It is not news that the cost of living in Nigeria has skyrocketed.
The Covid-19 pandemic, inflation, and rising insecurity are among the factors
being blamed for that. The fact is, good nutrition may be a huge challenge in
some homes at this point. At The Informed Mum, we understand that nutrition
plays a vital role in overall health thus we think sharing the following tips
would help us attain good nutrition inspite of the cost of food items.
1.
Focus on locally produced foods and buy from
local markets. Most Nigerians believe (sometimes rightly) that the quality of
foods from the supermarkets is higher than those in the open markets. The poor
regulatory conditions in the country make this belief debatable. But one thing
we should be able to do at this point is to ditch the foreign foods for local
ones. We wouldn’t only be growing our economy; we would also be saving our
money. Buy the Nigerian rice, swap Semo for Amala, tuwo or garri. For babies,
ditch the packaged baby foods and produce your own cereals-based food like akamu/pap.
You can choose to fortify the baby meals with fruits, nuts, and proteins
sourced from our locally produced foods. We have some links to explorable baby
food options Mango puree, Avocado and egg puree, Sweet potato and spinach puree and many others by clicking Baby meal ideas . “Good quality” doesn’t necessarily mean “imported”. I may
actually trust akamu made from the corn I bought in a local market than some of
the baby foods bought in supermarkets.
2.
For babies under 6 months of age, exclusive
breastfeeding cannot be overemphasized. It is free, cheap and the
healthiest option for most babies.
3.
Eat foods in season. Our lack of steady
electricity for food storage often means that foods and fruits that are in
season are as cheap as dirt, then become as expensive as diamonds when their
seasons start to go. One way of feeding fine is to stick to foods that are in
season. Season of yams; eat yams. Do the same with beans, fruits and even
vegetables. Nigeria is so blessed with arable land that there are foods in
season all year round. During the rainy seasons, we get the vegetables like
Ugu, spinach and so on, abundant in the Southern parts of Nigeria. When the dry
season comes, vegetables from the Northern parts of Nigeria where they practice
a lot of irrigation farming start to bloom. There is food for every season, we
just need to make our taste buds adapt to our pockets. We would end up both
healthy and able to save some money for our other needs
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