Girls and nutrition

I had another meeting with my girls club last week. Since malnutrition is a big problem here (there are lots children with big bellies and skinny arms and legs, and children with light-colored hair due to a lack of essential vitamins, and those are just the visible signs), I decided to do this session on nutrition. A couple of weeks ago I asked the girls to write down everything they ate and drank over a period of a week so I could get an idea of what they were eating. There was little to no fruits or proteins in their diets. So, for this session I basically listed the essential vitamins and nutrients an average person should get on a regular basis, listed what each of the vitamins and nutrients did for the body (Vitamin C good for the eyes, etc) then listed which foods available here contained each of them. Since not everyone is literate in French, I drew pictures of the foods in each groups. The girls thought it was pretty funny. I took about a half hour to explain everything to them, then we played 2 games to see how much they really got out of my explanation. They were pretty good. It was interesting to see how little they knew about (1) the nutrients essential for good health and (2) the foods readily available to them that contained these nutrients. At the end of the day I just told them they had to had to had to eat fruits and vegetables and protein whenever they could. They all were very happy with the session and promised to remember to get a variety of fruits and vegetables every week and make sure to eat more meat, eggs and milk. So far, so good.