As we told you earlier, Regional Food and Nutrition experts are meeting in Belize this week to discuss what's on your plate, and how they can make it healthier through the use of the media. If they had their way, instead of pigtail and beans, you'd probably be eating soy products. But how can policy makers seek to use policy to dictate what's on your plate? Well the Minister of Health, Vildo Marin explained that what you eat determines what goes right or wrong with Belize.
Vildo Marin, Minister of Health
"The major causes of morbidity and mortality in our countries are related to poor diet and sedentary lifestyles. Diabetes, hypertension, prenatal morbidity and mortality, osteoporosis, certain types of cancer, dental cavities, all have strong nutritional component. According to UNICEF, newborns weighing less than 5.5 pounds are approximately 20 times more likely to die than the heavier babies. Good nutrition is crucial in early childhood development and it seems to me that overweight is becoming just as much a problem as underweight and here I will not mention the gender, I think both of us are equally problematic in that area. So lets face it, my friends, good nutrition is crucial not only to early childhood but good nutrition is crucial to middle and late childhood. It is crucial to adolescents, adulthood, and to the middle, and my good Chairman friend, also when we enter the old age it is also important; good nutrition is of utmost importance."
And while the Minister of Health warned about the consequences of dietary pitfalls, in his keynote address, the Prime Minister spoke about the behavioral practices that determine what we eat, which most times is imported processed food, selected to the neglect of local products.
Said Musa, Prime Minister
"The last time I looked at the numbers it was well over $100 million of food that we are importing into Belize. Why we are sometimes ashamed of producing and eating some of our cultural foods and how we have become so dependent on imported foods are matters that need to be discussed, I would hope, at this seminar. Our buy Belizean campaign, for example, has had an uphill battle against an established mindset that if it comes from outside it is good and local is bad. And so we continue to have an insatiable demand for canned foods and imported consumer goods. We are left behind with the health bills and the solid waste problems that these foods cause. How our people have the unhealthy, and I like it clean but its unhealthy, we have this incredible appetite for pigtail, as a critical component of our diet potato chips in a tropical country like Belize, and while we prefer powdered milk or condensed milk over fresh milk, or in the case of infants breast is always best, right Dr. Israel."
At the end of the meeting, policy developers will come up with a plan to use public awareness to change eating habits towards more healthy practices. But practice does not mean implementation, and in a candid moment, the Minister of Health said we just plain talk too much.
Vildo Marin,
"Sometimes you know I believe that we in Belize we talk too much and that's why BTL is making a lot of money these days. The telephone companies I guess in all of our Caribbean countries make a lot of money. We talk too much and we don't do the things that we need to do."
Said Musa,
"I agree with the Minister that there is too much rhetoric, too much talk, we need to get down to action now. That's the way the world has been going with the Millennium Goals and all these summits and of course the media feeds on that too because you are in the business of words, that is the nature of your business. But we have to understand behind the words must come action. We have to indulge in both unfortunately because we are in the business of presentation as well. We are in the business of winning minds and hearts but in the end, I believe, we will be judged by what we do and our performance, not by what we say."
7NEWS produced for broadcast by News Director Jules Vasquez
Edited for the internet by Keith Swift
