Throwing a challenge to African medical doctors, nurses, dieticians, and nutritionists about diabetics

Greetings to ye all African professional medical doctors, nurses, dieticians, and nutritionists, wherever you are in the world.

Discussing from a complete layman’s point of view, I have a challenge for you regarding the correct diet for a diabetic and how and why.

I appear totally confused about what foods or diets African diabetics, if not diabetics in general, can eat, when and in what quantities.

I see these professionals variously coming across with suggestions, call them prescriptions if you want, about foods that diabetics can eat. One may suggest plantain is good, however, another will come out the next day to say it is not good.

I have heard these professionals advise us to stay away from, or consume with moderation, thus, eat in very small quantities at a time, foods like rice, yams, etc. They tell us we had better stay away from white rice, bread, especially white bread but to eat wholemeal bread once a while.

They advise us to rather eat more greens, thus, salad. Eat more cabbages, cucumber, carrot, broccoli, spinach, lettuce, they advise.

In Africa, we don’t grow most of the mentioned vegetables and they are not easy to come by. The little that is imported into the countries are very expensive, only the rich can mostly avail themselves of the benefits of such products.

When I was growing up in the villages in Ghana as a child, our main staple foods eaten without any problem by the population are the very those that both diabetics and healthy persons are being warned against their consumption.

What has gone wrong, when, and how? I pleadingly require our named professionals to investigate it. They are to conduct extensive investigations to come out with better solutions.

The cause of the diabetes that is spreading among Africans like a wild harmattan bush fire, call it mid-summer bush fire if you are abroad, must be found by our African medical professionals.

We cannot ignore the consumption of our local foods to go for those mentioned “green greens” that thrive mostly in the white man’s land and are principally the white man’s food.

Why is it that anything African is not good and are shunned by Africans themselves? Is it the question of inferiority complex or what?

Please, help us to find out what is causing this diabetes epidemic in Africa, killing most Africans or Ghanaians.

Could it not be down to the taste of the white man’s food culture that Africans have cultivated that is causing increase in sufferers of diabetes among us?

I am more worried about the confusion among you professionals as to what diabetics can eat and cannot eat. One professional says this, only to be countered by another in the next minute.

Please, find out why Africans are suffering and dying from diabetes, once a foreign illness to the African.

The layman in the medical field is querying.