Alleyne: West Indians eating wrong foods

Date: Tue 19-Oct-1993
Paper Page: 14
Publication: Daily Nation

BARBADIANS are not hungry -- in fact, many of them are too fat.

And the same goes for their Caribbean neighbours.

Proper nutrition is a concern of the United Nations' Food and Agricultural
Organisation (FAO), whose local representative Dr. E. Patrick Alleyne, said
eating habits are a regional problem.

He made the observations before a Ministry of Agriculture World Food Day
Awards ceremony.

He said Caribbean people either eat too little, too much, or not enough of the
right foods.

"The experts say we are eating badly; too much animal food, saturated fats and
oils and not enough complex carbohydrates.

"We are not hungry; we are told that our major problem is being too fat."

Alleyne said energy-protein malnutrition has been the major nutritional
problem of the Caribbean for three decades. But not in Barbados, where farmers
produce foods 150 per cent above standardised protein requirements.

Alleyne also said Caribbean peoples tend not to eat what they produce although
it is generally agreed that most regional countries would not be able to
properly feed themselves from their own production.

Available data suggests declining per capita food production in Barbados,
Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana up to 1990, with a yearly food import
bill for CARICOM countries of US $2.1 billion.

The food expert cautioned that structural adjustment programmes are usually
accompanied by deteriorating nutritional practices given the relationship with
levels of personal income.