This newsletter contains:

1. Monthly Maxim: Fats
2. Special Kitchen 1 - Kindawo

1. Monthly Maxim: Fats

Heat damages the essential fatty acids in oils and makes them harmful for the body. Margarine and other low fat options contain hydrogenated veg oil which contributes greatly to heart disease and other illnesses.

• Choose olive oil over steamed veggies, rather than fried veg,
• Original Black Cat peanut butter rather than Skippy,
• Homemade biscuits with butter, rather than with marg.

2. Kindawo Children's Home Kitchen

special kitchens and their feeding and eating practices

Kindawo is a children’s home run by city councilor Sandy Lyne. Kindawo’s focus is not only looking after the basic needs of children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, but also to ensure that they receive a high quality of education. Apart from providing a home for 6 children and 2 adults, Kindawo also serves a wider community of people in need of care and education.

I interviewed Sandy with a particular interest in the kitchen at her home and the level of healthy feeding and eating it provides. Like always my intention is to write about the solutions people find for increasing the health of their house holds and to inspire them to improve it even further.

The people and food at Kindawo

The people that are served by this kitchen is Sandy herself, the two care givers and 6 children the eldest of whom is 13 and the youngest 4. Three of the children are Sandy’s own foster kids, the others belong to the two care givers, Senzeni and Gloria. These two women also run the kitchen for the most part. One does all the cooking for a week, while the other cleans the house, makes the packed lunches and baths the children. Next week they swap. The children also help with the tasks where they can.

Sandy’s own role is to buy all the groceries and manage its consumption so that it lasts the whole month. So, for instance, everything in the fridge can be used by anyone without asking, but her permission is needed for the stock in the freezer. She is now very grateful for a bar fridge recently donated, where she can store her personal things and the kids’ medication.

With the same donation also came a big freezer which allows her to store a months supply of bread, milk, meat and frozen veggies. This simplifies the processes in the kitchen considerably. Sandy also tries to ensure that they all eat a balanced diet and she takes care of the cooking over weekends.

I asked her how healthy she thinks her household’s diet is and she elaborated more on her role to help them balance their food intake. Her biggest challenge is to reduce the starch or carbohydrate intake, give them yoghurt and add more fresh fruit and vegetables. They eat chicken, mince, stewing meat or boere wors (local sausage) at least four times a week and the other nights she encourages them to eat either beans or cabbage. These are made into a stew with tomatoes and onion and sometimes with butternut, spinach or potatoes. Not that the ingredients matter, she laughs, somehow it always seems to end up tasting the same. She is grateful that her charges prefer bones and fatty meat to lean tender meat; it is much easier on her budget.

Vegetables and Balancing the Diet

That’s just their culture, she says, it is what they are used to. Just like the mounds of rice, phuthu (mieliemeel porridge), bread and potatoes the stews accompany. As a rule she always adds a helping of frozen veggies to her own plateful and pops it into the microwave to cook. She tells me this is a big joke with the others: they do not understand how anyone can eat so much vegetables.

She got them so far as to add some frozen veg to their stews, but it seldom adds up to more than a cupful per meal! There are a few Western dishes she has taught them to make: macaroni cheese, spaghetti bolognaise and chicken a’ la king, which they really like. She is also glad that they have taken to salad and they eat quite a bit of it in summer, especially carrot salad or coleslaw. The children all have fresh fruit once a day in the afternoon. They have sandwiches for lunch with tuna, egg pr peanut butter and more porridge for breakfast.

All in all she thinks over a week, their diet is quite balanced, but if they could afford it, or if they had a sponsor, they would eat more yoghurt and fresh fruit. It. I find myself hoping she means plain white yoghurt rather than the flavoured stuff.

I asked her about fish and she said they often had pilchards on Tuesdays when she goes out to supper with a friend (she herself cannot stomach it). On some occasions when she is out they also have their own treat of ‘walky-talkies’ i.e. stew made with chicken legs and heads.

For interest’s sake, Sandy mentioned that, while she eats from the same kitchen, she usually does not eat with the rest of the house hold. She finds that her presence often inhibits their interaction. On an earlier occasion she also admitted that she battles with the noise levels that goes with the social ocation of having supper together.

I wanted to make a contribution to Kindawo that would help them in a way that is both in line with my own values for healthy eating and with their own felt needs.

Kindawo and my 12 Healthy Eating Principles

I used my 12 Practical Eating Principles to evaluate their eating and feeding habbits and then compared it with what Sandy said their felt needs were in terms of health. Some of the principles, like 8 and 9, I found were simply not applicable since they can not afford luxuries like butter and olive oil above margarine and sunflower oil or fresh white cheeses above cheddar or gouda.. Sandy did mention she would like them to eat more yoghurt, but can not afford. Personally I would skip the cheese altogether if I had to settle for the yellow coloured stuff and rather buy yoghurt. As for supplements (principle 10), its simply out of the question and their indulgence (principle 12) do not happen so much at their own initiative, but when they are spoiled by some benefactor. So for instance they get a regular donation of biscuits for their lunch boxes.

On some of the other principles they are doing better than many conventional families. For instance, they get their fruit and vegetables from a vender who brings it to them on his bakkie (small truck) straight from the market and they have just been sponsored to get bread straight from a bakery which is closer to the source as buying from the supermarket (principle 3) and entails less packaging (principle 4). They also eat far less fast food and convenience foods that has been processed and is full of additives (principles 1 and 2). Again this means less packaging. Sugar and cafeien is limited (principle 10) because sweets are a luxury and Sandy swears by her rooibos tea (‘red bush’ tea, a local herbal beverage) for the kids – it keeps their immune systems strong, she believes.

As far as grains are concerned, the fact that their preferred starch is mielie meal porridge and not bread means that they get wheat only once a day, although they prefer white above brown. Also, the mielie meal is highly refined and the rice they eat is also white and not brown. They will clearly lack in ruffedge and grain oils. As for half of their diet consisting of fruit and veg… I think this is probably their biggest problem especially since these are so important for keeping a strong immune system.

Supplementing Kindawo's Kitchen

So, on Saturday past I bought an extra bag of fresh oranges from the market and dropped it off at Kindawo. In addition I am also sponsoring basic vitamins for all at kindawo who have HIV to strengthen their immune systems. The adults are taking Formula IV plus and the kids Vita Squares. Apart from vitamins, minerals and enzymes these products also contain the essential fatty acids and sterols found in whole grains (rice, soy and wheat). These are lacking in their diet because of the refined starches they consume, but is important for healthy cells and the absorbtion of nutrients.

This article leads in a new section on FeedandEat.com dealing with special kitchens and their feeding and eating practices. I chose this kitchen for the special work it does in helping to care for children infected and affected by HIV/Aids. With this series on special kitchens, I also aim to make a physical contribution to improve the health practices of the households in question and invite my readers to help out too if they can.

My last question was how Feed and Eat visitors can help. Kindawo is about R2000 short on their monthly budget every month and while donations of food, clothing and other goods are always welcome, it is their running costs that is eating the budget. Anyone who would like to support them in terms of cash donations can click here for details.

Petro Janse van Vuuren

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