From fish to biryani: How culture defines Kenya’s food choices

Beef stew remains a regular feature in Kenyan homes, served either with rice or the national staple, ugali. Refashioning the community of bacteria and other microbes living in your intestinal tract, collectively known as the gut microbiome, could be a good long-term investment in your health. That might mean ditching the tasty beef for the rather bland but healthier plant-based sources of protein.

PHOTO | FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Where you live has always had a bearing on your palate, just like your gender, age, and social placing.
  • Increasingly, however, bad urban dietary preferences are muscling their way into hitherto clean rural settings, contaminating the nutritive ecosystems of millions of unsuspecting Kenyans.

Culture, and not just financial stability or health concerns, guided for the better part — and as it always does — the choice of food Kenyans from different parts of the country ate during the just ended festive season.

That conclusion is derived from exchanges with 11 families from different parts of the country who shared their meals with us over Christmas and New Year festivities.

At the Ruong’os’ in Wagusu, Siaya County, for instance, Mr Eno Ruong’o complains that the chicken he is eating is “tasteless even though it is smells nice and is well-cooked”.

“It must be an old hen that we slaughtered”, he says, and for that indignation, the couple decides they will have the traditional Luo favourite — fish — for dinner.

In the evening, three three-kilogrammes of fish are prepared in different ways — smoked, deep- and wet-fried, as well as boiled — and traditional vegetables, corn meal (ugali) as well as rice are served as accompaniments.

The family and the many guests that troop the home enjoy their supper in silence.

In Kisumu, about an hour’s drive from the Ruong’os’, the Onyangos are having beef and chicken for meat, and the father announces ceremoniously that he will scream should there be no fish in the meal.

These culinary peculiarities that inform what people feed on in Kenyan communities are not just about relieving hunger, but an expression of culture.

In Bondo and Kisumu, older women insisted on preparing the main stews, afraid that the young would ruin the broth and shame them before we, the visitors.

In Nyanza, generally, ugali, rice, chapati, fish, beef, and sukuma wiki featured prominently on dining tables, while at the coast, a region spiced with pinches of Mediterranean culture, foods heavy on Oriental spices dominated tables... and mats.

Mr Danson Mwakamba (30), decided that instead of cooking at home would take his two children to Barka, a restaurant famed for its Swahili delicacies near Makadara Grounds in the Mombasa central business district.

“I know my children love biryani, so that will be on top of their list,” he said. “We will then have ice cream.”

His wife, Jane Kidasi, said that in December, the family takes the liberty to eat what it wants because as soon as the festivities are over, normal menu resumes.

Ms Martha Kadzo, a Kaloleni, Kilifi resident, listed what she would prepare for her family: Cakes, sausages, and milk for breakfast; roasted meat, ugali, rice, spinach, roasted chicken, and pilau for lunch. “Since my extended family will be around, we must slaughter a goat,” she said.

Within this coastal vicinity, the Nyutus, originally from Nyeri, said they would prepare plain rice, chapati, potatoes, goat meat, peas... and drink lots of beer.

Here, how culture influences the culinary choices of Kenyans, and the effect those choices have on their health:

Money — or lack thereof —  determines what people eat and whether the food available to them is healthy or not.

Mary Nyaboe, a shopkeeper in Bobaracho village in Kisii County, says the holidays have been becoming more and more expensive and demanding every year, so today she can afford only a portion of the food she used to buy five years ago.

For Christmas she planned to buy at least three chicken, a few kilos of beef, a bucket of potatoes, for kilos of rice, and a crate of soda for her family.

“I will also cook some chapati because I usually do that every year, even though I am not sure all my children and grandchildren will come,” Ms Nyaboe added.

Her husband, Mr Yuvinalis Osoro, says the feast could have been grander, but the food items have been reduced because they do not receive many visitors as they did many years back. And, also, the expenses are just too many for such a short time.

Modest as the Osoros’ decision is to “eat according to their means”, the relationship between money, food, and health has been the subject of scientific studies over time.

The family will cook what it can afford, what is common, and their visitors will be forced to eat what is put before them them. Therefore, any negative consequences of the choice of food, such as obesity, will be socially shared.

Even when the money is available, the social sharing factor remains a negative denominator because the families may just stack up on wrong, expensive food types.

For instance, Mr Alexander Onsongo has been anxious waiting for his family to get home so that they can celebrate the festive season together. He counts himself lucky to have money to buy food because his children, together with their spouses, have well-paying jobs in the cities, and they have hauled home an assortment of goodies that will last them the duration of their stay here.

All he needs to do is provide flour for corn meal, bananas, milk for tea and the local vegetables.

 “We haven’t spent a lot of money because they came with all kinds of foodstuff, ranging from a goat, several chicken, rice, potatoes, peas, and assorted shopping from the supermarket,” he says.

NUTRITIONISTS WORRIED

Those kilos of shopping from the city, which often include broiler chicken, processed fruit juices, long-shelf-life cakes, biscuits, sugary snacks, and sausages, appear good for now, but they have nutritionists worried.

Mr James Otieno, a nutritionist in Kisii County, says that he cannot understand the obsession with all this supermarket-based processed food yet Kisii is rich in varied agricultural ouptut consisting of plenty of vegetables and cereals.

“People in Kisii sell their produce rather than consume it, and prefer eating a lot of processed carbohydrates,” he says.

A healthy diet, the World Health Organisation recommends, should include the following in the right portions: fat should not exceed 30 per cent of total calories taken, and the calories consumed should match the energy expenditure; limit sugar to 10 per cent of energy taken, and only five grammes of salt is needed.

Ms Daisy Kerubo, a Nyamira-based nutritionist, warns that food poisoning and other food-borne diseases could increase due to improper preparation of processed meals.

And that is even before we start talking of the copious amounts of alcohol consumed over the festive season, and the lifelong effects the bingeing will have on the health of the unsuspecting victims.

So dire is the problem of food choices in the modern era in Nyeri that at least one out of three patients in local hospitals is overweight, says a nutritionist at the Nyeri Outspan Hospital. Mr Augustine Simiyu says the Body Mass Index — a calculation of the weight and height ratio that is sued to tell whether you are obese or not — of people seeking treatment there is above 25 due to a change in lifestyle.

“People are consuming too much carbohydrates and processed foods, overlooking the traditional foods that are considered primitive here,” he says, adding that the economic status of many in Nyeri is enough to support the obesity figures as people can afford “exotic” lifestyles.

A local resident, Ms Annah Wambui, told us that her home would have plenty of food at their extended family gathering over December. A must-have for her was roast goat and chicken. “We will have all normal foods cooked, but the concentration will be on chapati and meat,” she said.

In the back of her mind, however, she knew there would be feasting on sodas, juices, alcohol, processed meats, and the usual stuff stored in local supermarkets. Irio and the local staple, githeri, would have no place in the increasingly sophisticated dinner tables of Nyeri

Mr Simiyu says that overeating processed foods could lead to hypertension and diabetes, among other lifestyle diseases.

STORY BY HEALTHY NATION TEAM

***

UGALI OR RICE? IT’S ALL IN YOUR DNA

Is there any reason why these families preferred particular foods over others that would cost the same amount of money even though they live in the same environment? Could it be — and this is not as wild a guess as you might imagine — that their genetic make-up decides what they crave?

Human beings tell the taste of food — sweet, bitter, sour— when the chemicals that produce these tastes bind with some receptors on tongues.

Every person has different amounts of receptors depending on their DNA, and studies have shown that the chemical Phenylthiocarbamide, which is used as a marker of peoples’ taste sensitivity, varies.

Nearly 85 per cent of native people in Africa, South America and Africa have highly sensitive tastes.

United Kingdom-based Clinical psychologist Antonella Sansone has shown that as a child breastfeeds, he or she is programmed to develop affinities for certain flavours.

This would explain why a Nyeri-bred Luo man would be appalled at the sight and smell of fish, just as a Kisumu-bred Kikuyu man would move heaven and earth to eat the same fish.