Dietitians offer healthy living advice
Dieticians from all over the Waterberg District shared their knowledge with residents of Mokopane last Thursday as part of their Dietitian Awareness Campaign at the Crossing Mall.
MOKOPANE – The dietitians told Bosveld: “The reason for the campaign is to show there is more to us than meets the eye. They briefly introduced the community to some of the other vital roles the play:
Identifying nutrition problems and assessing the nutritional status of patients in a clinical setting.
Developing diet plans and counselling patients on special diet modifications.
Assessing, promoting, protecting, and enhancing the health of the general public in a community setting and providing strategies for prevention of nutrition-related diseases.
Working with individuals, groups and schools to provide dietary advice for healthy living.
Working with food and pharmaceutical companies to provide research, develop products, educate consumers, and promote and market better food and nutritional products in a business setting.
Emphasising the importance of breastfeeding as breast milk contains all the necessary nutrients that babies need.
The dietitians recommend that the community buy food marked with the, ‘Fortified for Better Health’ logo as some staple foods, like maize meal porridge, don’t contain enough vitamins and minerals for growing children.
To increase the nutritional value of meals, feed your child fortified complementary foods like fortified maize meal for babies and children, or micronutrient (vitamin/mineral) supplements. The ‘Fortified for Better Health’ products contain additional vitamins and minerals.
They concluded with the saying: “The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.”
redaksie.bosvelder@nmgroup.co.za
