Learning the Health Benefits of Locally Available Foods Helps One Mother Feed Her Children Better

Chu A Xa is a 30-year-old mother of two small children who, like many La Hu women in the far northwest region of Vietnam, feeds her family everyday with rice, maize and some pork. This diet is followed despite the fact that the fully grown pumpkins, which are plentiful, are highly nutritious and could be eaten for more than their stalks and green young fruit as vegetable. As it is now, Xa and her neighbors use the fully grown ripe pumpkins to feed their pigs. During a CWS-hosted nutrition info-sharing session, when Xa was learning about Vietnam’s four key food groups, that she came to know the nutritional value, especially for her children, of pumpkins. Now, after the cooking demonstration that followed the info-sharing, Xa says she now knows that ripe pumpkin has a lot of vitamin A and other nutrients that help children grow and be healthy.

Now Xa is happy to share that she also knows nutritious local food alternatives/substitutes available around the village and, like other mothers, she now knows how to prepare vitamin-rich food for her children.