Today, about 70% of all deaths and funeral announcements here in Africa have been dominated by people in their 30s and 40s or at best, very few in their 50s. Shockingly, nobody seems to be concerned about this dangerous development.  From the streets of Lagos, through Accra, Lusaka to Cairo, it is business as usual as if to say, seeing many of us die below age 50 is a normal thing. After all, we are always too busy, chasing more money that none of us has time to take a second look at this dangerous trend we’re currently living with.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of chatting with an old woman in her late 80s. I took the opportunity to ask some questions in my attempt to identify the root of the problem. As patient as she was, grandma was able to help me out, bearing in mind she was dealing with a young man who wanted answers to save his generation especially the youth from dying younger.

Q:  Why did you and many in your generation live longer?

A: My son, it was because of our eating habit when we were young. The quality of food we ate was far better than what you people eat these days.

Q: Why are we dying young now?

A: My son, the problem is still because of your eating habit. You don’t eat well at all! Besides, the quality of food you eat today is very, very dangerous! What you call food today is in fact chemicals!

Q: Grandma, what do you mean when you say that my generation feeds on chemicals? I thought we’ve been eating a ‘balanced diet’!

A: You see my son, let me tell you a short story. Many years ago, there were no fertilizers. Every food we ate was naturally well cultivated and well-prepared. Farm produce was allowed to grow naturally. Consequently, farm produce such as the yam was as sweet as the sugarcane. But today, the yam you eat has no taste. We did not spray our foodstuffs with those dangerous chemicals which you modern people have been pouring on your crops every now and then.

At that time, any fruit or food you got on the market or at home had a real natural taste. Our pineapples, pawpaw, and all the fruits would ripen naturally on the farm before they were harvested for consumption. In fact, one could sense the sweet smell of pineapples from a distance of 100 meters and beyond.

When a woman would prepare chicken soup, for instance, everybody in the neighbourhood would smell the aroma of that soup from a far distance. We could all sense the house in which chicken soup was being prepared. The taste of the soup was as wonderful as the aroma. We ate local dishes such as ‘ebunabunu’ and ‘mportomportor. We ate our yams and cocoyam with palm oil (red oil) and avocado. I am told palm oil is very good for the eyes. In short, there were many kinds of food we ate during our time which your generation doesn’t like to eat. Your people want ‘ready-made’ and fast foods.

Today, you people don’t eat avocado. You don’t cook with red oil anymore. In fact your generation doesn’t know how red oil is even prepared. You only like the type of oil imported from abroad which has too much cholesterol in it. This is not good for you.

Your stew is no longer green like our time. Even the kenkey your mothers cook today, they wrap it with polythene bags, so the food doesn’t absorb the nutrients from the leaves with which we used to wrap the kenkey. The polythene bag itself is dangerous especially when heated together with the food but you still do it every day. I am very worried about this.

Nowadays when you boil rice, you choose to use black polythene to cover the food. You say that the polythene bag absorbs the steam. Don’t you realize that the heat in the bag also releases some dangerous chemicals from the polythene into the rice?

Nowadays, your pineapples are all green but you claim they are ripe. Today’s pawpaw is harvested while green. 

This explains why there are too many diseases around. Your generation needs to change the nature of food you eat. The chemicals in the food is simply too much but you can’t see it with your eyes. You also need to change your eating time. You people don’t eat early at all. You go to work and come back at 9pm. So even at 10 pm, you’re still eating ‘fried rice’ and chicken. Oh, it’s a pity. It is dangerous my son!

Before I forget, my son, you know during our time, we did a lot of exercise as well. We walked every day to the farm. We climbed hills. But today, you don’t walk. You don’t climb any hills. All you do is board vehicles and before you blink twice, you have reached your destination. That is why many of you often collapse. You have to change your lifestyle!

What can we learn from grandma?

After listening to the old woman in her 80s explaining the logic and the mystery behind why the modern African dies young, I began to wonder the irony of life. But seriously, if our ‘illiterate’ grandmothers knew all these things, why doesn’t the current generation  seem to have any clue about why our people are dying young in large numbers?

We Africans must take a second look at our lifestyle, eating habits and most importantly, the quality of food we eat today. We must invest in quality food. This is the only way we can live longer as our forefathers did. These so-called modern foods and our current bad eating habits are only helping us to dig our own graves. It is imperative that we take a look back and ask ourselves the reasons why our forefathers lived longer.

By Honourable Saka

The writer is project coordinator for the Project Pan-Africa (PPA), available at: http://www.projectpanafrica.org/. PPA is grateful to Itech Plus and all media partners who supports his vision for the African youth. E-mail: [email protected].