Projects Abroad Nutrition Project Teaching Healthy and Affordable Eating Habits

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WORDS Cara Sainsbury

According to UNICEF, many of the global under-five deaths occur in children already weakened by malnutrition. In 2010 this amounted to 4.2% of children under-five in the Western Cape being diagnosed as suffering severe malnutrition. On the opposite end of the scale, we have the South African Medical Research Council reporting that nearly 70% of South African women are both overweight and obese. This means it’s not uncommon to have an overweight parent, with an under-nourished child in the same family.

Two very different ends of the same spectrum and yet both of these unbelievable facts have to do with poor nutrition. The newly started Projects Abroad nutrition project aims to help and improve the lives of these children and adults by teaching about:

•  inexpensive ways to provide food for the family
•  the importance of eating food that is nutrient-rich

Unfortunately, many health problems stem from limited knowledge and lack of food availability, especially for poorer families. So the nutrition project will educate as many of the local communities in and around Cape Town about healthy eating and how to cook nourishing meals (on little resources) for the whole family.

The vegetable garden (including these just-planted tomato seeds) will be a source for the volunteers to cook with as well as educate the participants about healthy food. Photo: Cara Sainsbury

Projects Abroad South Africa started the nutrition project because they saw there was a need for food and nutrition lessons specifically in the centres where the Projects Abroad care projects are active. The volunteers at these centres noticed that the children found it hard to concentrate and this was partly due to the fact that they weren’t eating enough. Project manager and dietitian Deborah Talbot explained: ‘We will, when the project is fully set up and active, develop recipes for the care centres, which are healthy, affordable and easy to prepare. My volunteers and I will then go to these care centres and help the staff there with cooking and we will also try to provide some of the ingredients needed for the recipes.’

‘The second reason why Projects Abroad started this nutrition project’, Talbot continued, ‘is that there is a large need for nutrition education and intervention in the local communities.’ If malnutrition can be dealt with early, all kinds of related diseases and illness can be prevented. If children are malnourished, they can die from pneumonia and diarrhea and if adults have compromised immune systems, they can die from HIV and TB.

However there is another side to the lack of nutrition education; poor eating habits and diet are more likely to lead to diabetes. Centre for Diabetes and Endocrinology warns that 3.5 million South Africans suffer from diabetes, with millions more undiagnosed and susceptible. This is occurring in rural and urban communities.

As the project has only just started, project manager Talbot and her volunteers have spent most of their time setting up the Wellness Centre (which is next to the surf project) in Muizenberg. This includes developing screening tools and questionnaires that can help determine where patients are in terms of their health, weight and height. They have also been compiling nutritious recipes which are affordable and easy to cook. During the very first few days the volunteers were busy building planters outside. Talbot said: ‘We want to get to the point of being able to cook with our own produce and also use the vegetables as an education tool.’

Nutrition volunteer Julie McDonald presents an exercise to high school students which highlights the amount of protein in different kinds of foods. Photo: Cara Sainsbury

The nutrition project works with primary school children, high school students, adults with chronic diseases and other groups who attend the Projects Abroad surfing project. They have different activities and educational programmes for the different kinds of groups that they treat. The younger children come to the Wellness Centre on Tuesdays and Thursday every week. They go surfing first and afterwards the nutrition volunteers will cook a meal or snack to eat. One of the volunteers said: ‘We teach the children what is healthy about this meal and what kinds of ingredients went into making it. Sometimes we also show how easy it is to make for themselves at home.

‘We teach the children what is healthy about this meal and what kinds of ingredients went into making it. Sometimes we also show how easy it is to make for themselves at home.’ – Nutrition volunteer

On Monday and Wednesday, the volunteers organise detailed presentations for high school groups. This covers more in-depth knowledge about healthy eating, protein intake, organic food, food labels and ingredients. They do this specifically for the high school group as they are more interested in specific diets and have a higher understanding of nutrition.

And for the chronic disease patients the volunteers take all their measurements, for example height, weight, and BMI. ‘When we meet every week, we try to educate them on improving their lifestyle through small measures that are manageable even with the limited resources these patients have available to them at home,’ Talbot clarified.

Even though the project has been running for only a few months, the volunteers can already see a difference, especially at the project Where Rainbows Meet (WRM) in Vrygrond. The nutrition project visits WRM twice a week to help the adults who have chronic diseases. As the volunteers haven’t been with these patients for a long time yet, they have started to put in place methods to monitor the patients’ weight and health. A volunteer explained that ‘the patients appreciate so much already. Just having someone there who will listen and give up their time to care about them is making such a huge difference!’

Nutrition volunteer Gill Cameron visits one of the outreach care centres working with the project. The volunteers have to measure and weigh children to check if they are malnourished or not. Photo: Cara Sainsbury

Australian nutrition volunteer Julie McDonald has been at the project since the second week after its launch. She just finished studying nutrition at the University of Sydney. She wanted to come here to South Africa and gain a little bit more practical experience first before finding work in her field. She said: ‘It’s always been an interest of mine to work in community nutrition and so I knew that this would provide me with the skills and knowledge to go back and work in that area. I even saved a few of my lectures so that I could use them to teach the children about nutrition.’

Despite it being early days, the project has already had a lot of impact on the small communities of children, teenagers and adults who are suffering from the lack of nutritional information. And they have so many more plans especially regarding the care centres and the vegetable garden. Talbot said: ‘It’s a slow and gradual process, starting a project. However this is a project that will bring much help to the locals even if it is in small steps.’

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