THE ROLE OF CONSUMERS IN FOOD TRANSFORMATION AND NUTRITIONAL OUTCOMES

Hephzibah Onyeje Obekpa, University of Agriculture Makurdi and NAPP Scholar (2019)

The world is facing an epidemic of poor diets and this will not go away by itself until we all work together to overcome this problem. Food transformation is an important determinant of nutritional outcome and households can make a significant impact in the way they transform their foods by the little things they do every day. To an extent, food transformation is dependent on the attitudes, control, knowledge, and capabilities of the consumer and on the types of foods available and purchased for transformation as meals. Food transformation begins with all the processes or stages the food goes through from point of purchase to its final consumption. Starting from the farm to markets and then people’s homes and tables, everyone can make an effort towards good transformation of food to ensure healthy and nutritious diets which translates to positive nutritional outcomes.Consumers should make their contributions by asking vendors for the source of food items they purchase, this is very crucial because these reviews will get back to producers alerting them that consumers have become conscious of the safety and source of their foods. It is the duty of a consumer to be concerned about the source of their food.This is important because when consumers reject foods because of their quality and concerns about how it is produced, a signal will be sent to producers on the need to produce healthy foods or face the risk of loss.This is necessary because unhealthy produced food poses a global risk to people. Unhealthy diets are the largest global burden of disease and pose a greater risk to morbidity and mortality than does unsafe sex, alcohol, drug, and tobacco use combined. Because much of the global population is inadequately nourished (i.e., undernutrition, over nutrition, and malnutrition), the world’s diets urgently need to be transformed (WHO, 2016). It is also very important to eat foods especially in their season as they are fresher, cheaper and tastier instead of eating the same foods week in and week out.

Source: FAO

Another critical factor in food transformation has to do with the way consumers process and store their foods. Sanitation is a huge factor that must be considered when processing foods or storing them. In Africa where most poor households store their foods through traditional methods like drying under the sun and on local stoves, efforts should be made to ensure that the environment where such food are stored, is clean and that foods are not flea infested. Storing your food under hygienic conditions are important as this contributes to the quality of nutrients you get from the same food when cooked and on the table.

The domestic preparation of food induces significant changes in their physical and chemical properties, consequently their health attributes (Bongoni, et al., 2013). During food preparation, cross contamination happens even without the food preparer knowing this because of some carefree habits in the kitchen. When multi-tasking like washing meats, cutting vegetables and serving food at the same time, utmost care must be taken to avoid cross contamination as most foods get contaminated from the kitchen before consumption. Consumers must also avoid over cooking foods like vegetables which do not need excess heat in other to get the maximum nutrients obtainable. If consumer awareness of this duty is enhanced, there would be an increased collective effort in transforming our foods correctly which will also translate into better nutrition.    

Source: the EAT –Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems