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{
    "id": 621286,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/621286/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 272,
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    "content": "government level. In addition, the provision of health services is a function that falls within the ambit of the county governments as specified under Part Two of the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution. One of the most important things about the fight against cancer is prevention and control. Substantial knowledge and literature is available to the public as well as to health practitioners and professionals. However, the first line of prevention of cancer is nutrition and the environment. If we live in an environment which is unhealthy in terms of cancer causing fumes and material or interacting with a polluted environment and taking highly carcinogenic foods and fluids, we shall be preparing the body for a possible cancer attack. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the second statement that is related to prevention and control is diet and or nutrition. As part of propagating knowledge about cancer which is envisaged under this Bill, I hope that substantial information will be available to Kenyans that the first line of attack against cancer is nutrition. It has unfortunately been misunderstood that when talking about nutrition, it is all about expensive foods. On the contrary, in pre-capitalist African societies where the population was small, the environment was clean and families survived on subsistence farming. People accessed organic foods much easier at costs they could afford. When I was growing up, wild berries and fruits were available in the forests when we were looking after animals. It was surprising that you would not eat much substantial food in the morning but you could go into the woods the whole day looking after cattle and come back in the evening without feeling hungry. This is because we would go to the river and drink clean spring water with a lot of minerals. Today, if you dare drink water from the river, those minerals have disappeared and instead the water is polluted by all kinds of carcinogenic materials including feaces which make one amenable to typhoid. The good organic mineral laden river water is no longer available to herders to access and get the good kind of water, good for their bodies. Access to wild berries and fruits was good because they were organic and nutritious fruits that the bodies need. Back home, our mothers prepared flour for cooking from fresh millet that was grounded as we looked. They cooked ugali and porridge from that whole meal of millet. In the backyard, they had vegetables of many descriptions. These vegetables, if available in the market today, are expensive. Mr. Temporary Speaker, Sir, the information should go out to the counties that people should begin to grow the organic foods that we did before than thinking that we can only access good nutritious food in supermarkets. We must understand that a lot of supermarket foods are highly processed. In order to have a long shelf life, preservatives which are not good for our bodies have been put in. Therefore, one line of prevention is to encourage supermarkets to state clearly the nutrition content of the foods that are sold to consumers. In the United States of America (USA), it is mandatory that the food vendors state clearly on the packet covers what nature of food is on sale. There are many stores that sell these organic foods but in many instances, they are expensive and only accessible to the middle class and above. In rural areas in the USA, rural folks are highly sort after because they grow organic foods. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes"
}