Indigenous Fruits and Vegetables

Today's post is a quick little aside before we go on to explore GHG emissions from the agricultural sector as a whole later on in the week...

I was leisurely browsing the online world of food news this afternoon and came across this interesting article in the Guardian. The title, Healthy eating: nutritious indigenous foods you may never have heard of particularly caught my eye given the festive holiday season. After having eaten my fair share of sweets and decadent foods over the past week (and surely for the next week to come), I tend to get overly enthusiastic when I see articles with the word 'healthy' in their titles! 

Perinaldo artichokes (source: the Guardian)

The article describes a list of indigenous fruits and vegetables created by Food Tank: The Food ThinkTank that could present healthier alternatives to modern-day staples. The rationale behind the creation of the list is that the Western diet, which is rich in refined sugars, fats, processed grain and meat has taken over the world over the past three decades (e.g. Bonhommeau et al., 2013). This dietary shift has been linked with increased chronic disease incidence, including obesity and cardiovascular disease (Cordain, 2005). Organisations, such as the World Vegetable Center, are working to catalogue these indigenous foods, because many have been replaced and even lost as traditional diets are being replaced by Western diets. 

Amaranth (source: the Guardian)

The list includes some well known indigenous fruits and vegetables such as amaranth and argan (Africa), artichokes (Europe), okra, mungbean and lemongrass (Asia), and apples (Americas), as well as many others which I'd never heard of before (such as papalo from the Americas, which has a skunk-like smell and is known to regulate blood pressure and relieve stomach disorders).

Given that we recently touched on the Western diet when we examined the livestock sector, I thought that sharing this article would be a nice little break from all the hard-hitting environmental facts surrounding our food system. I'll be back to discuss the very imposing issue of GHG emissions from agriculture in a few days' time, so do check back soon.

For those of you that have come to study in the UK from abroad, are there any healthy traditional foods that are being replaced due to the emergence of a Western diet? I can't think of any examples from Canada off the top of my head, but I'll share in the comments if I come up with anything.

Thanks for reading!