African Food Habits, Health and Culture

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East African Food Habits

Overview | Tanzania | Kenya | Uganda | Zanzibar&Pemba Islands | Contact | Recipes | Links

AIMS OF THE STUDY

With my background of nutritional sciences, and interest in indigenous food cultures, I had a unique opportunity to develop an interactive web site on traditional East African food habits as part of my PhD project.

The Oltersdorf Collection

The website is largely based on the Oltersdorf Collection, a unique historical data set from observational studies of traditional Food Habits and nutritional outcome measures in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. These observational data from the 1930s to 1960s were provided by Professor Ulrich Oltersdorf from Karlsruhe, Germany.

The Oltersdorf Collection being made available online will improve:

Access: By providing these data, for the first time, via electronic medium.
Research: By providing a reference point for future studies conducted in these countries research will be improved and inter-tribal/community research can be enhanced.
Education: Increasing awareness of this valuable data set that spans 3 decades (1930s to 1960s) and includes the earliest, fundamental nutrition and health status surveys carried out in East Africa.
Communication: The web site including e-versions of old but valuable documents is going to be an important medium for communication in and outside Africa.
Comparison: By providing these historical dataset for the first time, via electronic medium, the early changes in food habits (past-present) and its driving forces can be explored.
Dietary acculturation: By providing information on East African Food Habits. This will enhance the situation of African refugees after migration and food security* issues can be identified by researchers, dieticians and health educators.
Awareness: By providing information on traditional African Food Habits, Western countries will potentially increase the availabilty of African foods.

*availability and affordability as well as identification of traditional African foods to enhance dietary diversity and healthy food choices after migration.

The traditional knowledge of food habits in Africa is being lost. There is clearly an imperative need for documentation, compilation, and dissemination of this rapidly eroding wealth of information. Such knowledge is likely essential in abating current projected non-communicable disease (NCD) trends for Africa, and the rest of the world. This information can and should be utilized by the global community, for improving the current globalized food culture, which is largely responsible for the obesity and diabetes epidemics plaguing the world. The online collection, could be instrumental as a potential source of information on traditional African food habits.

Future efforts should contribute to honing knowledge of traditional food habits within this region, and throughout Africa. Maintaining this traditional knowledge may be crucial for improving counteracting projected trends for NCD throughout Africa the rest of the world.

Created by Verena Raschke 2005 / Contact