COVID-19 and Food Safety: When African Men Cook The Food Their Manhood does not drop off!

COVID-19 and Food Safety: Involving African Men in Food Preparation Makes Them More Humane

Advocacy Network Africa-AdNetA is leading other CBOs in enshrining contexts for respect, dignity-affirmation and establishing mutual respect between men and women. In this article we show you how we use food and involving men in food preparation is not the cause of bad luck in communities nor a curse of any kind!

Our men cook. We are no nonsense, and they mop the house! Eeeissh! Tough love!

We have never had the men die on us just because they prepare the food or mop the house. That nonsense that African men do not cook is now debunked.

We asked one of the men at one of the CBOs under AdNetA called Nature Network to tell us the consequences of men engaging in food preparations. We chose to share one of their insights here below:

“When men cook, the food still tastes as ……...food!

When men cook, they do not develop heart attacks!

When men cook, the sky does not drop!

When men cook, their manhood does not drop off!”

We strive to bring you experiences that address dignity, respect and justice to all. We are one of the CBOs promoting contexts stopping violence against women+.  By “women+” we mean we are against all forms violence be it physical, verbal, non-verbal, mental and psychological.

Involving African men in food preparation makes them more humane. They contribute to good food handling best practices in communities. They ensure and pass on best-practices to maintain good food hygiene: keep clean to avoid contamination; separate raw food from dry ones and avoid preparing them in same spot; fully cook your foods as this kills pathogens; keep your foods at the right and safe temperatures to avoid growth of pathogens; and use safe water and all raw materials to avoid contamination.

We came up with campaigns to raise consciousness around the good things we can do to promote health and quality life for all.

This time we want to bring you the men who prepare food for the beneficiaries at the Nature Network Group Shelter for refugees.

Food is an important component for healthy bodies. We are now living during the COVID-19 pandemic; we need food accessibility if we are to be protected against COVID-19. There is a connection between food, immunity, well-being and the body’s ability to prevent COVID-19 transmission.

The men at Nature Network are trained in skills to prevent food-relate vulnerability to COVID-19, it is better we understood how to maintain food hygiene. There are five food hygiene best-practices we should adopt and maintain.

When we involve men in ensuring food hygiene we are adding a critical number of actors who can execute hygiene in our communities.

Food hygiene is an important aspect of food production, preparation, consumption and preservation. By ensuring food hygiene, we are reducing the chances pathogens can colonise or make home in our foods through exposure. Pathogens are disease causing organisms.

According to WHO, food hygiene are all those conditions and measures necessary to ensure the safety of food from production to consumption.

Food can become contaminated at any point during slaughtering or harvesting, processing, storage, distribution, transportation and preparation.

Lack of adequate food hygiene can lead to food-borne diseases and death of consumers.

When we equip men with good food handling practices, it supports a chain of health for all. Men take full part in promoting safe food handling through systematic disease prevention and health education programmes directed to food handlers, including the consumers. Food-borne and waterborne diarrhoeal diseases are a problem for every country in the world but they can be prevented. 

Diarrhoea is the acute, most common symptom of food-borne illness, but other serious consequences include kidney and liver failure, brain and neural disorders, reactive arthritis, cancer and death.

When men take up roles in good food handling they contribute to the requisite social skills for food hygiene. It is important to acquire the social skills through building capacity to prevent, detect and manage food-borne risks. Some of the activities include community mobilisation, awareness raising, providing food hygiene complaint infrastructure, generating baseline and trend data on food-borne diseases and supporting implementation of adequate infrastructures (e.g. laboratories, clean markets, refrigeration and access to proper food preparation facilities).

Each year worldwide, unsafe food causes 600 million cases of foodborne diseases and 420 000 deaths. 30% of foodborne deaths occur among children under 5 years of age. WHO estimated that 33 million years of healthy lives are lost due to eating unsafe food globally each year, and this number is likely an underestimation.

When men are provided information about good food handling habits, it contributes to the critical numbers of people with interests in good food hygiene in communities

Foodborne diseases are preventable and WHO has a critical role in taking global leadership in investment and coordinated action across multiple sectors in order to build strong and resilient national food safety systems and provide consumers with tools to make safe food choices. With food safety receiving relatively little political attention, especially in developing countries, having a reliable data on the actual national burden of foodborne diseases is essential to draw public attention and mobilize political will and resources to combat foodborne diseases.

Food hygiene prevents food borne infections which in turn may expose one to illnesses and loss of life. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important that people are aware of the link between poor food handling and vulnerability to diseases such as COVID-19. This will then empower them to make informed decisions about how to avoid food borne diseases, hunger and detrimental food handling practices. 

COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that it does not make men any lesser beings if and when they take up the hoe and knife to produce, prepare, preserve and serve food. It increases food Safety. Involving African men in food preparation makes them more humane because they contribute to the factors that enshrine life preservation, security and safety for all.