Nutrition – How to combat the perils of misinformation?

The most important fact that young people MUST be taught from school and parents is the art of healthy eating. It is not necessarily an expensive option, but nutrition is an important aspect of education that is overlooked.

It is important first as a young child to be given healthy food to eat. Few parents change their habits for their children, but it is an advisable option as young people must eat healthy food such as reed raw rice, as opposed to white polished rice that is the norm today, leading to a whole range of illnesses. On the same vein, eating leaves grown at home without the use of any pesticides is important as well as to eat less of sugar and more of locally grown indigenous legumes.

I do not believe in forcing anything down anyone, but I do believe an early start will make a lifetime of difference, as it is difficult to change your dietary habits later on in life, however much one accepts that one is not eating healthily. So the early parental involvement in this project not confined to youth but to much younger children is important.

At the youth stage young people are more aware of the rights and wrongs as so are able to understand the rationale which in early years is mere what the adults say as opposed to them being able to logically deduce the reasoning behind the admonishments to use less sugar.

As a country we are now at the risk of a series of non-communicable diseases. The worst of which are caused by alcohol, and cigarette and related cannabis and other ingestible drugs that youth are prone to partake in. It has now spread to the worrisome childhood diabetes that is brought about by too much starch consumption, especially of the refined varieties like flour, but more especially the sweet tooth Sri Lankans seem to be proud of.

Let it therefore be a telling lesson for kids that if they do not change their eating habits at a very early age to healthy food, they are more than likely to suffer badly with illness resulting from a bad diet and have to be on medication all their lives to control a situation which if they have been warned off earlier could have reduced their problem or eliminated it altogether. So parents and young people you have a joint effort at this.