Page 7 - Barefoot guide

INTRODUCTION

How best can people across Africa deal with
COVID-19? How can those in densely
populated urban areas or in remote rural
villages best survive COVID-19 if they
get infected?
There are several answers to these
questions. But there is one that we must
never forget: eat a variety of nutritious,
wholesome food that is produced
without heavy use of toxic sprays
and has no added chemicals. Eat
how most grandmothers taught
their children to eat. Learn about
and celebrate your traditional
diet, while improving it wherever
you can, using modern scientific
knowledge. Eat a variety of food.
Eat a balanced diet. Eat natural
foods. It’s not complicated.

Of course, you must also do
all the protective actions such as
washing hands regularly, keeping
a distance from people and wearing a cloth face
mask. That is understood. But over and above all this is the critical
importance of being healthy, of strengthening your body’s immune system to
reduce the severity or serious effects of the virus and help it to heal should you catch it. Food is essential to our
immune system and good health in general and not just any food, but naturally grown, safe, diverse and nutritious
food. This has been largely neglected in all the information shared about COVID-19. In short, a variety of nutritious,
natural food is medicine!
We cannot predict what will happen with this virus but whatever happens, we will be better off if we eat healthy
food. A drive across Africa to eat natural, diverse, wholesome food, using our traditional diets as a basis for what we eat,
will bring many benefits. Apart from helping to cope and recover better from COVID-19, it will also lower the number
of new cases of many modern diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cancers.

Let us not forget that growing our own food and buying from local growers supports food and income security,
strengthening the local economy. It also reduces plastic packaging waste, greenhouse gas emissions, and higher
transport costs that usually come with imported food and the damage the plastic packing does to the environment.

COVID-19 is a wakeup call to us all. Let’s turn the tide away from over-processed foods that are often grown using
chemicals and instead build a healthy norm, by eating a great variety of nutritious, locally produced natural foods,
including indigenous crops and vegetables that we have often dropped from our diets.

We (the writers) have created this Barefoot Guide to help us all better survive COVID-19. It includes topics on
what COVID-19 is, why food is the best medicine, and how to obtain and prepare the food to maintain its medicinal
value and what you can do to promote this marvelous gift from nature. Enjoy and share with your families, neighbours,
students, friends and colleagues. Good health!

INTRODUCTION v