Posted on March 29, 2012

Mrs Temane cooking pap for supper


The title is: Mrs Temane cooking pap for supper, Lesotho (2007). photo by Pim Techamuanvivit http://www.flickr.com/photos/chezpim/2123993103/

South Africa has one of the highest rates of obesity in the world, as well as a major problem with child malnutrition. Poor nutrition contributes to chronic disease and poor academic performance. Obesity rates will rise even further as South Africa is experiencing what is called a 'nutrition transition': people shift from a relatively healthy (although often insufficient) high-fibre diet high in complex carbohydrates to a high-sugar, high-fat diet as urbanization progresses and socio-economic conditions improve (Steyn et al. 2006).

Intensive food advertising for high-sugar, high-fat commercial food products has (unsurprisingly) been more successful in determining food choices than 'eat your greens' public health messages. The unhealthy 'western'-style diet has a high social status in South Africa and is associated with ideas about development and modernization. Similar nutrition transitions are happening around the world, even where people have access to good quality fresh produce (Popkin and Gordon-Larsen 2004). Discussing the rapid adoption of a 'western' diet and soaring obesity rates in Papua New Guinea, Dr TK Waqanivalu from the Office of the WHO representative for the South Pacific in Fiji, says 'traditional foods ... are unable to compete with the glamour and flashiness of imported foods'.

We need to start a critical conversation that looks at ways to promote the social status of cheap, healthy staples alongside campaigns for better availability of fresh produce for the poor. The WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health (2004) recognizes 'the socioeconomic importance and the potential health benefits of traditional dietary and physical-activity practices', recommending 'measures to preserve and promote traditional foods' at the national level (WHO 2004:17). The WHO says that healthy indigenous foodways should be promoted, as they tend to be cheaper and more culturally acceptable than new foods.

In some countries such as Italy and China, a sense of food as heritage has delayed or even prevented a wholescale food transition. In China, for example, while some middle class consumers have westernised their diet very quickly, a substantial group of people in the medium income category remain committed to traditional Chinese food (particularly rice and vegetables and only moderate amounts of pork, poultry and seafoods) (Zhanga et al. 2008). Another study similarly found that 'loyalty to a long tradition of buying fresh food, the need to be 'in control,' and a desire to maintain identity and traditional family relationships' were inhibiting factors in the adoption of a westernised diet by middle class Chinese (Veeck and Burns 2005).

In places like the UK, however, industrialization in the 18th and 19th centuries had already radically altered the staple diets of ordinary people for the worse, and only previously high status meat-heavy feast foods (sausage and mash, meat pie, roast beef) remained in the popular memory as 'heritage'. A similar commercialization of food staples occurred quite early in South Africa, and traditional African food is not given much public status today (other foodways in South Africa have a slightly different trajectory of course, which I will explore at another time).

In the nineteenth century indigenous African foodways were already being disrupted by labour migration and the collapse of African farming under colonialism. Staple foods (like sorghum) that used to be widely consumed in South Africa were replaced by commercial maize during the 20th century. Many of the healthy cooking strategies that did survive (such as the use of wild spinach or ash in maize porridge) are nowadays associated with poverty and low social status, and abandoned as quickly as possible in urban areas in favour of a high-meat, fast food diet.

The notion of African traditional culture itself is of course highly constructed, and politically difficult, because it was promoted under the Apartheid system to justify segregated 'homelands', and never fully embraced by the anti-Apartheid struggle. Using old ideas of 'tradition' to promote healthy foods could thus be potentially problematic, but in recent years it seems that our public discourse about heritage has become more mature and open to discussions around culture and the pre-colonial past as we re-evaluate the lazy future we drew for the rainbow nation in 1994.

'Heritage' food products are being promoted by numerous countries under the new Intangible Heritage Convention, mainly for reasons of trade or tourism (see my previous blog on this). We are always complaining (quite justifiably) about the instrumental use of heritage to further a specific political agenda. Should this make us wary of exploring the use of heritage discourse in promoting public health? I think not - any public health program that promotes better nutrition has an obligation to do this, because we know that food choices are influenced by ideas of tradition, memory and culture, as well as social status. It is these things that advertisers have to invent out of nothing for every new breakfast cereal.

The nutrition transition will not stop on its own. Alongside subsidies and other supply-side interventions, discussing food as heritage can help to give some healthy traditional foods a higher social status. The District Six Museum has already started the process of looking at food, heritage and community in our museum sector. It's a powerful topic, and engaging with it can contribute to broader debates about the politics of health and the usefulness of the heritage sector, and more broadly of course the humanities. Both heritage practitioners and public health programmers would benefit from understanding what advertisers already know about how memories and emotions can be constructed and can influence beliefs and actions.

About this project

This project is still at the conceptual stage - the intention is that it will be a crowdsourced project from its very inception, and will hopefully benefit from many minds and collaborations. If you have suggestions about the ways in which it can take shape and develop please let me know.

References

B M Popkin and P Gordon-Larsen 'The nutrition transition: worldwide obesity dynamics and their determinants', International Journal of Obesity (2004) 28, S2-S9.

A Veeck, A.C. Burns, 'Changing tastes: the adoption of new food choices in post-reform', China Journal of Business Research Volume 58, Issue 5, May 2005, 644-652.

X Zhanga, H Dagevosa, Y Heb, I van der Lansc, F Zhaib, 'Consumption and corpulence in China: A consumer segmentation study based on the food perspective', Food Policy Volume 33, Issue 1, February 2008, 37-47.

Harriet Deacon, consultant correspondent to the Archival Platform, is a medical historian by training. She has worked on leprosy, HIV/AIDS, social stigma and intangible heritage. She is currently based in the UK where she has been involved in writing training materials for UNESCO about the Intangible Heritage Convention. The opinions expressed in this blog are personal, and not attributable to any organization.