If your granny didn't eat or drink it, you shouldn't either.
This simple rule of thumb and other practical advice on nutrition from The Centre in Zimbabwe has helped hundreds of HIV-positive people live longer, healthier lives.
What it means, explains Centre director Lynde Francis, is reverting to the foods used before colonization and avoiding low-fiber Western diets that are high in fat, sugar and stimulants, which have harmful effects on the immune system.
"Where there is a traditional cuisine, that is the one people should adopt," she said. "The only exception is where the staple is a potato or cassava or yams--what we call ground produce. Then they need to supplement it with unrefined grains."
In Zimbabwe, for example, a traditional staple is sadza, a stiff porridge made from ground maize, millet or sorghum.
Centre staff show clients that a nutritious diet is effective and affordable. "When you tell people that they can stay healthier by eating well, their faces fall because they think that's expensive," Francis said. "But in most developing countries, to eat healthy is almost always cheaper."
In fact, when Centre staff compare the cost of buying food for a nutritious traditional diet to a client's regular shopping bill, the savings are substantial. They recommend that clients use these savings to buy vitamins to strengthen their bodies' natural resistance to infection.
Francis noted that scientific papers on nutrition tend to focus on parenteral feeding, supplementation with micronutrients, and other high-tech interventions that are irrelevant to most people in low- and middle-income countries, rather than food.
Centre staff show people that they "don't need Western packets of protein powder," Francis said. They do so by translating nutritional theory into useful information, suggesting foods that are available and affordable to people with limited incomes and explaining the health benefits of a nutritious diet in clear, understandable terms.
This advice is provided through individual counseling, group education sessions and training workshops. Until last year, when a grant from the Canadian Public Health Association's Southern African AIDS Training Service enabled The Centre to open an office, these services were offered from Francis' home in Harare, the country's largest city.
The Centre's materials include sample menus and meal plans, lists of foods to eat and foods to avoid, and guidance on the best foods and vitamins to take during various illnesses, such as diarrhea, herpes or shingles attacks, and thrush. Its "Golden Rules of Eating for Health" emphasize the importance of unrefined, unprocessed indigenous foods, clean water, and small, frequent meals.
This is good advice for anyone, but for people living with HIV/AIDS, it is a survival strategy.
Francis and the other six staff members at The Centre know this first-hand. All HIV-positive, they do not take antiretroviral drugs. Instead, they practice what they preach and share what they have learned about diet and natural remedies with others.
"I thought the best thing I could do was helping other people not to have the kind of experience I had when I was diagnosed with HIV in 1986 and there was nothing--no support or information and absolutely no hope," Francis said.
Since it was founded in 1991, The Centre has worked directly with more than 700 clients, in addition to reaching hundreds more through training workshops and educational awareness sessions at workplaces. Of those 700-plus clients, only 68 have died.
This relatively low mortality rate has been achieved without antiretroviral treatment or--in many cases--other drugs. Like most people in countries with limited resources, many Centre clients have little or no access to any medical intervention.
"For many people, good nutrition is the only therapy available," Francis said. "The good new is, it's available, affordable, effective and--importantly--enjoyable, with no adverse side effects like drugs."
