In its ninth year the ADM Belize Mills National Nutrition Quiz Competition is taking its place alongside the Coca Cola Spelling Bee and the Social Security Math Olympiad as a prime showcase for students to display their wit and demonstrate their academic talents. This year the event was at a new venue, inside the Prince Room at the Princess Hotel which had just enough room to accommodate the hundreds of students who attended. I was there, and the winner is.
Jacqueline Godwin Reporting,
None of the students could have been more surprised than the winners in the 2008 ADM Belize Mills Secondary School National Nutrition Quiz Competition. But at the end of the fourth round and some fours later, Eni Gonzales, Alice Huang and Risela Rivero of San Pedro high top the scores with one hundred and twenty five points.
Alice Huang, Winner – ADM 2008 Nutrition Finals
“We just came back from the first competition, we were very busy with our school work and we barely had any time to study sow e came with a mentality that we won’t make it that far so right now we are just in total shock that we came out on top so we are very happy.”
The young women competed against students representing seven other secondary schools across the country. For their effort Gonzales, Huang and Rivero each received six hundred dollars and a trophy. But according to the students it is not all about capturing the first place.
Risela Rivero, Winner – ADM Nutrition Finals
“It is very important because it applies to our lifestyle, it helps us in every way in what we eat or not.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
And how better informed are you three young ladies?
Risela Rivero,
“Well we have been practicing what we have learned an obviously it has helped us a lot because at first we did not know what to eat or what we eat what it does to our bodies but now that we know we can implement it in our lifestyle as well as the people around us.”
And that is why the competition is held every year to improve the image of food and nutrition in Belize.
Lorraine Thompson, Technical Advisor - PAHO
“Try to increase the knowledge about good nutrition and healthy eating among the young people, we have targeted the secondary schools because we feel that there is a chance of effecting change when you target the young people
and so for the past number of years we have been trying to increase the number of schools participating. We started with something like 6 schools back when it started and now we are up to a total of twenty eight schools participating nationally.“
It has been nine years since secondary schools have been participating but it was only last year that for the first time Belize was represented in the regional part of the competition in which the first, second and third place winners get to participate. Unfortunately the 2008 top winners will not be among the nine Belizean students who will compete in that Caribbean event.
Eni Gonzales, Winner – ADM Nutrition Finals
“Since we are going to graduate this year I do not think we will be able to go and represent so we are just going to have participate from our school go and represent.”
Lorraine Thompson,
“We try to do the competition around September because the regional competition is usually in October and November and it is hard to get students just coming back from school to get them geared up for the competition so we have been having a lot of difficulty with that so for that reason you might noticed that we brought down the quiz to earlier in the year, the national competition and so it ends up that the students who would have participated and would have possibly won they would probably some of them would be graduating and will not be able to participate in the regional and so we then leave it to the school to decide who would participate in the regional competition.”
And the team that goes to the regional competition will be comprised of winners from the first, second, and third place schools. They will participate with the use of audio-conferencing facilities at the UWI School of Continuing Studies.
