Nutrition
Back to Our Roots: Growing what we eat, eating what we grow
Did you know you can grow tomatoes, peppers, kontomire, and even carrots in plastic bottles, buckets, or old cooking pots right on your balcony or backyard?
Across Ghana, families are rediscovering the joy and power of growing their food, even with limited space and resources. With rising food prices and growing concerns about chemically treated produce, more people are turning to home gardens as a low-cost, healthy, and empowering solution to address malnutrition and food insecurity.
Malnutrition remains one of Ghana’s most urgent challenges, with children facing stunted growth and anaemia, while adults battle increasing cases of obesity and diet-related illnesses. But solving this crisis isn’t just about eating more, it’s about eating right, eating safely, and eating smart. And that starts with going back to our roots.
By planting vegetables at home, families can cut food costs, eat fresher meals, and reduce dependence on produce grown with harmful chemicals. Schools, churches, and even workplaces are joining the movement by creating small gardens to promote good nutrition and self-reliance.
The revival of traditional Ghanaian foods
At the heart of this movement is a revival of traditional Ghanaian foods. Once staples in every kitchen, crops like millet, legumes, baobab, and cocoyam are naturally packed with nutrients our bodies need. These local superfoods are making a comeback, not just for their health benefits, but also for their cultural pride and affordability. They grow well in our soil, suit our climate, and nourish our families.
Ensuring food safety and sustainability
Good nutrition also means knowing how our food is grown. With increased use of pesticides and environmental threats like illegal mining contaminating farmlands and water sources, the need for safe, sustainable farming is urgent. Home gardening allows us to control how we grow, what we grow, and how we feed our families.
Education and awareness are key. Through school programs, community cooking demos, and social media, more people are learning that nutritious eating doesn’t require imported products or expensive supplements. It starts with what’s already around us, our land, our seeds, our knowledge.
The fight against malnutrition in Ghana doesn’t have to be complicated. It starts with a simple act: planting something. Whether it’s in a sack, a bottle, or a backyard plot, growing your food is a powerful step toward better health, lower food costs, and stronger communities.
Ready to start your own garden? Here’s how
Starting your home garden might seem daunting, but it’s easier than you think. Here are three simple steps to get you going:
Choose your spot: Look for an area that gets at least 6 hours of sunlight daily. This could be a balcony, a small patch in your backyard, or even a sunny windowsill.
Pick your container: You don’t need fancy pots, you can use old buckets, used plastic bottles (cut in half with drainage holes), or even firm sacks can be perfect. Just ensure they have holes at the bottom for water to drain.
Select easy to grow crops: For beginners, start with resilient and fast-growing vegetables. Good choices in include kontomire (cocoyam leaves), spring onions, garden eggs, and various types of peppers. These thrive with minimal attention.
For more in-depth guidance and local tips, consider connecting with your local agricultural extension officers in your community.
Feature Article by Women, Media and Change on its Nourish Ghana: Advocating for Increased Leadership to Combat Malnutrition Project.
Egg stew is a traditional dish from Ghana. It is very healthy and easy to prepare. The dish is traditionally served with rice, plantain and any other meal of one’s choice.
Ingredients
-1 litre of vegetable oil
-2 fresh salmon
-10 large tomatoes
-5 large onions
– 6 eggs
-3 tablespoonful of pepper
-1 tablespoonful of powdered garlic and ginger
-1 tin of mackerel
– I large green pepper
-3 tablespoonful of tomatoes paste
Preparation
-Wash tomatoes, onion, green pepper and blend
-Put oil on fire and add onion and powdered pepper to it
-When onions turn golden brown, add blended tomatoes and tomato paste to it. (Allow it to cook for 3 minutes.)
-Add eggs and salmon to stew and leave it for a minute before stirring.
– Add seasoning to the stew and serve.
By Linda Abrefi Wadie
Every baby deserves a healthy start. But in Ghana, too many children are being born already behind, too small, too fragile, and at far greater risk than their peers. Low birth weight, defined as weighing less than 2.5 kilograms at birth, affects an estimated one in seven newborns in this country.
That is a significant proportion of children beginning life at a disadvantage, often due to preventable causes.
Children born with low birth weight face a steeply uphill journey from their very first breath. They are more susceptible to birth asphyxia, infections, hypothermia, and respiratory complications.
They are more likely to die in their first month of life. Those who survive face higher risks of stunting, impaired cognitive development, and a greater likelihood of developing non-communicable diseases including type two diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease later in life.
Low birth weight does not just harm the child today. It shapes their health for decades.
The most powerful determinant of a baby’s birth weight is what the mother eats, and how healthy she is before and during pregnancy. Research in Ghana has consistently shown that maternal anaemia, poor dietary diversity, and inadequate antenatal care are all strongly linked to low birth weight.
A study in Cape Coast found that mothers with low dietary diversity during pregnancy were significantly more likely to deliver low birth weight babies. In Northern Ghana, maternal anaemia in both the first and third trimesters of pregnancy increased the risk of low birth weight. What a woman eats is what her baby weighs.
Education matters too. Mothers with secondary or higher education have been found to be less likely to deliver a low-birth-weight baby, a difference attributed to better nutrition knowledge, improved antenatal care attendance, and healthier health-seeking behaviour overall.
This points clearly to the need for a whole-of-society response, not just a clinical one.
Ghana has made some progress on low birth weight, but the burden remains unacceptably high and in some parts of the country, it is worsening. Other important risk factors must not be overlooked.
Adolescent pregnancy, which remains prevalent in several regions, is strongly associated with low birth weight because young mothers are often still growing and competing with the fetus for nutrients.
Malaria infection during pregnancy, particularly in endemic areas of Ghana, damages the placenta and restricts nutrient transfer, further increasing the likelihood of a low-birth-weight baby.
These risk factors compound the effects of poor maternal nutrition and limited antenatal care. Leaders in government, health facilities, and communities must prioritise maternal nutrition before, during, and after pregnancy.
Reducing low birth weight is not complicated. It requires feeding mothers well, supporting them through antenatal care, ensuring access to iron-folic acid supplementation and malaria prevention during pregnancy, and treating their health as a national priority, not an afterthought.
Feature article by Women, Media and Change under its Nourish Ghana: Advocating for Increased Leadership to Combat Malnutrition project
