Wednesday, June 30, 2010

"Eat Your Vegetables!!"


Malnutrition is a huge problem here, especially in the rural areas of Guatemala. But it' now pretty personal to me because of the children that attend my classes. One of the little girls was bleeding when she went to the bathroom. We took her to the hospital, and I thank God that there was a visiting pediatrician. She told me that this little girl's intestines were impacted with waste (or poopoo as we would call it...) She now had fissures from the internally tearing. She was not eating enough fiber in her diet. The father said that she 'refused' to eat vegetables and fruit and because she hardly ate anything (wonder why....) when she wanted a snack she got chips or other junk food. Also, she doesn't drink enough water but her father did say that she drank 2 or 3 glasses of cola daily. This is also a common problem here. Many suffer from headaches and when I ask them how many glasses of water they drink daily the answer lets me know that dehydration is also a problem. Especially since we live up in the mountains. We thought for awhile that the people here are short in stature because of their genes but one of the main reasons is that they are malnourished. More protein and fresh fruits and vegatables are needed but they have come to love what has been imported for the most part into their country: chips and pop. And it cost the same for a small bag of chips as for a piece of fruit, but they want the chips. Some of the children that attend here have rotten teeth due to the pop and sugar. So we now give the kids more fruit and less cookies. But I think I will begin to be more inventive with their snacks. I heard you can actually substitute beans for the oil in some cookies or brownies. Sounds weird....If anyone out there has a good nutritious recipes for kid's snacks, drop me an email, okay??

2 comments:

Andrea said...

How sad that we are exporting our bad eating habits, junk food and soft drink addictions to Guatemala!
Snack ideas: make some sort of "dip" for the kids to dip veggies into. Make fruit "shish kabobs" using toothpicks. FamilyFun.com has lots of ideas -- such as: http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/pine-tree-fruit-kabobs-800492/

Andrea said...

How sad that we are exporting our bad eating habits, junk food and soft drinks to Guatemala! Ideas: make a dip for kids to dip veggies into. Make fruit shish-kabobs. Do you have a blender - to make smoothies?