Healthy eating: Possible or impossible?

Reports are that the Rural Development Commission will be rolling out a “Grow What You Eat Programme”, to help the public understand the importance of feeding themselves and as a means of helping to reduce the island’s high food import bill. Let’s hope Barbadians wholeheartedly embrace this programme.
It is clear any efforts to get Barbadians to grow more of their own food and to by extension eat healthier is a must, given reports as well by Dr. Lystra Fletcher-Paul, Sub-Regional Co-ordinator for the Caribbean at the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), that Barbadians are literally “eating themselves to death”, given the high levels of overweight and obesity amongst the local population and the high levels of chronic non-communicable diseases severely affecting citizens.

Pointing to information produced by the World Health Organisation, Dr. Fletcher-Paul indicated that by the year 2016, 52.6 per cent of persons over 16 years old in Barbados were overweight and 23.1 per cent were obese. As such, she noted that the data suggests that over half of the adult population of Barbados is overweight and approximately one in five persons is obese.

Furthermore she said, the problem is more severe in women, as almost 60 per cent of women over 18 years old are overweight, compared to 44.7 per cent of men. Thirty-one per cent of women are also obese, compared to only 14 per cent of our men. The data therefore suggests that more than twice the amount of women are obese, compared to men in this country. According to the FAO representative, the problem of course is linked to the incidence of chronic non-communicable diseases, such as stroke, hypertension, diabetes and some forms of cancer, which are now currently the leading cause of death in the country and all this is directly related to the foods we eat.

Now while a great deal of work has been done to make persons more aware of the need to eat healthy and to even bring healthier menus to schools, I do believe that further steps need to be taken at the national level, to make it easier to eat healthy. Of late, it has been suggested that healthy foods that are grown locally, should be packaged in such a way that consumers making a purchase find it easy to cook and consume them. This is a great idea, given the hectic lifestyles of many Barbadians. Greater effort must be made at the national level as well, in getting fast food restaurants to allocate a certain percentage of their menus, to healthy foods.

Of course, it can never be overstated that individuals have to be responsible for their own health. An ounce of prevention is certainly worth more than a pound of cure. As such, we must all seek to cut down on salt and sugar, eat more fruits and vegetables and exercise frequently, even if we have to schedule it. Indeed, eating healthy, if we make the effort, is not impossible, though it may be challenging. We simply have to make a determination to start eating healthier food portions and then take small steps to change our dietary habit, and those small steps will eventually add up, if we remain consistent and persistent in our efforts.