Indigenous Food Consumption Guide For Healthy Living In Nigerian Families: A Home Economist’s Paradigm:- Georgina Oluchukwu A

ABSTRACT

Food is a basic human need which helps us to be healthy. Nigeria as a country is blessed with abundant food resources. Most of the time, consumers are deprived of the nutrients that are contained in these foods due to wrong food choices and poor management of these foods by some food handlers at home, restaurant, hotels and fast-food establishments. The consumption patterns of most households are characterized by starchy diets that are prepared mainly from processed and imported foods that do not provide all the essential nutrients needed for a healthy life style. Poor nutrition can influence the development of certain nutritional chronic disorders like obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cancer, diabetes mellitus and protein energy malnutrition.

 Proper food management is necessary for healthy living and access to nutritious, wholesome and safe food is fundamental to sustaining life and promoting good health. Many studies have revealed that, nourishing foods including snacks and drinks can be successfully produced from readily available and culturally acceptable indigenous food crops that can help to combat diseases, poverty and food insecurity in Nigeria.

  Many food researches have also shown that some food managers lack knowledge of the method of preparation of different food products using our indigenous food resources and as a result, rely highly on processed and foreign foods thereby neglecting our indigenous foods that are fully packed with nutrients required for the well-being of individuals and families.

More so, the high cost of food commodities, particularly imported foods demands that faster consideration be given to the usefulness of other local food crops, as well as a diversification of the methods in which these food crops are consumed. This worrisome development requires urgent attention as the Nigeria economy is so devastating that many families find it difficult to buy food. Using indigenous crops to develop food product will help to reduce the problem of food insecurity and the influx of foreign foods and other consumables. It will also increase the production of these indigenous food crops. Every food manager should therefore have knowledge of these indigenous food resources, their nutrient content and how to utilize them in food production in order to provide the consumer with the nutrients which the body requires for healthy living.