Health Minister, Colin Riley
Last week Friday there took place in Brades an event known as the Juice Hut challenge.
The event was held with the blessings of Colin Riley, Minister of Health, but was the initiative of Sylvester Solomon. Both Minister Riley and a medical practitioner gave the thumbs-up on the venture.
The Minister spoke at the opening of the all-day exhibition held to encourage residents to adopt healthy eating habits. Thanking the ‘juice hut’ owner he said the challenge is in line with the Ministry of Health’s drive to reduce the prevalence of non-communicable diseases among residents.
“We know that one of the ways to do that is to eat healthy, to eat foods that are grown close to our homes and that have the nutrition value to help us to be under weight control to have sort of the energy management through the day and to do the sorts of things that keep us well,” the Minister said.
He spoke to the economic value of the a private sector initiative, the risks, believing that the business venture will grow over time. He added: “We also want to make sure that people understand that what Mr. Solomon is doing is coming from the private sector,” Riley said. “He’s taking risk, and we believe that overtime his business will grow,” supporting view, “because one of the things we would like to do overtime is to encourage people to eat local.”
He repeated the health factor and strengthened the economic argument. “…such initiatives will help keep people healthy because as we expand and increase the amount of food that we grow from the local farms. We will not only be making ourselves healthy, we will also be absorbing that foreign exchange, keeping the wealth local, providing jobs and income for our people,” he concluded.
ZJB radio who reported on the matter (TMR was uninformed of the activity) spoke to people who visited the event. One such person said, drawing attention to one recent article we published on the benefits of coconut water: “I think this is an excellent activity to make people be aware of the importance of having fruit and vegetable and especially coconut water,” revealing their experience from the far east and the expense of fruits, “…in the far east it is very expensive to begin with. Also you will see these available but in tins and most of them unfortunately have been flavored, so we are really blessed to have proper food natural fruit here on our island,” she said.
Another person said, “The Juice Hut challenge is a very good initiative, I think as the minister said it is a good opportunity to make the people of Montserrat more healthier and of course reduce the hospital visits, so it’s a very unique challenge.”
A final solicited comment stated that the Juice Hut challenge, “is long overdue it is very interesting.”
The Juice Hut in Brades promises to provide healthy foods, to include smoothies, vegetable sandwiches and coconut water among other items.
