Hi everyone, welcome to my blog.
It's another weekend and I'm excited this morning to share with you one important thing that we often don't pay attention to. I know if you ask anybody on the road that what are the basic need of life? Most people will say food, clothing and shelter.
Oh! I'm not saying you are wrong. Infact, you are right, because that is what we were taught. But, I realized that even with the availability of these, some still struggle with good health. To me, I feel good health should be included in the above. Talking about health, a lot of things that causes illness are due to some factors that can be avoided.
Most times, we give attention to filling out stomach with food while some factors are not of relative importance. One of these factors is what I will be discussing with us in this post. Which is the cooking fuel.
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While I was writing my thesis I did a comprehensive study on respiratory health and I discovered that in Nigeria the prevalence of respiratory infection is high(DHS, 2018/19)and according to WHO(2018), approximately 50 percent of the world population are being affected by respiratory infection. How does cooking fuel choice comes into this discovery is what I will be explaining in the paragraphs below.
Many feel so far they are taking adequate balance diet they are free from sickness. This is not absolutely true because the kind of cooking fuel you use in preparing your food also affects your health.
There are two major divisions of cooking fuels: clean and dirty fuel. The clean cooking fuel are regarded as clean because there is no emission of smoke in any form. Examples of these fuels include liquefied gas and electricity while the dirty cooking fuels are those fuels that emit smoke during the cause of usage. Examples are kerosene, coal, firewood and dungs.
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Many household use dirty fuel because they are cheap and this is common in developing and under developed countries. Dirty fuels are readily available in our environment but are harmful to our health. Why?
The smoke emitted from these fuels are inhaled into our body and this causes respiratory infections which can lead to lung cancer, asthma, CPD, tuberculosis etc. The worst part of it is that children are mostly affected because they love to play around their mothers while cooking. In Nigeria, clean fuels are now extremely expensive and not readily available in some area, but I believe with determination we can switch gradually to using clean fuels. If switching is not possible it is advisable to use dirty fuels outdoor and not indoor.
I just want this to be something we hold in esteem too, lets fight for the safety of our lives and environment. As the Lord will be blessing you, try to switch to clean fuels to save one from unnecessary spending on respiratory infection by doing this we reduce the numbers of victims.
In summary, food is important likewise the choice of cooking fuels is very important too and switch to clean fuels if you can.
Thanks for reading my post. I wish you good health.