Various nutrition and food experts gathered at the Radisson Red Hotel to map a healthy traditional food future for South Africa.
With the country celebrating Heritage Month this month, the Healthy Living Alliance (HEALA) through its advocacy for the recognition of traditional and indigenous foods as alternatives to convenient and often unhealthy food diets, brought together experts from various fields who are keen to help South Africa stem the tide against non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
A group of panellists led by SABC news anchor, Bongiwe Zwane, proposed solutions and interventions aimed at helping reduce SA’s obesity and non-communicable diseases scourge.
According to HEALA, globalisation has resulted in food exclusion as globalisation and other forms of dominance have weakened and displaced traditional and indigenous dietary patterns.
This, according to some of the experts, has resulted in nutrition transition that has seen South Africans both in urban and rural settings disregarding their own ways of producing and preparing food. This, they say, is all in an attempt to assimilate and adopt western ways of thinking, talking and producing even their own foods.
Among the panellists was S’phamandla Manqele, the co-founder and commercial director at Local Village Africa, a private and non-profit organisation which empowers rural communities to grow their own food.
Representing the healthcare profession was Dr Nomathemba Chandiwana, a healthcare practitioner; principal scientist and director at Ezintsha Research Centre, and HEALA’s nutrition programme manager Angelika Grimbeek.
It is reported that South Africa is home to an alarming obesity rate that suggests that at least 70% of SA women are overweight or obese.
HEALA has reported that this puts South Africans, including its children and women in particular, at an increased risk of diabetes and other illnesses.
“We need to convince government to lead these conversations, which is why as HEALA, we are agitating for a more meaningful approach to the sugar tax levy or health promotion levy where this levy could be used to benefit children and rural women as part of the social grant system. There has been so much power given to these industries (to use) their monopoly to create these unhealthy food products,” Grimbeek suggested.
For Dr Chandiwana, it all starts with educating and empowering doctors and other healthcare practitioners with skills and knowledge about nutrition, healthy food choices and lifestyle so that they too can empower their patients.
“One of the first things that need to happen is for healthcare professionals to be educated about nutrition and food. We really do not know. From the medical field to nursing colleges, we should also be empowered because we see our patients coming with NCDs and other healthcare problems, but we only give them medication and do not go further to the type of food they are exposed to and the whole conversation about their real situation,” she said.
Manqele proposed empowering rural women with knowledge, skills and training to use their land and resources that are readily available to them to create food hubs and community-based projects and after growing these, to sell them to health shops as finished products.
The Star