African Healthy Food Secrets: Forgotten & Waning African Food Culture

FOREWORD

Eat Yourself Healthy - Food is The Best Medicine

For whom & why this book?

It is no secret anymore that, one of the greatest health-woes of our time is the emergence of many chronic metabolic disorders resulting from our insatiable consumption of sugar and its different, hidden chains in our foods. Besides, in these days of harmful chemicals, metals, and nanoplastic particles in our meals, taking a journey back to the roots of The Secrets of African Healthy Food Traditions could not be a wrong choice.

Today, we do no longer eat locally but globally. Globalisation has made all sorts of food available worldwide with all consequences. Everyone must, therefore, get informed on what we eat, its effect on our body and which alternative sources are available out there.

If you feel often exhausted, engage in reparative, rather than preventive medicine and take much health-risks…. this book will surely be a great benefit to you and your family. In the 21st century, our suspicion of modernity has increased so much.

We have increased worries about environmental causes of poor health, which is fostering a shift to complementary and alternative medicine. We are concerned about radiation, WIFI and the safety of mobile phones, environmental pollution, vaccines, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and genetically modified foods. Our concern on diet, in general, has led to a heightened awareness of the effect of environmental changes on health. We believe that these concerns about technological change, which have not found a general acceptance by researchers, have important implications for our lives and how we accept health information.

We are regularly bombarded with a deluge of health information, we experience much high-tech in medicine, we swallow many pills, but still, the rate of chronic illnesses in our modern society is very high.

For many there is a better cheaper treatment: Eat differently. Medical Experts are convinced with nutrition, so much could be achieved but unfortunately, only a few people know this. Worse still, many who possess this information, do not use the opportunity. So, with this book, I am empowering you to eat yourself healthy because as we know better know: The right food is the best medicine.

Whether you are African, Asian, European or Hispanic, all century-old healthy traditional food secrets handed over from one generation to the next from each culture in the World are great resources for humankind. With all these nutritional secrets put together, we can keep illnesses at bay. This task is of great importance for our human heritage and generations to come. This book is for everyone interested in healthy living. Those interested in the new ever-popular trend – using nutrition to stop or improve an unhealthy lifestyle and thereby preventing future chronic diseases.

It is for those interested in finding out what nature has given us for health promotion which is gradually waning out of our food culture and our lifestyle. If you are ethnic African, shout Waaoo! for this work is a wonderful guide to assist you get back to the roots of the healthy foods of our ancestors refined and adapted with professional and scientific backing.

For most people who left their countries of birth to start a new life in a foreign country, making health and nutrition decisions can appear peripherally to be a simple task. In reality, for our organs, it is a different story: One wrong choice or habit held so long and sourced by cultural adaption could make all the difference between a healthy life and a later life in abject misery, illness and poverty. It is therefore especially crucial if you immigrated to a new country, to watch what and how you eat. Those who still live in their countries should equally watch out on new food cultures that could be harmful to health.

It is now no news that Western diet with its steady supply of high-calorie, high sugar, high-fat and high-salt ingredients is responsible for most of the health woes in industrial societies and worse still, for the African communities, especially in the US, lower, poorer groups. Statistically, we know western societies have higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity etc. We also know today that Blacks in the US and other western countries suffer from higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity than other members of other ethnic groups. The Centre for Disease Control US published the alarming statistics in black and white. It is also a known fact that nutrition and culture are intertwined and when Africans adopt foreign Franken food culture without special consideration, the result could be chronic health disorders like diabetes, cancer and hypertension.

This book is not a boycott call for western food, but a call for a professional reflection and for a new approach to fix African health-problems with researched information, intercultural health and nutrition awareness. A mix is needed!

Before I left as graduate Journalist the continental Africa for Europe, health themes have always been of great importance to me, and I wrote a lot on them. Ironically then, due to the daily struggle to survive the next day, I never really gave much attention to nutrition or what I ate.

Years later after my medical training and qualification as a state registered Intercultural Competence and Intercultural Health Professional in 2010, my view of how food and culture affect our health, took a different turn. The experiences I gather daily with my students in the Intercultural Competence Training classes and patients in the clinics, fortified my interest for further research in this direction.

Also, if you are health-conscious, immigration as a process will not only force you to re-examine each food you eat, it will equally push you to re-think its access and processing. This is because immigration and migration-phases, its processes and culture, play huge roles in our health and lifestyle.

Besides, as an intercultural trainer, I know how powerful food could be as a cultural transporter which often has been underrated by many people. Awareness creation and publicity is the key. Food and recipe from Africa had primarily been relegated to the background for many reasons.

Think about the Japanese Sushi in Europe in the 1980s and Sushi-food-culture today. Same goes for the Indian Food. In the late 1950s, Chinese, Japanese or Indian foods gained popularity in Europe because of the popularity of Asian culinary literature.

Years later, European obsession with Asian food never indicated an abating trend. Today, Asians and their meals are no longer foreign in Europe. The great divide has been broken down. It is from our long human history and experience that the saying in German Liebe geht durch den Magen (The way to a man's heart goes through his stomach) is true in almost all cultures. Food is not only a game-changer but a wonderful mesmerizer.

After successfully launching and publishing a magazine on positive Africa since 2004, I was quite determined to change how people perceived the different countries of Africa via with a new tool – Africa´s rich food culture.

We also know media coverage of Africa till this date, remains that of starving children with bloated bellies, and people are thinking Daily, same pictures: why can’t these Africans solve their problems themselves?

Today in 21st Century, many books, illustrations, films and media-reports still present Africa ignorantly as a country, where nothing else reigns other than cataclysms, hunger, diseases and wild animals roaming in the Savannah.

Over decades in western countries, many saddening images have been portrayed, and blood-curdling tales of wild savagery told about Africa.

Many Africans in Diaspora know that these images often do not reflect the realities in their respective home countries in Africa. It is this perpetual, negative-image thinking and presentation of Africa and its people that I also want to address and dispel with this book.

Do you know, there are so many tips; so much knowledge, medicine, art and literature in our food culture out there - unseen and unreported? These aspects of African heritage need not be left to drift into oblivion. These must be documented and made public. Moreover, for me, this book:

African Healthy Food Secrets is part of the great African asset. It is a part-access and beginning compass for those interested in moving Africa forward.

This is an indispensable resource for people interested in the exploring-journey on African way of life, starting with food as their vehicle.

Food, Faith and Ancestry-Mix is the Key

The biggest aim of this book is to create awareness on the hidden health benefits of many forgotten and threatened African foods & recipes and to suggest how "Food, Faith and Ancestry-Mix" could provide many Africans with the solution to the modern/rural nutrition-clash-dilemma and modern chronic diseases. I feel passionate about improving not just the health of every human, but especially Africans at home and in the Diaspora.

As concerned African media and intercultural health professional in Europe, the daily health environment I find many Africans in Europe, starting from unbridled fast-food consumption to absolute emptiness in health-awareness is pitying and alarming. This situation needs not only publicity but immediate attention.

Life is all about the golden choices we make: We can always choose between: paying the nutritionist, investing in knowledge-acquisition: To get more awareness on a healthy lifestyle now...or to opt for relatives paying the gravedigger later. I have seen enough of many avoidable deaths occur now and then in our communities both at home and in the Diaspora. Personally, between 2016 and 2018 I lost four dear relatives as a result of poor health awareness. I will not wish anyone to experience such. This experience is a driving force for this publication.

Untimely deaths resulting from misinformation, superstition, religious chauvinism, ignorance and poor health awareness must be stopped in our communities. Tips and feedback reports from my patients and clients in the clinic were fed into this project to enhance its utility.

This work highlights eating more, natural foods – like whole full brown grains. Readers will learn the difference between eating less fat, (e.g. fried foods etc.) sugar and salts versus eating more greens and bitter vegetables or healthy millet — which feeds birds in many industrial countries but consumed to enhanced health-advantage by people in many African countries. This publication will show you how carrots and ginger can change your health positively, the difference between okro and bitter leave and the non-organic versions, the difference between Quaker oats and organic oats, and other substitutes we can make to increase the food-quality we eat.

Finally, this book will help many people with African ancestry to re-discover their roots and the food-culture that kept many Africans healthy over the centuries. Cultural heritage and nutrition are like water and salt.

Each dissolves without leaving colouring trace in the other, yet one can taste the presence of each in a mixture.

Pride and self-esteem of a community pivot around Culture. So knowing your cultural and genetic origin helps you recognise your gene-cultural-programming, which biologically controls how and what you eat are processed in your body. Finally, this determines your overall health.

From Europe, I cannot help or reach everyone with my intercultural health awareness lectures, but this great health awareness information can reach you through this book.

CHAPTER ONE

Historical Background

Early Human History & Our Food Today

From a scientific point of view, humans are the result of evolution and are equally subjected to the same environmental pressures as other living things. From nutrition and feeding behaviour, what similarities can we see between humans and other animals? Marked differences are not apparent when humans and other animals are compared to nutrition. Human needs are similar to other animals’ needs (Schmidt-Nielsen, 1996).

We can recall that the first revolution in feeding habits transpired with the innovation of fire by our human ancestor Homo erectus (Rose, 2006; Wrangham, 2009). No doubt, fire must have enabled them to make use of food. Cooking helps digestion and it also eliminates all possible toxins which may be present in the food. Although the discovery of fire is not accepted by other researchers as the fundamental discovery in the development of nutrition from the primitive age.

Nonetheless, Wagram (2009) stipulated that our species i.e. humans have small teeth and a short digestive system. Moreover, unlike animals whose anatomic structure could support easy digestion of raw substances like roots or fibres, humans need to cook raw food to make it suitable for consumption.

Furthermore, the second revolution which led to the development of food happened at approximately 11,000 years ago when agriculture found its way to Southwest Asia. It signalled the introduction of grain in the human diet like oats, barley, rye, wheat etc. We should also know that omnivorous eating enabled humans to establish a large food community. If humans were exclusively vegetarians, they wouldn’t bother establishing themselves in places which lacked plants. Moreover, if they were solely carnivores, they would have faced difficulty during the primitive stage. Under the Chapter on Early Man and Our Food Today, we will discuss primitive nutrition vs present day eating customs.

In the order of superiority, our ancestors’ diet was unquestionably superior to the modern diet or the diet we have today (Cordian et al., 2005; Lindeberg et al., 2007; Zucoloto, 2008; Eaton et al., 2010). When we are talking about the food we have today, we may not be able to make generalisations. We all know that food nutrition in some countries/regions of the planet can be better than in other regions.

A good contrast here could be the traditional Japanese food/Mediterranean diet or West African diet vs the fast-food diet prevalent worldwide. Quickly let’s go through this; the American Food culture is rooted almost on four staple foods: Rice, potatoes, wheat and corn as opposed to the Japanese and French’s who ingest in large quantity and quality more vegetables than Americans.

One big goal of this book is to document, dwell on and expose the health and great nutritional secrets existing in natural African meal ingredients and food-culture.

It will also be a guide for those interested in healthy eating. It will, therefore, help us preserve forgotten, African food traditions which most kids with birthdays from the late 1980s will never learn without such a resource.

The sad story is that the exit of these plants, trees and other ingredients and their recipes is happening so fast and many adult Africans do not even possess this information on (the great nutritional values in native African ingredients and food tradition). Take Moringa Oleifera as an example: Have you ever heard or made use of Moringa? It is native to