What Is Your Awareness Level Towards the Nutrition Topic?
The food we consume daily, has everything to do with our body development, well that is what your primary teacher told you right, well this is correct, in fact more than correct, that is what UNICEF South Africa in association and other partners want to discuss in the upcoming weeks on the campaign and that is where us as (University of Johannesburg) volunteers come in, to share our input and views on what this topic really means to us across various topics.
What are the Topics that are available for discussion?
Non communicable diseases (non-contagious) - this is an extremely broad discussion that we can have, it explores topics around Risk factors and their prevalence in our society, take diabetes for an example how many people do you know have diabetes and what is their lifestyle.
Food Justice - this is how much is healthy food is in our markets, we can expand on this topic or thought to even your friends on campus, have conversations on when was the last time, they had access to healthy vegetables, then you could also discuss the price surrounding those foods.
www.foodbanking.org/promoting-food-security/
Accessibility - this explores remarkably interesting themes on how far (distance) we obtain our foods, the availability of street vendors and where we can buy vegetables, remember our geographical locations differ, and this could affect our behavior on the obtaining of these foods. We could have internal conversations with our vendors or shops on campus, to observe their thoughts on these topics.
Advertising/marketing - have you thought about the food you buy on campus? Have you noticed on how it is advertised, well this is a conversation we can have with our on-campus vendors and have a discussion on how this marketing affects us, whether good or bad, we can expand on advocating for the marketing of healthy food on campus, so that we can make better informed decisions on healthy food consumption.
Let us explore a quick fact on Non communicable diseases
NCDs are the leading cause of death and disability in SA (South Africa) – Diabetes and CVD + cancer on the rise.
They are often chronic, lower quality of life and are costly to treat
They can be prevented.
Here are the quick Risk Factors of NCDs
Tobacco Use
Obesity
Air Pollution
Unhealthy diet
There are numerous ways we look to approach this campaign and we are not, closing the door to our friends on campus that might wish to contribute, please kindly follow us at @UNICEFUJ on tik tok and Instagram same handle, we are also glad that some of our volunteers have started making their mark towards what we seek to accomplish.
leave a comment on your thoughts on this topic and share with friends and family to keep the conversation going.
By Vukani Mabuza
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