Nutrients

Oops, somehow an entire month went by without any blog posts...and let's face it, the one saying I was going to MST doesn't really count...sorry, guys. By guys I mean the handful of relatives who actually care how often I update. I've done some sort of interesting stuff that I'll try to start posting about, but writing just never seemed that appealing. I'll work on being better.

We started a two-day training session on nutrition today. Today's class covered the basics of food groups and healthy cooking, and tomorrow we'll be working on applying that knowledge to the drop-in centre menus.

Food groups in South Africa are pretty widely known. Unlike in the US, where we are taught four basic food groups, South Africa teaches three: energy (carbohydrates and fat), body-building (protein), and protective (fruit and vegetables). You can see a poster for them on every clinic, school, or creche wall. We've tasked the drop-in centres with making their own, using magazine pictures to illustrate different examples of food. Khanimamba is sort of in love with projects that help centres create educational wall posters.

However, basically none of the drop-in centres I've visited so far actually applies that knowledge to their menus. Most serve vuswa (pap, or maize porridge) with some sort of protein source, no vegetables. Some centres have a vuswa and cabbage day. I went to one that was serving vuswa and potatoes. It was a carbohydrate orgy. It was also my lunch. Tomorrow, therefore, they will be revising their menus and writing up budgets for them.

Remember that many of the kids who attend these centres are HIV positive and/or have other illnesses, making basic nutrition and a healthy diet even more important than for the general population.

On to my fun anecdotes from today.

I blew the minds of my trainees not once but twice today. It's so much fun when I blow their minds. They think I'm lying to them. Here are the facts I imparted:

1. Bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) is bad for vegetables. (I'd never heard of putting baking soda in vegetables before moving to SA. Do other people do this?)

2. You can eat potato peels. In fact, potato peels contain half of a potato's nutritional value (NOT as some Americans have tried to tell me its entire nutritional value).

It took a lot of convincing, including Elisa's very vocal support (and I'm pretty sure the potato peel thing was new information for her too...), but I'm reasonably sure that some people believed me. Of course, I also believe that deep-frying my potatoes is bad for me and I do so anyway on a somewhat regular basis, so we will see if anything changes.

I also bonded with the trainers today about how much we hate the colored chalk the administrators bought. My hands are still yellow, and despite sponging down I don't think the blackboard will ever be the same--the blue chalk isn't even visible. And the box they got was enormous.