Enhancing Our Health and Educational Status with Good Nutrition

Sound education is sequel to having a healthy and sound body which largely depends on eating good foods. When you are healthy, you not only feel and look your best, but you think more clearly and get along better with others. Quite often, health is usually associated with good food because the latter plays a vital role in nourishing the body hence, ensuring its healthiness. This makes good nutrition an indispensable factor for the body’s state of health. However, one may ask, what are the components of a good nutrition?

Good nutrition involves eating meals that contain the different food nutrients in the correct proportions. This entails the selection of different food stuffs rich in the nutrients that will provide nourishment for the body. Good nutrition is essential for normal organ development and functioning, for normal reproduction, growth and maintenance, for optimum activity level and working efficiency, for resistance to infection and disease and for the ability to repair bodily damage or injury. This can be achieved by eating a well-balanced diet selected from all the food groups-protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals. The potentials of a good (balanced) diet to maintain a healthy life must never be underestimated for it recuperates the body that has undergone lots of physical stress and tension associated with modern living.

Nnamani and Ibenyenwa, in their book; Education, healthy living and Nutritional Development, affirms that, the ability of an individual to maintain a body fit enough to continue to carry out the normal functioning of the body both externally and internally is achieved mainly by personal service of the body through food eating habits, plenty of rest and adequate body exercises. For an individual to attain satisfactory state of health, his eating habits must be checked ‘ab-initio’, that is, as an offspring (unborn child). At this stage, it requires good medical care and adequate nutrition because its health depends so much on that of the mother-her diet and ingestion of drugs or chemicals. During post-pregnancy, the infant requires adequate breast milk which is more nutritious than any artificial milk at least for the first six months of its life. The importance of good nutrition at an early stage is that, the child is able to develop both physically and mentally, also his intellectual capacities are greatly enhanced, all of which are evidence of a healthy body.

With a good health, the prospects of an individual achieving his goals in life are higher. He will be able to perform actively in his chosen career-be it in business, education, sport or craft. What he accomplishes is deeply and continuously affected by his physical health, his intellectual adequacy, his interest in his work and his emotional freedom to the demand of his activities- this was constantly echoed by Ismail in his publication titled; Psychological Aspects of Physical Education and Sports. A poor health will create deficiency in a child’s educational status. This is because his ill-health will not allow him to take full advantage of the schooling available; also he will be prone to a very low IQ when compared to his fellow classmates thus his educational development is retarded. For the unhealthy adult, his ability to use the knowledge and skills acquired depends on his mental and physical fitness. If an adult is impaired by physical or mental ailments, he can not take advantage of his intellectual capabilities to develop his society.

In Nigeria today, a good percentage of children, youths and adults suffer from physical and mental ailments traceable to nutritional deficiency and this has cut short their potentials in life. Little or no emphasis is made on the place of good nutrition in the life of individual thereby encouraging indiscriminate poor eating habits. This in the long run has increasingly affected their educational outputs. One of the imperatives of nation building and national development lies in a sound education for its citizens that are of sound health. For the individual’s food, his health and education are all interwoven together and must be treated together and never in isolation.

Nutritional Deficiency: A Threat to National Productivity

Nutrients are those substances derived from digested foods and are required for the effective functioning of the body. The importance of nutrients to the body can not be over emphasize because the body need them for building up and repairing tissue; supplying heat and energy; protecting the body from disease; and elimination of waste products from the system. Good nutrition involves eating the right foods that can provide nourishment for the body hence, maintaining a healthy structure at all times. This implies that the right quantities of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins must form a bulk constituent of our meals – a term often referred to as ‘balanced diet’. Nutritionist are of the opinion that, the real place of nutrition in the preservation and sometimes cure of ill-health is in a well balanced diet taken sufficiently at meal times. This will definitely help the body that has lost some vitality to regain physical ability, improve and help the functioning of various organs as well as enzymes of the body.

Quite often, the nutritional needs of infants, adolescents, adults, sedentary and manual workers, pregnant and lactating women, the aged, the invalids and convalescents are not usually met. Added to this, is the misplacement of priority by many while selecting their foods – preference is often made on choice diets over balanced diet. Inability to meet the varying nutritional needs of the aforementioned groups of persons will invariably affect their health which consequently affects their social, mental and physical potentials in life. Nutritional well-being is a pre-requisite for the achievement of the full social, mental and physical potentials of a population so that the people could lead fully productive lives and contribute to the development of the community and the nation with dignity (W.H.O Rome conference, 1992).

In his book; Nutrition: A health Sector Responsibility, Habitch reported that about a billion people in the world suffer from at least one of the five greatest nutritional deficiencies of energy, protein, iron, vitamin A and iodine. At present, that number must have increased significantly judging from the increasing number of malnourished and under-nourished children and adults around the world. Nigeria as a nation is not left out in this palpable situation which poses a serious threat to its citizenry. The nation that is generally under-nourished tends to have high mortality and morbidity rates of young people and children which invariably affect the economic well-being of the country as the productive man-power is usually not available to provide economic growth as noted by Tanimu and Sabo in their book; Nutrition and lifestyle for the Body Immunity.

The effects of these nutritional inadequacies in our diet impairs greatly on the nation’s manpower hence may decline production. One is that the individual from infancy would not have developed strong bones, muscles and stamina. He may become susceptible to disease attack and may experience slow recovery from illness. All these culminate into a physically, mentally and socially impaired individual that can not contribute his own quota towards economic development. Imagine a labour force that is incapacitated through sickness or other ailments, they can not contribute meaningfully thus affecting output levels.

Good and adequate nutrition at all levels of man’s growth is the key to correcting this ugly scenario. The government, NGO’s, corporate bodies and parents (stakeholders) must take necessary actions to ensure that children, youths and adults receive the right and adequate nutrition in order to promote a healthy nation, for a healthy nation is a wealthy nation.