Why Attention To Diet Is Important Amongst The Emerging Middle Classes in Africa.

 What Africa must not do now, with its greater wealth per capita and the sophistication of mobile and computer communication, is make the mistakes that have happened in Asia. The basic rice, vegetable, fish and meat diet that kept Asia going in the past is being eroded by ‘Westernisation’.

With more disposable income across Asia it is meat, wheat and dairy that are on the increase and with a marked effect on the incidence of obesity and heart disease - ‘so called Western diseases which are crippling their health systems and disabling their working populations .

Africa must not let the West do this to them.

Though it is increasingly accepted by some Africans  that some of their traditional foods and methods of preparation do not provide ideal nutrition, eg nshima, it is vital that good thinking goes into what might be best to replace them and that they be replaced gradually where they are not healthy.

Most of Sub Saharan Africa is fabulously fertile. There are of course issues about fresh water but that is there when it is wanted to water the marvellous vegetables that she sends to the rest of the world.

Slowly the West is learning, after hundreds of years, not to destroy these vegetables by cooking them.

but to eat them as they are, incorporating them into warm raw vegetable salads.

It is great for us that we can have summer vegetables in a winter many thousands of miles distant  but so sad that Africa seems not to be able to harvest for itself, to be putting on them on your plates straight out of the garden.

Africa must avoid a rapid replacing of its traditional foods with the industrialised rubbish that infests the West, products  that carry preservatives, sugars and many other unhealthy substances that cause obesity and illness.  Many natural traditional foods can be kept and incorporated with new foods that can be cultivated in your rich soil.

Companies across the rest of the world spend billions on advertising their rubbish and will take every opportunity to do so in Africa.  

Increasingly in the UK people are stalling in the supermarket walkways, taking goods off shelves and spending time reading what they might be putting in their mouths.

Public awareness is helping this to happen - food programmes, and media onslaughts about what is good and bad are helping. I am sure this is happening in Africa too but the pressure must be kept up to stop what I call  ‘Big Foodie’ - the big manufacturers -calling the shots.