Hesperian Health Guides
Ways to Work toward Better Nutrition
HealthWiki > Where Women Have No Doctor > Chapter 11: Eating for Good Health > Ways to Work toward Better Nutrition
Here are a few examples of ways to improve nutrition. These suggestions can help you grow more food or different kinds of food, or store it better so the food does not spoil. Some of these examples bring quick results. Others work over a longer time.
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Trying a new idea
Do not be discouraged if an experiment does not work. Perhaps you can try again with certain changes. You can learn as much from your failures as from your successes.
Not all the suggestions in this chapter are likely to work in your area. Perhaps some will work if they are changed for your particular community and the resources at hand. Often you can only know whether something will work or not by trying itâthat is, by experiment.
When you try out a new idea, always start small. If you start small and the experiment fails, or something has to be done differently, you will not lose much. If it works, people will see that it works and can begin to use it in a bigger way.
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Here is an example of experimenting with a new idea:
You learn that a certain kind of bean, such as soya, is an excellent body-building food. But will it grow in your area? And if it grows, will people eat it?
Start by planting a small patchâor 2 or 3 small patches under different kinds of conditions (for example, with different kinds of soil or using different amounts of water). If the beans do well, try cooking them in various ways, and see if people will eat them. If so, try planting more beans using the conditions in which they grew best.
You can also try out even more conditions (for example, adding fertilizer or using different kinds of seed) in more small patches to see if you can get an even better crop. To best understand what helps and what does not, try to change only one condition at a time and keep the rest the same.
Here is an example of adding animal fertilizer (manure) to see if it helps beans grow. This person planted several small bean patches side-by-side, under the same conditions of water and sunlight, and using the same seed. Before planting, each patch of soil was mixed with a different amount of manure, something like this:
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| no manure | 1 shovel manure |
2 shovels manure |
3 shovels manure |
4 shovels manure |
5 shovels manure |
This experiment shows that a certain amount of manure helps, but that too much can harm the plants. This is only an example. Your experiments may give different results. Try for yourself!
Other ideas to experiment with
- To increase the amount of food a piece of land will produce, try planting different kinds of crops together. For example, plants that grow along the ground can be mixed with plants that grow tall. Fruit trees can be planted above both. Or plants that take a shorter time to grow can be mixed with those that take a longer time. Then the first crop can be harvested before the second crop gets too large.
- If you must plant cash crops (non-food crops that you sell), try planting food crops together with the cash crops. For example, plant nut or fruit trees to shade coffee. Or plant cassava with cotton.
- Try to find nutritious plants that grow well in local conditions, so that you will need less water and fertilizer for good results.
See Hesperianâs book A Community Guide to Environmental Health for more information on:
- storing food safely.
- sustainable farming in both rural and urban communities.
- managing pests and plant diseases.
- fish farming.
- raising animals.
- improving local food security.
Share with your neighbors
Some communities have a tradition of sharing food with those who need it. For example, when families go to religious services, they bring a handful of grain to share. Small amounts of grain from many families add up to a lot of stored grain. Then, if a few familiesâ crops fail, the stored grain is given to those struggling families. Some groups have set up formal ârice banksâ where families leave rice during the harvest season to loan to people in need during the dry season.