By Blessing V. Bonga
There is a critical need to revamp the Food and Nutrition Council (FNC)’s information system in order to continue extracting ground truth in information to inform National Development Strategy 2 (NDS-2) on the basis of evidence and household dynamics in a bid to arrest all forms of malnutrition, a senior Council official has said.
Speaking on the sidelines of FNC’s 4th Annual General Meeting held in Harare on Tuesday, Council Director General, Dr George Kembo said his organisation is worried about malnutrition and called for a multi-sectoral approach to mitigate the phenomenon in all its forms. This comes at a time when the country is broadly reviewing the performance of NDS-1, as it gears towards NDS-2.
As the Food and Nutrition Council, we are worried about all forms of malnutrition which are over, under and also the micro-nutrient deficiency. Speaking about over nutrition, our desire is to maintain a balance and avoid moving from under nutrition to over nutrition.
“Over nutrition is when one begins to carry a bigger body than what you can accommodate, emanating from poor dietary diversity or over-consumption, or consumption of one type of food which results in accumulation of fata and other issues,” he said.
Dr Kembo added that over-weight places a burden on a human being’s life, hence FNC’s desire is to ensure that people live a healthy life, their environment is safe, and the food they eat should be adequate and not be an over-supply of it. This should be augmented by eating the right nutritive food, quality food and moving away from what is sometimes referred to “junk” food, -normally processed food that is high on calories, unhealthy fats and added sugars.
Dr Kembo also stressed that quality food is not just defined within the urban spectrum as he touched on how rich most of our traditional foods are as compared to urban food.
“Eat nutritive food, quality food for the betterment of your health. And when we talk about quality of food, it is not only defined within the urban spectrum, it can also be defined in terms of the diversity of the food.
“Even your local food becomes quality because our traditional food also has significant micro-nutrient composition which speaks to that quality, and the moment you diversify, you improve on the quality. Your body’s ability to extract the necessary micro-nutrient is enhanced by the diversity of food,” added Dr. Kembo.
In a speech read on her behalf by Col. Bhebhe, Guest of Honour at the event, Permanent Secretary in the Office of Vice President, Gen. (Rtd) Chiwenga, Mrs. Marcia T. Nyanda commended the FNC Board of Directors for holding the AGM in compliance to Section 33 of the Public Entities and Corporate Governance Act, while also noting successes recorded by the council.
“The line ministry notes with appreciation the continued strategic oversight by the Board of Directors that has enabled FNC to remain aligned to its role of coordinator and conveyer of food and nutrition issues in Zimbabwe.
“Your immense contribution towards Government’s aspiration as enshrined in the NDS-1 and the vision of our country that is towards a prosperous and empowered middle income society by 2030 is indeed noted,” she said.
