Nutrition, Diet and Health Tips

As a country we are in need of more oncology (cancer treatment centers), diabetes clinic, weight loss surgeons and more. This is not a bad thing considering the surge in numbers for both communicable and Non-communicable diseases. But why is it so?

Myself, everytime I get to CBD- Nairobi Town, my eyes get all teary and I start sneezing. This is something I’ve noticed for the past few months. I always go back home with red eyes. What this simply means is the toxicity in the air and environment at large is too much. Now picture someone who works at CBD for 8-14 hours a day 6 days a week. The duration of exposure will make it worse for them.

We are in agreement that unless we get to manufacturing, as a country we will not develop. But again this begs the question where or what happened to policies and laws that are meant to protect the masses from overexposure to toxins and unsafe environment? What are we doing to protect our tress? Environment? So that they can in turn protect us.

You might be thinking ooh, I rarely go to CBD so this won’t affect me. Well you are very wrong.

Toxic environment means changes in climate (we have already experienced the effects and with the projections it is getting worse) which means less food production and availability of the basic households commodities.

The second thing too much toxicity means access to UNSAFE foods. How does this really happen? Toxicity affects our rain water quality, soil quality and remember we have use of unregulated fertilizers, pesticides control and more agricultural inputs so our crops and other agricultural produce get to us already contaminated.

Our bodies are not meant to digest or even metabolise such so we end up burdening our key organs of Detoxification such as the liver, lungs and the kidney increasing incidences of chronic Non-communicable diseases such as cancers, diabetes, renal diseases and more. Now you get the relationship between toxic environment and disease.

And as if that’s not enough, we have our regulation bodies and standards seriously compromised due to greed, lack of Accountability, Embezzlement and corruption which means the foods safety and standards are not met for most produce.

As long as the manufacturers can ‘oil’ the pockets of the officers, they’ll have their products on the shelf. Quite a sad state of affairs.

You’ve all witnessed people dying due to food poisoning, you remember the Mukuru girls incidence, the family members who died from consuming porridge – a staple in many foods. You can imagine if porridge flour is contaminated the number of kids and school going children that would be affected?

We need to start acting right as individuals, as Professionals and as a country if we are to propel Kenya forward.

It’s quite saddening to see such things and you wonder who will protect us? It’s the sole responsibility of the Government to take up sectors or institutions that are meant to protect the health and well being of its citizens regardless of whether it’s profitable or not.

After all when the budget was read the other Day there was provision for emergency funds right? Food safety in Kenya needs to be taken as a serious emergency because it’s getting out of hand 😔

Thank you for taking your time to read this. Please share so it can get to the right authorities and individuals.

Your favourite Dietitian
Lilian Mumina
Mumina Wellness Solutions.