Accra, Dec.6, GNA - Major Courage Quashigah (rtd), Minister of Health, on Wednesday said the Sector was developing a programme to promote food safety.
The programme dubbed: 93Regenerating Health and Nutrition Project" is aimed at promoting healthy lifestyle in relation to the type of food eaten in the country.
The Health Minister announced this when he met with Executives of the Ghana Chefs Association to discuss the importance of food to health and what the Association could do to promote good nutrition especially in hotels.
He stressed that food could be used to regenerate health since nutrition was the basis of health and food also served as medicine for the body.
"Help to make people to respond to the health needs by rejecting wrong and unhygienic food stuffs from the markets. Most of the time you see hotel vans parked in markets where foodstuffs are displayed on the ground."
Major Quashigah urged the Association to appreciate the situation of food in relation to health and to tie in all the hotels and their Executive Chefs to ensure that they went by the rules of the Association to achieve a state where nutritious and hygienic food were served in all hotels and restaurants.
The Minister who was decorated with some badges of the Association by Mr Gary Lane, an Executive Chef of the Labadi Beach Hotel, for the support he had and continue to offer the Association, pledged the Ministry's continuous support for the Association.
Mr Lane said members of the Association would compete in an international food competition organised by the World Association of Chefs' Societies (WACS) next year.
The World Association of Chefs' Societies is a global network of chefs associations first founded in October 1928 at The Sorbonne in Paris.
He said Chefs in all hotels would be educated on the need to keep health checks on the food they served and would offer support aimed at uniting members of the Association.
Mr Lane also announced plans by the Association to start a programme called "beans for health" where the public would be reminded of the nutritional value of beans to encourage the eating of beans in addition to serving bean dishes in the various hotels, restaurants and other eating-places.
The group earlier visited the Ministry of Fisheries to solicit support and promised to encourage more fish diets instead of meat since eating fish was healthier than meat.
At the Ministry, Mr Lane said the Association was developing a fast food fish concept to promote the eating of fish.
Mr Emmanuel Mensah Quaye, Chief Director of the Ministry, who received the group, said the fishing industry formed the very basis of the economy of this country and commended members of the Association for the decision to popularise the eating of fish.
