Eating healthy isn’t expensive
Eating healthy is not as hard or expensive as some people may think it is. This was revealed by Ena Harvey Senior Vice-President of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Barbados as she also noted that last year there were over 400 strokes which meant there was more than one a day and that it was reaching the younger and younger population.
“On Saturdays at the Heart and Stroke foundation we run a youth gym for clinically obese children. We have kids 11 years old who suffer from hypertension, diabetes and its because of the way we feed our kids and the food culture now where time is not taken and food is not honoured.
“We have changed our lifestyle so much that there are some who think that food comes in boxes.”
She noted that some do not know there is something called Cheapside market, but believe that macaroni pie or chicken and chips is good eating
“To eat healthy you can reduce your food bill by as much as 50 per cent by shopping from the market or the vendors or where the food grows.” She mentioned that a lot of people have discarded the idea of taking the time to prepare food, “They don’t honour sitting together and having a meal. Parents and children don’t sit together anymore or they have their phone around the family table or they eat watching TV. They don’t sit together and discuss things and enjoy the meal and talk about anything.”
She believes that there is a need to look back at the old time ways of doing things and shopping as close as possible to the source to the food and that way one will recognise the value of our farmers, the value of our agricultural community and that we are what we eat and we can reduce our food import bill and get healthy.
“Some people don’t know that a guava is much more nutritious than an apple and the apple that we get are sometimes a year old which were picked during last year’s autumn season. That eight Bajan cherries have enough Vitamin C for you for an entire day.
“Our food is good for us, but people need to be sensitise and start feeding the children our food. Feed your children from the pot, you don’t have to have expensive food to eat healthy,” she added.