OPINION | By Godfrey Kutesa
HEALTHY foods have given way to less healthy foods and beverages in the diet of the average African child. French fries, potato chips, ice cream, and soda have displaced fruit, vegetables and milk. This change has not occurred in every Ugandan household, but it has occurred in many.
When parents are unequivocally in charge, they decide what is for supper, and their kids either eat what is offered or they go hungry. That was the norm in the African families as recently as the 1970s, but today it is the exception.
In the 1970s, it was common for parents to say, “ Ssooka olye emere olyeke olye ennyama”, meaning first eat the food on the plate and you’ll get yourself a piece of meat. They also used to say “no snaking in between meals. The aim was to instill a sense of discipline in us when it come to food. Some African parents still insist on such rules but they’re the minority.
According to statistics from Coca Cola Sabco, Ugandans consume on average 2.25 bottles of soda per month, making it about 27 drinks per person every year. This has increased from what it used to be 20 years back but to children, there has been a replacement of soda by other soft drinks. The percentage of meals which Ugandans ate at fast-food restaurants increased by 120 percent. Some private schools have raised money by installing vending machines selling Coke, Pespi, Riham Soda, Fizzy Soda, e.t.c. We don’t have regulations that prohibit the sale of junk food and sugary drinks in schools after all these are other ways school administrators make money.
Now if a school has three (3) months in a term and budgets ninety (90) days of feeding children. And in that budget, it accounts three (3) meals per day each at Shs.3700/- per child. This school would have to spend Shs.333,000/- per child on meals in a term. It means that a child will have to attend school all days of the term and eat all meals in full. But what happens when a child ends up skipping meals?
When a school puts a canteen in place and stocks it with enough snacks, it’s very common for students to opt snacks to a well prepared meal of Posho and Beans. Schools make a lot of savings on this shortage. I know of a boy who was at SMACK for 4 years but never ate food in the dinning until he left.
Our children have changed so much today. They have grown up in a culture in which their desires are easily satisfied and are paramount: in which school lessons are often presented as entertainment: in which University professors are graded by students based in on much fun their classes are. In such a culture, it is unreasonable to expect children to eat Posho and Beans at School without protest when they’re accustomed to pizza and French fires. In some private schools, kids have started bringing in their own brown –bag lunched rather than eating what prepared by the school.
Especially in more affluent schools where kids have many options, it is unrealistic to expect that simply offering kids healthy choices will consistently and reliably lead to kids making healthier choices.
Parents especially affluent parents, now commonly carry bags of snacks in the car on the way to and from school. Heaven forbid that the children should experience even a moment of hunger. They don’t want their kids to get hypoglycemia.
New evidence suggests that allowing kids to have on-demand access to food may be one factor promoting obesity, independent of the total number of calories consumed. It’s what we call Ad lib feeding. Ad lib feeding through out the day appears to disrupt circadian rhythms, interfering with normal metabolism and disturbing the balance of hormones that regulate appetite.
Recent studies with laboratory animals have found that animals with Ad lib access to food become fatter than animals with only scheduled access to food, even when the total calories consumed are kept the same in two groups. So here’s the thing. Restricting the the amount of time when food is available to 09 or 12 hours out of 24 – without restricting calories – improves health and brings weight back to normal. Unless parents get back to this important disciple, more and more children are going to be overweight.
Many parents don’t want their children to be hungry for even a few minutes. Anyhow, since when did a few minutes of hunger become unacceptable? When kids have the final say, then parents must make every effort to ensure that kids are not uncomfortable. Not even for 5 minutes and this is very bad. To some parents hunger – even just on the car ride home from school is intolerable. Kids who have never been hungry in life will grow up to be heavier; yet psychologically they are likely to be more fragile. They haven’t learned their own needs.
And this is where the problem starts. When parents begin to cede control of their kids, food choices often are the first thing to slide. A statement like “Jerry, no ice-cream until you eat your food” morphs into “Jerry, how about if you eat three spoons of your food (rice & peas), and then you can have ice-cream?”
As I described earlier, parent today have lost power in their homes. They’re no longer in charge but rather they’re consultants. They can’t draw a meal time-table of what they know children “need” to eat but they just ask children what they “want” to eat and that’s absurd. Parents’ command has melted into a request or a question capped with a bribe.
Recently I was at a restaurant where I watched a well-dressed father pleading with his daughter, who looked to be about 5 years old. “Honey, could you please do me a favor? Could you please just try a bite of your green peas?” I never commented a word but friends, we should know the danger we’re putting our children into by being like this.
When we feed kids with such appeals, they take them literally. If this girl does condescend to eat a bite of her green peas, she is likely to believe that she has done her father a favor and he now owes her a favor in return.
The time has come for us parents to reconsider what we allow our children to eat and how we have trained them to feed.
The writer is founder of the Kuteesa Foundation and BOYS’ Mentorship Programme.
