GNA – Ms Gifty Ampah, the Coordinator for Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition Programme of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), said nutrition is the bedrock for proper human growth and encouraged Ghanaians to patronise local foods.
She said lack of good nutrition produced weak populations, hence the need to eat well-balanced diets, regularly.
“Sometimes when we are running late for work and all those things, we skip breakfast but that habit is not good because breakfast contributes to checking your weight…,” she said.
Ms Ampah said this during a breastfeeding awareness advocacy programme at the Tema Main Market, organised by the GHS with support from the Greater Accra Regional Health Directorate and the Tema Nutritional Team.
It was to create public awareness on the importance of breastfeeding to the healthy growth of every child.
Ms Asmah said Ghanaian local foods were the best one could eat to become healthy and urged all to continue patronising those foods.
“Our local foods are the best you can go for; because ‘waakye’ for instance, by the time you are done eating, you would have taken some beans, rice, stew, fish, and some vegetables, when added. So our foods are good…,” she said.
She said junk foods were unhealthy as they were high in calories from sugar or fat, with little dietary fiber, protein, vitamins, and minerals, which added important nutritional values to the developing body.
She encouraged the public to engage in regular exercises to keep the body active.
“Your body also needs physical activity, we don’t need you to be running around the entire country to say you are doing a physical activity but in your own house, compound, walk with your children, play with them,” she said.
“It is also part of the ways to increase your activity levels so as to utilise the energy that you take in”.
She said COVID-19 was not a hindrance to breastfeeding and encouraged mothers to exclusively feed their children with breast milk.
Ms Ampah appealed to all to help advocate breastfeeding, especially by the men, to support their wives after delivery to ensure the infants were breastfed.
GNA