Dr. Laetitia Adaudu is the Chief Executive Officer of Jos-based Laetitia Resorts Limited, a public health initiative, with focus on healthy living. The Public Health specialist teaches people to live and eat healthy and also to reverse diseases when possible. Adaudu had her Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) from the University of Ibadan and then specialised in Public Health in the University of Lagos.

She worked in the Military Hospital, Yaba and Ikoyi in Lagos and also with some private clinics in Lagos before she went to work with the United Nations in Abuja. After that, she worked with the European Union, EUPrime, an immunisation outfit sponsored by the EU before going on to start her own public health outfit. In this chat with Vanguard, she speaks on healthy eating and says she is more interested in preventing than in treating diseases. Excerpts:

*Dr. Laetitia Adaudu…Fruits cleanse the system while vegetables nourish the cells

By Ebele Orakpo

STARTING my own business: According to Adaudu, while working in the clinics, she discovered that most patients came with ailments that could have easily been prevented and that got her thinking. “As a clinician, I was teaching patients how to stay healthy and it worked. I asked myself why wait until they are ill and have to spend so much money on medications which have side effects? I decided that people are ignorant about how to keep and stay healthy. That was where my passion stemmed from.”

What I do: “I have patients with diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure etc., who come to me for treatment, they are put on therapy. I also write a lot about healthy living on social media, creating awareness.

Creating awareness

But my target is actually people who are not patients so they don’t have to become patients. Right now, I am making film clips called Lease on Life with Laetitia on healthy living.”

Supplements cannot replace good nutrition: “Basically, in teaching people how to stay healthy, the focus is on what to eat. Nutrition is actually the backbone of health. Right now, so much emphasis is placed on supplements; a lot of supplements are coming into the country and people just buy these supplements and think they can continue to eat junk foods and not come down with sickness but they will come down with sickness if they don’t correct their eating habits. You cannot equate supplements with healthy eating.

There are many supplements now – for arthritis, hypertension, diabetes etc. I am not saying supplements are not important, they have their place but they are being abused, people want to eat their cake and have it; they don’t want to stop their poor eating habits, they just want to buy the supplements and continue eating the wrong foods, oily foods and animal foods.”

Highly processed foods: “Another thing is that good nutrition consists in eating natural foods. What we find is that our foods are highly processed. We eat a lot of carbohydrates, proteins and all are highly processed. We don’t eat vegetables and when we do, the vitamins are killed because the vegetables are overcooked. So people need to be taught how to cook vegetables.”

Living foods: “We need to eat living foods; foods that the vitamins and minerals are still intact and fruits. When people want to eat natural foods, they eat a lot of fruits but what we need are the vegetables which most people don’t like. Fruits are important but we should not overdo the fruits because most of them are sugary so it is best not to eat too much of fruits. Fruits cleanse the system while vegetables nourish the cells and that is why they are very important.”

What the cells really need:  “On a rich man’s table, you see a lot of meat of different types, an array of food and he says he eats well but he is not eating well.

Even the man who doesn’t have much money, when you look at his food content, you see that he is not being nourished because he does not have those natural foods which the cells really need.”

Eating at the cellular level

“We feed the stomach, we don’t nourish or feed the cells. The cells are the foot soldiers. It is at the cellular level that the work is done and most of the time, they are starved. Many of us have already laid down the foundation for disease because of poor feeding and this takes years before it manifests. They tell women to go and do mammography instead of focusing on nutrition so the woman does mammography and finds a lump and the breast is removed and they think that takes care of the cancer; it doesn’t because the cancer will still come out in another place. What people need to be taught is healthy eating and healthy living.“

Healthy eating: “Healthy eating consists of not just the nutrition but also active lifestyle. At Laetitia Resort, we teach what is called CANCER (Contaminated Air, Nutritional Carelessness, Environmental Roth)-free lifestyle. All these predispose us to ill health so all of us are living the CANCER lifestyle. Here, almost everybody has a mini generator and they all breathe in polluted air, we eat a lot of junk, even children. I went to a shop the other day and I saw so many parents jostling for position, looking for what to buy.

Diseases for the future

I asked one of them why so many parents there and he said they came to buy juice for their children to take to school. I said to him: “You mean your wife cannot juice something for the child to take to school or put an apple or banana or something in the child’s lunch box?” He said “oh, I never thought of it.” The juice contains a lot of sugar and before the child gets to class three, he is already obese and laying down fat cells and diseases for the future.

You see a lot of polythene bags in the environment, everywhere is a refuse dump, and these things come back to haunt us because they are traps for viruses, bacteria and all of that. In a nutshell, that is the CANCER lifestyle. What I found out is that people don’t really care about their health until they are sick. Even the educated people will tell you that something will kill someone. Yes, something will kill someone but do you have to die like that? You have been working so hard, saving so much money and at 50 or 60 years, you want that savings to be used for a trip to India for treatment or Honolulu to enjoy your holidays?