Ghan and back again.: 101 Days of Ghanaian Food

Today is my 101st day in Ghana, and a reflection on food is very long overdue, given that I just wrote a 53-page report on issues of food. One thing I don't know if my body will ever recover from is the absolutely terrible diet I've been eating the last 101 days.

All Ghanaian dishes, every single one, from the North to the South, East, West, rural or urban, can be summarized like this: a giant hunk of starch with an outrageously oily soup or stew. The starch can be corn, cassava, plantain, wheat, yam, rice, and they are prepared with astonishing diversity: boiled, fried, fermented, pounded, mashed, stirred, baked, broiled, balled it's really quite incredible.While stews sometimes have vegetables in it, they are entirely overcooked, and the outrageous amount of oil really cancels any nutritional they may have. There are times that I can literally pour out a cup of oil from a bowl before I start eating, in general it is a 3:1 oil to food ratio.

This diet is so devoid of anything truly nutritious it's just amazing. Within five weeks, when I got malaria, my blood work showed I had already become anemic. (I've been taking supplements ever since) I've never had iron issues, but I can seriously count the number of times I've eating something green and fresh in the last 15 weeks in under one hand.

This infatuation with starch goes hand in hand with cultural desire for fatness and feeling full. In a place where historically food is so scarce, people strive to be big, to feel full is the ultimate luxury and that's behind all modern food issues. Every major Ghanaian face, every leader, every role model, the bigger the better. Women often get 'fattened' before weddings by sitting around prohibited from doing housework and just being fed repeatedly. In rural areas, a bloated belly might be a sign of protein deficiency, but it's also beautiful, and it is a sign that you can feed your child. There is very little nutritional education formally or informally. The very young population of Ghana (about 40% of Ghanaians are under 25), makes it worrisome to think what a public health crisis this could be in a few decades. Right now, despite all encouragement from the outside bodies, this issue is simply not deemed important by Ghanaians.

One must eat until you feel ready to explode and the easiest way to do that is with starch. In fact ,these starchy dishes: banku, fufu, kenkey, abole, TZ, etc, they generally don't even have much of a taste at all. Fufu, for example, is made from cassava and yam, pounded into a ball that has the texture of silly putty, it really doesn't taste much like anything, in fact, it's not even chewed, you just grab a piece and gulp it down like a shot. People will eat a massive bowlful of this with some soup as a meal. And it's simply cheap and accessible.

While Ghana may have the perfect climate for growing fruits and vegetables, it doesn't have the storage capabilities, farming techniques, or demand for them. A bowl of fufu might cost 50pesawas (about 35 cents), but a mango costs twice as much: 1 cedi (80 cents). And when you're trying to feed a family, there is simply no way that fruits and vegetables could be incorporated for the average household.

While many of these dishes I've come to appreciate and even enjoy, after awhile it just feels disgusting to eat, to know what terrible things your putting into my body. And I always had the ability to buy the little fruitsa nd vegetables available, I can't imagine not being able to at all. Whether I'll ever physically recover, I don't know. I haven't seen a mirror in weeks so God only knows how much weight I've gained, my attempt at running the Warrior Dash in 35 days after I return shall be interesting. (If I end up stuck in the mud or with burnt legs trying to jump over fire we'll just blame it on the Ghanaian starch...not on the fact that it was insane for me to have signed up for the thing in the first place).