Selman: Get back to basics

Esther Selman, Director of the Caribbean Institute of Nutrition and Dietetics believes what we get from our own gardens can heal us.

While speaking to The Barbados Advocate at the third Caribbean Nutrition Conference

2018 at Hilton Barbados, Selman indicated that the three day conference gives a holistic view about Nutrition under the theme “The Science of Garden to Plate, Cancer Prevention and Survival”.
She explained, “It is a three-day conference that draws people from Barbados but also throughout the region and we have presenters from the United States who are attending the event too. We have a prevalence of Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in Barbados and throughout the Caribbean, therefore we are parallel with the United States. In Barbados and the region we have high incidents of cancer, diabetes, hypertension etc. but it is just more to do with lifestyle, that is the reason why I decided to even have a nutrition conference because I realised we need to educate our Barbadian population as well as the region. NCDs have a severe impact on quality of life, it also goes into the workplace and it reduces productivity. If we have a healthy nation we will have a healthy workplace and then a healthy home and church.”

According to her, “The main thrust of the conference is not only to look at nutrition but to look at nutrition holistically. We have made a shift, let us look back at what happened with our grandparents and our great grandparents, they worked land, they ate anything but they were physically active in the land and children played outside, but we don’t have that now – we have a society that is sedentary. People walked a lot before, now we have cars, the entire environment has made a shift. We didn’t have any problems because we ate from the land which did not have any pesticides and persons kept active. It is time that we look at Nutrition seriously because the health of our people depends on taking what we put into our bodies seriously; and the importance of educating the youth of the country about better nutrition.

This conference is a health and wellness Tourism conference and I believe that we need to develop health tourism in Barbados, this conference has people who came in from throughout the region and we have the environment that can facilitate health tourism.” (NB)