Healthy Food and Safe Water

1Food is the fuel your body runs on

A car cannot move without fuel. Your body cannot run, think or grow without food. But not every food helps your body in the same way.

2Three jobs that food does

1. Foods that give you energy. Rice, cassava, sweet potato, maize, bananas, ubugali. These fill your tummy and give you the power to run and play.

2. Foods that build your body. Beans, eggs, milk, fish, meat, groundnuts. These make your body grow taller and your muscles strong. Growing children need them every day.

3. Foods that protect you. Fruits and vegetables — dodo, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, mangoes, oranges, avocado. These help your body fight off sickness.

Your body needs all three jobs done. So a good plate has a little of each.

3A worked example: building Mutesi’s plate

Mutesi wants a healthy lunch. Let’s build it together.

• Energy? She puts rice on her plate. ✔
• Building? She adds beans. ✔
• Protecting? She adds dodo (green leaves) and keeps a mango for after. ✔

Rice, beans, greens and a mango. All three jobs done. That is a healthy meal.

Now look at the other choice: sweets and a fizzy drink. What job do they do? They give a quick rush of sugar and nothing else. They do not build her body. They do not protect her. And the sugar sits on her teeth and digs holes.

So here is the rule. Healthy foods do a job for your body. Unhealthy foods are mostly sugar, fat and salt, and do almost no job at all. Sweets, biscuits and fizzy drinks are “now and then” foods, not every-day foods.

4Safe water

Your body is mostly water. You lose water when you sweat and when you go to the toilet. So you must drink water all day — water is the best drink there is.

But water can carry germs, and germs give you diarrhoea and stomach pain.

Here is the tricky part. Water from a river or a pond can look perfectly clear. Clear water can still be full of germs, because germs are far too small to see. Clear does not mean safe.

5How to make water safe

1. Boil the water until it bubbles hard for a short while. Heat kills the germs.
2. Let it cool down.
3. Store it in a clean, covered container, so no dust or flies get in.
4. Take it out with a clean cup — never with dirty hands.

Also wash fruit and vegetables in clean water before you eat them. Germs and dust sit on the skin of a mango, even a beautiful one.

Try it yourself

Try each one before you look at the answer.

1. Sort these into healthy and unhealthy: beans, sweets, a mango, a fizzy drink, an egg.
2. Niyonzima wants to grow taller and stronger. Name two foods that build his body.
3. Why do we boil water before we drink it?
4. Keza says, “This river water is clear, so I can drink it.” What would you tell her?
5. What is the best drink for your body when you are thirsty?

Answers

1. Healthy: beans, a mango, an egg. Unhealthy: sweets and the fizzy drink — they are mostly sugar and do no real job for your body.
2. Any two of: beans, eggs, milk, fish, meat, groundnuts. These are the body-building foods.
3. To kill the germs in it. Germs in water cause diarrhoea and stomach pain, and heat kills them.
4. Tell her it is not safe. Germs are too small to see, so even clear water can be full of them. She must boil it first.
5. Water — clean, boiled water. It has no sugar and your body needs it all day long.