89% of educated Nigerians don't know when they are food poisoned

The world is full of activities and you have to choose the one important to you as you cannot attend to everything, you cannot know everything and fortunately you don’t need to know it all or pay attention to it all, you simply decide what’s important and act on that. The question is, “what’s Important and what’s not?”

The issue of food safety does not look important to Africans and Nigerians in particular. We simply carry on without paying attention to the fact that what we eat makes us more than any other thing. Many are focusing on nutrition and diet, which is quite good but the safety of the food we are taking in good diet matters. Nutrition can affect the social and physical appearance of individuals and as such attention is given to it. The enemy in food, which is the unsafe food leading to food poisoning is overlooked as many people don’t even bother to know if food poisoning exists.

Food poisoning is real and it happens around us all the time but we simply are not aware or do not care. We must have heard of whole families wiped out in Nigeria after a meal or a family member dying mysteriously after eating yet we do not think that it is food poisoning or even trace it back exactly to the cause. A well-known pastor died recently and suddenly in Lagos State, he was said to be vomiting and probably coughing and this led to his death in a short time. It was surprising that people did not link it to food poisoning despite the obvious symptoms that suggests so! Many thought it was cardiac arrest and as usual some said it was the devil. That shows how much we are not aware about food safety!

Do you know when you have reacted negatively to food you have eaten? what have you done about it? Have you ever traced back your vomiting or diarrhea to what you ate and did you go back to inform the food seller?  Do you know that most grains you buy in the market are not even safe? Do you know that they contain pesticides used as preservation and can kill or cause organ damage with time? No wonder we have had more kidney failures than ever of recent.

My survey last year (2016) revealed that 89% of educated Nigerians with access to social media and main stream news, within the ages of 20 to 45 have not observed if they have been food poisoned. While they acknowledge having troubles with health after eating, they did not link it back neither did they find out what the reasons for the break down was. To cap it all, they didn’t get medical attention.

The accumulation of different break /flashes of poisoning can eventually lead to organ break down as the organs can get overwhelmed with time having to deal with flushing out the strange elements introduced into the body. We just keep going by like nothing is happening, we see the events every day, we donate to the renal failure victims, we read in the news the whole family wiped out, we even observe that we purge when we go to some food centres to eat, yet in all of these, we do not pay attention to how safe our food is or trace back and take action when we observe that a food gave us funny feeling.

Please stop looking on, buy your food materials from safe food stores close to you, you can guarantee the safety because professionals are involved. You can read on what to observe in eateries before eating as well as the actions to take to guarantee safe foods. To locate a safe food store close to you, please contact me directly.