Years ago, when I went to an Ethiopian restaurant for the first time , I was blown away. A lot of their dishes were exactly how my grandma and mom cooked. I mean almost 1:1 similarity.
My dad had told me years ago, plus I have done my DNA and we were one of the first "tribes" to move out of Africa and settle in Tamilnadu. Hence, there is so much similarity in the cooking style which is very different than well.. Indian restaurants here or most of India.
So over the years, I started cooking like my grandma did.
And now this paper, I was waiting for the longest time:
Abstract:
African heritage diets are increasingly being replaced by Western-style dietary patterns because of urbanization, economic development, increased access to processed foods, globalization and changing social norms.
The health consequences of this nutrition transition are not well understood. We conducted a randomized controlled trial in the Kilimanjaro region in Northern Tanzania to investigate the immune and metabolic effects of switching between Kilimanjaro heritage-style and Western-style diets for 2 weeks and consuming a traditional fermented banana beverage (‘Mbege’) for 1 week.
Seventy-seven young and healthy volunteers assigned male at birth, some living in urban areas and some living in rural areas, were recruited in the trial. Primary outcomes were changes in the immune and metabolic profile before and after the intervention and at the 4-week follow-up. The switch from heritage-style to Western-style diet affected different metabolic pathways associated with noncommunicable diseases and promoted a pro-inflammatory state with impaired whole-blood cytokine responses to microbial stimulation. In contrast, the switch from Western-style to heritage-style diet or consuming the fermented beverage had a largely anti-inflammatory effect.
Some of the observed changes in the immune and metabolic profiles persisted at the follow-up, suggesting a sustained impact from the short-term intervention. These findings show the metabolic and immune effects of dietary transitions and the consumption of fermented beverages, underscoring the importance of preserving indigenous dietary practices to mitigate noncommunicable disease risk factors in sub-Saharan Africa.
This episode from Zoe Podcast covered this well, listen to it here: Can a traditional African diet help protect against inflammation?
Prof. Quirijn de Mast: It's not easy to define because there is not a typical, traditional African diet. I mean, Africa is a huge continent, and there's so much diversity in dietary patterns across the different regions. That said, there are some unifying themes. If you talk about African diet, so many of the traditional African diets, they're mainly plant-based. That's one.
So people consume a lot of legumes, traditional grains like millet, sorghum, and teff in Ethiopia. And these are very, I would say, interesting small grain cereals with many health benefits.
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Jonathan Wolf: And you've mentioned quite a few grains that I'm not familiar with. Sorghum, I wouldn't know if it dropped on my head.
Could you describe for listeners who maybe are not familiar with a millet or a sorghum? What are they similar to, that we might be used to finding in a Western supermarket?
Prof. Quirijn de Mast: To be honest, I can't really compare it to what we are used to in Europe or in Western supermarkets.
But they are extremely interesting, these grained cereals, because they're so nutritious. They contain lots of fiber, more than, for example, wheat. They are rich in polyphenols. They also have a low glycemic index, so you don't see this spike in glucose or insulin when you eat them.
Yeah, they're kind of neglected, I would say, but they have very interesting health benefits.
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