The wife of the Anambra State Governor, Dr Nonye Soludo has urged Nigerians to embrace healthy living, good nutrition, environmental cleanliness, basic life skills and sound morals in order to maintain longevity and fight diseases.
Soludo disclosed that she has embarked on a healthy living campaign across schools in the country aimed at promoting healthy lifestyles among children with a view to inculcating into them the culture of good diets with local foods.
She spoke in Awka, on Friday, during a media chat to promote her project, tagged, ‘Healthy living with Nonye Soludo Campaign’, urging Nigerians to avoid chemicalised food which damages the organs of the body.
She explained that the campaign had begun in primary and secondary schools with the aim of helping children imbibe the culture of healthy living so that as they grow older, they would know certain things to avoid and how to clean up their systems with good nutrition.
She said, “I started championing ‘Healthy living with Nonye Soludo’ 10 years ago. I give talks on healthy lifestyles and good diets with our local foods.
“I want to bring the message home to our people because we need to be healthy to achieve a liveable and prosperous homeland.
“I have started forming healthy living clubs in our schools to inculcate the culture of healthy lifestyles and catch them young so that they can grow into responsible adults.
“Our children need to get addicted to eating healthy, doing physical exercises and environmental hygiene to stay healthy, rather than get addicted to their phones and social media.”
She urged Nigerians to cut down on processed and chemicalised foods and embrace backyard farming in order to harvest and eat natural foods.
“Our mission is to mobilise everybody, every critical sector in the society to make healthy living a culture. People should realise that if they keep dumping chemicalised foods on their bodies, the organs will be suffering until they make conscious efforts to clean up the system by eating healthy.
“Our local foods are readily available and cheap. They are also energy-giving, healing and medicinal to our body systems, organs and general health.
“We need to start avoiding processed foods and make conscious efforts to eat well with more grains of fibre and do 30 minutes of exercise daily.
“We are partnering with religious and community leaders to drive this message home within Anambra and beyond,” she added.
According to her, Nigerians need to also embrace walking and cycling in order to reduce vehicular air pollution and promote a healthy life style.
“The emissions from our vehicles are polluting the air and environment; and this is hazardous to human health. We need to introduce and embrace cycling to reduce carbon emissions and exposure.
“Cycling is a clean mode of transport and a fitness choice with health benefits. Sometime we need to pack our cars and walk more, especially if we are not going long distance. All over the world, people are talking about healthy living and it is contagious, we need to do more in this regard,” she noted.