Category: Nutrition

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Nibbles: Svalbard, Consumers, Seed law, Fragrant rice, Five Farms on radio, Invasive plant used, Genetic diversity and latitude, Coffee and tea in history, Coconut disease

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What’s yellow, nutritious and doesn’t rot?

If you answered PPD-free carotene-rich cassava roots, then you obviously got to the CIAT blog before we did. There’s a great story about the kind of serendipitous result that makes scientific research so exciting. CIAT has been developing a yellow cassava, which they call an “egg-yolk” variety, in the hope that the extra carotenes would help to rectify the vitamin A deficiencies that plague so many poor people. Roots were sent off for analysis (the results are very promising) but some of those roots were forgotten in a store-room for two months.

They should have been “totally spoiled and rotten,” because cassava roots are prone to something called post-harvest physiological degradation (PPD) that destroys them within a couple of days of harvest. It seems that the anti-oxidant activity of the carotenes — which had faded away in the stored specimens — had somehow protected them from PPD.

This is a huge breakthough for cassava breeders, growers and processors. Read more at CIAT.

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Indigenous food systems documented

FAO has a book out called Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems, published with the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment (CINE). There’s an informative interview with Barbara Burlingame, senior nutrition officer at FAO and coordinator for the book, on the FAO InTouch website. Unfortunately, this is only available internally at FAO, for reasons which elude me. Here’s a few of the interesting things Dr Burlingame had to say.

We wanted to showcase the many dimensions of these traditional food resources, breaking them down by nutrition, health, culture and environmental sustainability. So much knowledge of early cultures is contained within traditional foods and their cultivation, and they have a direct impact on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health of indigenous communities. Indigenous foods can have important nutritional benefits, for example. For instance plant foods are generally viewed as good sources of carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. These foods also provide important economic benefits, such as helping create self-sufficient communities and establishing a strong foundation of food security.
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We believe the information can be a help to those in nutrition, agriculture, environmental and health education, and science, including policymakers. Nutritionists can use the information to try and correct imbalances in certain regions. For example, we discovered in research that the Pohnpei district community in the Federated States of Micronesia was severely deficient in vitamin A, despite the fact that a species of banana rich in vitamin A beta-carotenes was indigenous to the region. Once we determined the nutritional composition of the banana, we were able to educate the people about its benefit and encourage them to eat the local fruit, which helped reverse the deficiency.
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Yes, another book is under way that focuses more on nutrition and public health. It will look at policy dimensions, stemming the tide of obesity in indigenous peoples, the value of indigenous weaning foods for babies, and a ‘go local’ campaign in Micronesia encouraging communities to eat local food items. We will also continue in our efforts in integrating elements of biodiversity into all aspects of nutrition.

“Go Local” of course refers to the campaign to promote traditional foods in the Pacific spearheaded by Lois Englberger and her colleagues at the Island Food Community of Pohnpei, who have appeared frequently on these pages. It’s great to see my old friends from the Pacific getting this kind of international exposure for their efforts, and making a difference beyond their immediate region.

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