President John Dramani Mahama has taken a light-hearted swipe at Ghanaians’ love for heavy late-night meals, jokingly urging the public to cut down on such eating habits as part of efforts to promote healthier lifestyles.
Speaking at the launch of the Free Primary Healthcare Initiative on Wednesday, April 15, the president linked the rising burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) to modern dietary habits and increasingly sedentary lifestyles.
He painted a familiar picture of long workdays ending with heavy meals at night, cautioning that the practice could have negative health implications.
“Stop eating banku at night,” he said jokingly, drawing laughter from the audience, before advising that dinner should ideally be taken earlier in the evening.
“If you are the kind of person who likes eating heavy foods, you are not physically active, and you are sitting in one place, and yet when they give you your fufu or banku, you say it’s too small. You want a big bowl of fufu, and you want to eat it every day.
Sometimes you eat it at night before you go and sleep. Please, by 7PM, eat your dinner and don’t eat again. If you are hungry, just pick up some cup of tea or something. Don’t eat any heavy food. You come from work in the evening, and your wife is tired, but you force her to come and get you banku at 10PM. Why?” he said.
President Mahama also drew a comparison between past and present lifestyles, noting that earlier generations combined their diets with physically demanding activities such as farming, unlike today’s largely sedentary routines.
“Our fathers used to eat banku and co. in the night, but they were physically active; they used to go to the farm, and they expended energy. Now we don’t do any physical activity. You wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, drive to work, sit behind the desk from 8 am to 5 pm, drive back home, and when you come home, you ask for your banku. What physical activity did you do to deserve banku?” he jokingly questioned.
The president’s comments formed part of a broader call for lifestyle changes under the Free Primary Healthcare Initiative, which also emphasises public education as a key strategy to address the growing burden of non-communicable diseases.
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