Family nutrition guide
Langue : Anglais
Eating well is vital for a healthy and active life. Most people know that
we need to eat in order to have the strength to work. However, not
everybody has a clear idea about precisely what it means to eat well and
how this can be achieved with limited resources. The problem of eating
well with limited resources is a particularly important one for many
people in developing countries. Poverty is a major cause of the
nutritional problems found in developing countries. But malnutrition also
exists where people are not poor and where they can get enough to eat.
This is clearly evident in the fact that there are two - quite opposite -
main types of malnutrition. The first type is the result of insufficient
intake of good-quality and safe foods. The second type is caused by an
excessive or unbalanced intake of food or certain types of food. Both can
be prevented by an adequate or healthy, balanced diet. To be well
nourished, families need sufficient resources to produce and/or purchase
enough food. They also need to understand which combinations of foods make
a healthy diet and they need the skills and motivation to make good
decisions on family care and feeding practices. Whether food supplies are
scarce or abundant, it is essential that people know how best to use their
resources to obtain a variety of safe and good-quality foods. Nutrition
education plays a vital role in promoting good nutrition. It is especially
important in developing countries where traditional knowledge alone often
is no longer enough to deal with the new challenges of rapid and thorough
economic and social changes. Many governments and non-governmental
institutions make great efforts to improve people’s nutrition, and
nutrition education is often one way to do so. To be most effective,
nutrition education must apply the latest findings of the nutrition
sciences. Also, it must be carried out in a way that truly succeeds in
motivating people to adopt healthy diets and lifestyles. Educational
programmes need to take into account the advances made in our
understanding of nutrition and behavioural change, and the curricula of
programmes need to be updated accordingly. The Family Nutrition Guide is a
book that can help in this educational process. It provides an up-to-date
summary of the relevant nutrition information and gives many suggestions
on how to share this information when working with groups of people. The
overall purpose of the Family Nutrition Guide is to help health
professionals in developing countries to provide more effective nutrition
education by giving families the information they need to prepare
nutritious and safe meals and feed each member of the family well, and by
motivating people to adopt healthy eating habits. The guide is designed
primarily for professionals who want to improve the feeding and nutrition
of families. It may also be useful to individuals or members of a
community group who want to know more about nutritious family feeding.
While the illustrations and food examples in this guide mainly reflect the
situation in countries of Eastern and Southern Africa, the basic
information in this book is relevant for all regions. We hope that you,
the reader, will find this book useful as a technical guide and that it
will help you to design new, or improve existing, nutrition education
curricula and material.We also hope that it motivates you to become even
more involved in nutrition education. Your opinions are important to us.
So we invite you, the user of this guide, to send us your comments on its
contents, to share your experiences in its use, and to make suggestions
for improving future versions. FAO is ready to collaborate with
governments and institutions that want to improve their nutrition
education activities. For example, FAO could help where it is necessary to
adapt this Family Nutrition Guide to the needs of specific regions and/or
communities.
Date de parution : 06-2004
Ouvrage de 124 p.
Thème de Family nutrition guide :
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