Peak Holds World Milk Day, Emphasises Health Benefits

Funmi Ogundare

More than 20,000 students from various public and private schools in Lagos recently converged on the Blue Roof, LTV, Ikeja for the World Milk Day organised by Peak Milk.

The programme, designed to propagate the values and essence of milk particularly among the young population, witnessed a cooking competition among 10 schools to let people know that there is more than they can do with milk than they currently know.

In her remarks, the Marketing Manager, Peak Milk, Mrs. Dolapo Otegbayi, said there is a lot more that could be done with milk, apart from the fact that it is beneficial to people.

“It is one of the natural sources of vitamin; it enhances growth, as well as physical performance, and it is also one of the cheapest sources of protein that we have around. It also helps in the general development of children.”

She called for a roundtable discuss on the importance of diary and milk, saying, “it is high time stakeholders began to talk about it, we all know that Peak has been in Nigeria for the past 60 years. We all do our best to propagate the values and essence of milk particularly among the young population. Over 40 per cent of Nigerians are under the age of 18 so you can imagine if we don’t start talking about milk now, then there could be a time when there is no more milk.”

On the selection of the 10 schools for the competition, Otegbayi said, “we activated over 500 schools in Lagos, this is the first time we are having this activity beyond, it is about raising the awareness and getting Nigerians to know that there is more that we can do with milk than we currently know.

“We have reached over 500,000 children as well, we saw the kind of recipes the children came up with without the support of their teachers and so you can imagine rather than use water alone to make your wheat, they replace water with milk to make wheat and they enjoyed it. It is also all about healthy living.”

A brand ambassador, Mrs. Sola Sobowale, described the programme as fantastic, while expressing concern that Nigerians are not eating balanced meal. “Our food is never balanced and we just eat to fill our stomach, coming here today is an eye opener for us to eat what is good for our body. The only thing what we know how to do best is to drink our milk, pap and custard, but we can do a lot of things with milk wisely because excess of everything is bad. We must balance what we eat.”

One of the judges, Dr. EloUkatu, who also gave a talk on the essence of good nutrition to children, said it is about letting them know what nutrition is and why they should have quality nutrition, the classes of food and how to ensure that the classes of food are represented in their meals.

“In Nigeria, there is malnutrition and you also have under-nutrition, on the other hand, you have over nutrition because some people are obese. It is to teach them how to balance their nutrient, rather than taking it excessively or inadequately and preventing all the negative effects that poor nutrition can give.”