Food is what we need most to survive. It is also, more than survival, what we need to enjoy life. But we tend to exercise a routine nonchalance to how we eat, where we at, what we eat and when we eat.

The bottom-line is that we privilege taste over quality, disdain proportion and pay less attention to the environment. The life style statistics of Nigerians, especially the part that shows that our life expectancy does not match the developed world, has not yet restrained our attitude to diet. Many Nigerians die for reasons that are easily avoided.

It was instructive that the 4th World Food Safety Day 2022 had resonance in this country when the director-general of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, Professor Mojisola Adeyeye, took advantage of the day to harp on the need for Nigerians to eat right. The motto was ‘Safer Food, Better Health’.

“We know that food safety is a shared responsibility, and everyone has a role to play in ensuring we have safer food for better health: from growers to processors, to transporters, sellers, buyers, and those who prepare or serve food.

“Policy makers, educational institutions and workplaces, as well as consumers are not left out; food safety is the responsibility of all. We must all work together to help achieve safer food for better health,” she said.

Sometimes we regard food safety as a private responsibility. But it is also a public responsibility and it is not necessarily tethered to food policy alone. We have to see it as a security issue. Food security is also national security. If the citizens do not eat the right food, they will not live long. They will depend on drugs for living, and they will not enjoy good enough health to be alert to work for national development.

For instance, if we have soldiers on the warfront to duel insurgents into silence, we need them not only to eat proper diet, but the diet must also be neat. If we fail, the soldier will not be at his optimum to defend us.

The child who does not eat right, no matter how well he or she prepares for examination, will not perform at the level of his or her potential.