Cape Town - Health expert and executive director of Grow Great, Dr Edzani Mphaphuli, has warned that child nutrition was at risk due to the low quality of food being consumed due to load shedding.
Mphaphuli says children in schools, homes and early childhood centres are reportedly eating less fresh food and more fast food due to numerous factors such as the ongoing power outages.
Power utility Eskom implemented Stage 6 load shedding on Tuesday morning, resulting in more rolling blackouts.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, Mphaphuli said load shedding was putting parents in South Africa under intense financial pressure because of the current economic situation which influences their food choices.
“Not only does the load shedding influence the quality of the food they are purchasing, as we continue experiencing power outages, we are not able to buy fresh foods in bulk anymore.
Video: African News Agency (ANA)
“If you are a parent that is financially stable you end up buying fast food online or the any available food product compared to nutritious food, and for the poor class it is even worse because the quality of the fast food they can afford is even more unhealthy and has no protein.
“You end up feeding kids junk food because you cannot prepare healthy food as you would have preferred.
“Mothers likes to prepare food in bulk and store it in the fridge so that they can feed nutritious food to their children, but with constant load shedding they cannot do it anymore,” she said.
Mphaphuli said load shedding was impacting the country in the long-term and resulting in low nutrition and chronic disease and children are not growing properly because of the poor quality food they’re having to eat.
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