Improving eating habits

In mid December, Rutger and I went to a 2-day nutrition course in Managua which was really interesting. We learned a lot about malnutrition of children, the symptoms, the consequences and the needs for recovery which we can apply in our fieldwork for WFP. In Nicaragua, 49% of the women are obese, while desnutrition among children is a big problem as well. This seems very contradicting. However, when you look at the eating habits of the people of Nicaragua it is logical. People eat the same things every day and do not have a diverse diet. They use an overload of oil and sugar while cooking and most things are fried. In addition, the majority of the people live of less than 1$ a day and with a bad harvest this is not enough to feed an entire family which results in not enough (diverse) food which leads to malnutrition. However, this blog will not extensively discuss this topic again, because it was discussed in an earlier blog (see bad habits).

 Instead, I want to share a different experience with you: teaching women how to cook with cereal. We went to a community in the municipality of San Dionisio to learn women how to cook with the donated food from WFP. WFP donates peas, rice, oil, maize and cereal to the communities. However, most people in Nicaragua eat rice with beans and maize tortillas three times a day and have no idea how to cook a meal with other ingredients. That is why WFP Matagalpa developed some recipes with cereal and our job was to teach the women in the communities how to cook a healthy meal with the products of WFP. At the one hand, we teach women how to cook with cereal and at the other hand we give them a fantastic social day. When we arrived at the community, all the women were waiting for us at the house of the community leader. She had a big kitchen and we were allowed to use that kitchen to cook several dishes. The women were all very excited and eager to start. We brought some ingredients with us, but the women all went home to collect other ingredients like yucca, tomatoes, bananas, chilli and even a chicken was slaughtered for this special day. Beforehand, we were supposed to teach them how to cook a meal with cereal. Instead we had to sit down and watch while they would prepare the dishes with the help of the given recipes. It was a wonderful sight: twenty women all very busy with preparing different meals. One was chopping the tomatoes, another was preparing the chicken and a third was rolling the empanadas. A few hours later, we had to taste all the different dishes and they were delightful! They made empanadas with banana and a wonderful soup with albondigas (meatballs). These women know how to cook a good meal with simple ingredients! In the end, it was a nice relaxing day and an amazing new experience, but our job was limited, because these women do not need our help in cooking. They just need the ingredients and a recipe.