posted Sept 28th

Carrying on from our last post, we donated 3 boxes of library books to Nuku Primary School, near to Burebasanga Primary School that we featured last time. We were impressed by the school’s emphasis on eating healthy foods: something that we don’t see as often as we would like to.

To put things in perspective, Fijians in general suffer from a disproportionately high rate of non-communicable diseases, especially heart disease & diabetes, brought about by unhealthy diets. One might be forgiven for thinking that life in the tropics should be more healthy than in Westernized countries, but in fact a lot of unhealthy habits have crept in: processed, sugary foods are everywhere & drinking coconuts have largely been replaced by coca cola!

At school canteen with healthy foods, L-R: Peter, John, Heather, principal, Dr Peni

This is particularly evident when we visit people’s houses & are asked if we would like to drink some ‘juice’. When we say ‘yes’,  our hosts cheerfully bring in some coca cola, sprite or fanta, usually accompanied by sugary biscuits!

teeth brushing time!

In contrast, the principal of Nuku School had decided that he would only offer healthy foods in the canteen & then have compulsory teeth-brushing afterwards! We hope other schools will copy his good example!