By Fr Paulino Mondo
“The secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside”
Importance of food
Food is any essential substance consumed to provide nutritional support for an organism. Today, the majority of the food energy required by the ever-increasing population of the world is supplied through self-initiative; that is why food safety and security is important. St Paul insists that “if you don’t work you should not eat” 2Thessalonians 3:10-12. A saying goes that if you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him/her because people who give you their food give you their heart.
Way to protect food
Some of us are likely not to grow and to waste more food than others. If you are the breadwinner, you can probably guess why. Some people have eyes bigger than their stomachs. In life we need smart food strategies like growing personal foodstuffs, making grocery lists, and using up leftovers. The common-sense rule to serve only what you can finish. Take some extra steps to help yourselves grow and not waste food. The main way to value food is by not to waste it but instead to use it for its right purpose. Good and sufficient food is meant to give nutrition to the human body so that we remain healthy. Here is our lesson for today.
- Take a personal food waste challenge
Measure how much food you waste daily and come up with ideas for how to stop it.
- Plan for your meals minimum one week ahead
Planning ahead not only reduces waste, but it also allows you to make fewer trips to the market, saving time, cash and gas. If you don’t plan your food, you end up poor working only for the dust bin. Imagine toiling all those long hours and when your food is ready for eating, you throw it away. We need to think about the value of food because if we ignore good food, we get sick and may end up dying. We need to respect food because it nourishes life.
- Limit pre-meal snacking
Don’t let yourself snack mindlessly when you are approaching mealtime.
- Make good food easy to eat and serve it in small portions on good plates and cups
How many times have you had to throw away the half-eaten plate of food you cooked badly?
- Give food beautiful names especially when you have children in the house
Having fun with food helps you eat more of what is on your plates. Giving ordinary vegetable names like ‘Green joy’ and ‘Power Punch Pumpkin’ makes you eat more vegetables.
- Get the portions right
If you are too young to serve yourself, serve them small portions of food at determined intervals of time. If you heap too much onto your plate, some of it is likely to go to waste.
- Do not serve other people what you don’t like to eat
Some people have classified foodstuff in the house. A good one for the owner and the rest for whom it may concern. This is a wrong attitude, it wastes food.
- Cook and eat in a healthy way
Healthy eating involves preparing food preserving nutrients and preventing disease which will make you save on medicine. Prepare food healthily by steaming, boiling, grilling, roasting and cooking foods in as little water and for as a measurable period of time.
- Get rid of distractions-turn off the television/screen
This is important. It is hard to be engaged and focused on your food with the distractions of your own mind and technology. Eating is an honorable duty.
- Eat with others/share a meal
A meal is an opportunity to share the pleasure of the food itself and a special treat of feeding someone with the food you have prepared.
- Stop before you feel full
When we are eating mindlessly and eating without thinking about it, it is easy to keep eating. Part of mindful eating is knowing what it feels like to feel satisfied, which is not the same as being full. It takes our brain about 20 minutes before it gets the message that we are full.
Save what you have not eaten.
When you finish eating your meal save the leftovers
Wash clean what you have used for making and eating a meal
Help yourself from an untidy eating place.
Teach the people you stay with about respecting food
In the long run, if your household learns to value food, they are more likely to grow up to have good eating and food saving habits. In addition to taking food waste as a challenge:
Visit a farm to learn about crops and animals.
Plant a garden or even a few window herbs together.
Plan meals you can cook together.
Discuss the cost of different foods at the grocery store.
Explain what happens to the food when we throw it away.
Start a compost bin so that you can generate organic fertilizers to produce essential food near your place of residence.
There are three dining tables which should be known by every Ugandan
- The Alter where we celebrate the Eucharist and the word of God
- The Dinning table where we share our daily food
- The Matrimonial bed where God creates life through a loving family and where we rest after evening prayer when we are tired.
We need to know how to utilize each of these necessities of life and they all need good food. Uganda is blessed with a good climate all year round which supports the production of a variety of delicious food locally. Time is now that whenever we think of eating some food, we have also to put in reasonable effort towards its production and safe conservation. Food is everything we are. It is an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandmother. It is inseparable from those from the wise. Remember, too, that at a time when people are very concerned with their health, it is all about what they eat and drink. We are most times unhappy because we have handed over the responsibility for our nourishment to faceless corporations who make us eat what we don’t know and even what we don’t love, simply because we want to try something new.
Keep this in your heart that it is easier to change a man’s mind than to change his diet. In life, there is no magic bullet; you need to eat healthily and live healthy to be healthy and look healthy. Peace be with you.
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