President Lazarus Chakwera has urged Malawians to embrace food diversification if the country is to deal with malnutrition.

Chakwera made the call when he launched the Scaling Up Nutrition 3.0strategy in Lilongwe where he also committed to strengthen nutritional operations and allocating adequate resources towards nutrition programmes.

Chakwera said investing in preventing malnutrition is better than dealing with its consequences.

“There can be no serious discussion of the role of citizens in fighting malnutrition without the national mention of our staple ’Nsima’ ,we need to face the painful truth.

“As a country we have become overdependent on it and Chakwera said it is high-time Malawians substituted nsima with other foods like fortified sweet potatoes, cassava and banana’s in order to meet our nutritional needs.

“This SUN 3.0 is an unique opportunity for us to re-engineering our society towards a diversified diet,” added Chakwera.

Delivering her keynote speech, deputy Secretary General for the United Nations and SUN coordinator Gerda Verburg said she was impressed with the strides that Malawi has made in reducing under-nutrition to 37%.

Verburg also challenged government and stakeholders to start thinking about nutrition as an investment .

“Start with investing in children because if you start with investing in children and their mothers, starting with adolescent girls you invest in prevention and prevention is the best early warning, early action that you can imagine and its the best and strongest stepping stone to build resilience,” she said.