet, sorghum, cassava, yams and sweet potatoes, provide the body with adequate energy and are cheap and easy to find.
Due to physical growth and overall development, children’s body cells undergo renewal and rebuilding more often than those of normal adults. To grow, for instance, the body needs adequate protein, a major cellular building block made of strings of amino acids. Children’s bodies cannot make enough amino acids required to replace old cells and rebuild damaged ones. So, these essential amino acids must be supplied in their diet. Traditional African foods including lentils, sorghum, millet, nuts and seeds, are good sources of amino acids needed for building and repairing body tissues.
But there is more to it than feeding, renewing and rebuilding body cells. Body cells need protection. Since children’s bodies burn a lot of energy, they also produce a lot of damaging-free radicals. Free radicals are also generated by sunlight, cigarette smoke, smog, pesticides, food additives, drugs and several other chemicals to which we and our children are exposed. Antioxidant nutrients help to neutralise free radicals. Many of the locally available deeply coloured indigenous fruits and vegetables contain nutrients such as Vitamin C and flavonoids which protect body cells. The Vitamin E family and carotenoids defend the cells’ membranes.
Building a healthy foundation that will last a lifetime requires a commitment to good nutrition, which includes traditional African foods so that your children are in shape for what they need to do now and for their future responsibilities.
The writer is a nutritionist.
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