Editor,

RE: "Western-style diet is unhealthy” (The New Times, August 25).

Even more urgent and as a preventing action, would be to train at high scientific level of Rwandan dieticians and food designers with strong recommendation to focus on re-discovering and re-use some of our local traditional foodstuffs – giving priority to safety and health over illusive economical objectives.

Francois-X. Nziyonsenga

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Those are some of the most wholesome and most nutritious foods on earth. People never know the value of what they have until they no longer have it.

It is really true: We are what we ingest. You take in industrially processed, chemically-fertilized and herbicide and pesticide grown junk liberally marinated in oil and can be sure you are stoking up all kinds of old and new diseases that modern medical knowledge can do little to nothing about.

And the irony is that in many developing countries, including ours, these nutrition-poor ‘foods’ are seen as a sign that you ‘have arrived’.

Mwene Kalinda