Eating habits

I thought of what I should discuss this week while I was going out with my cousin to buy call card. Fortunately, where the call cards are sold is close to a food vendor’s shop.

I had already mentioned the type of call card I wanted when a man came to the food vendor’s shop and said he wanted to buy “Rice N50, beans N50, macaroni N50, plantain N60, N200 assorted meat that is offals. He also ordered for one bottle of Pepsi and two sachets of pure water.

I opened my mouth in disbelief. I couldn’t close it. Equally surprised was my cousin. We were both shocked to see the man seated to eat the large portion of food. I have never seen a person eat like that before.

Much later I had another experience at church bazaar. There was a feast held with the bazzar where I met a girl of my age eating like she had never eaten before.

She ate pizza, shawarma, Chinese rice served with roast chicken, ice cream, fizzy drink, and then she top it up with pop corn. She sat on the same table with my sister and I. Unknown to her, we were both watching.

I am not a doctor though but I feel it is important we watch what we eat as teenagers. I could recall a foundation once came to my school to give a lecture on diet. The dietician explained to us that people think wheat is good but it is not. I didn’t quite understand the term she used but she said wheat flour supplied to us in Nigeria is not so good.  She also said only 5-7 percent of such wheat enters the American market but about 87 percent enter Nigeria market. She also said we should be careful in taking bacon because it takes 3days before it digest in our body. We hear of all sorts of diseases in small children like, diabetes, stroke, cancer etc.

Most of these diseases are as a result of what we eat. As my biology teacher would say we should ask ourselves: ‘’what nutritional value does this food am taking give my body.’’ We Nigerians don’t mind anything that comes our way, if we eat rice in the morning, we warm it and eat it as lunch again and probably take bread in the evening. We must learn to watch our food intake as children.

IKEOLUWAPO OLUBANJO

Ikeolwapo Olubanjo is a SSS1 student at Lagos Anglican Girls’ Grammar School, Surulere.