African countries have a rich tradition of cultural foods that is being invaded by western food habits, bringing in a myriad of health issues to be solved by inefficient and profit-focusing health interventions. This assault is caused by numerous economic pressures such as those on the local agricultural system through structural adjustment or the ability of western food giants to plant themselves and their fast-food chains in African countries. The proliferation of these fast-food chains is fueled by expatriates, international tourism, and other factors, until they become consumed by us, and consequently, their positions become concretized into the nutritional landscape of the continent.

What promoting our diets means is to incentivize local agriculturalists to give up factory farming in exchange for growing local staples that serve the needs of the local diet
In the wake of this transition, African countries should do something important that maintains their sovereignty and uniqueness as a homeland: Africa should work to define, characterize, and promote its maiden diets (at the detriment of those that emerge from neo-liberal constraints). Recipes from different villages should be recorded both in written and in video format, research should be done by scholars from the continent and respective communities to find some systematicity in diets that could launch initiatives designed for cultural preservation, and diets that do not align with our findings as a continent should be regulated, and sometimes banned, to accommodate the health benefits that our ancestors discovered over millennia of crafting our own diets.

Ultimately, what promoting our diets means is to incentivize local agriculturalists to give up factory farming in exchange for growing local staples that serve the needs of the local diet, with restrictions on the amount, size, revenue, and other metrics of non-African food imports being in place. This maintains the integrity of local food customs as well as gives Africans the ability to maintain indigenous agricultural habits that are synchronized with the greater health of the environment.

A traditional diet is one crafted from centuries, millennia even, of knowledge gained from ancestors.
In response to a growing restaurant culture, we should develop an industry that maintains the integrity of the experience of eating out while still upholding a high quality of food, meaning more specifically reducing non-fresh, highly chemicalized ingredients that cause serious health effects. The restaurant landscape should restrict restaurants from sourcing food from giant suppliers in favor of receiving daily food shipments from local farmers. This increases the freshness of the ingredients, prohibits the needs for harmful additives like salt, sugar, and fat, and promotes a more robust local economy that props up the agricultural industry and, by extension, the struggling rural communities in the face of globalizing economies.

Defining Diets
To understand the reasoning behind the recommendations, we defined two distinct institutionalized nutritional concepts: a traditional diet and a neo-liberal diet. A traditional diet is one crafted from centuries, millennia even, of knowledge gained from ancestors.

This diet has been tested over time, leading to not only specialized information by a synchronization with the physiology of the people eating it over time; it has been optimized for health, has implications for rituals in social life, and has found a way to be sustainably collected in the environment without endangering local wildlife and fauna (Oniang’o et al n.d.).

This compromises the native ability to cultivate the requisite number of foods to maintain our dietary habits, and in exchange provides us with cheap subsidized foods that do not always align with our local diets
A neo-liberal diet was partially touched on before: it is a new diet that is becoming institutionalized, and consists of fast and processed foods, dietary habits and behaviors that are not natural to a group of people or geographic area, it tends to be bad for your health, and comes from non-voluntary pressures. For example, one can see the emergence of neo-liberal influences on diet through activities like other countries and international corporations pushing our agricultural system to grow cash crops, launching our agriculturalists into a never-ending debt cycle (in the name of profit) (Bernstein 1990). This compromises the native ability to cultivate the requisite number of foods to maintain our dietary habits, and in exchange provides us with cheap subsidized foods that do not always align with our local diets. This changes the fundamental structure of the diet, especially as younger cohorts consume them, causing cohort-effect implications on our health and social institutions.

A second way of looking at this diet is the invasion of products like Coca Cola or fast-food restaurants like KFC (Olutayo and Akanle 2009). These companies use extensive food additives (which fuel huge health crises like the record-breaking obesity and chronic disease rates in the western world) as well as spend billions of dollars on advertising to hook people on consuming them (Moss 2014). Traditionally, sugar is not a huge staple in the African diet broadly, and neither is fried fast food, but as these foods plague our younger cohorts and become eaten on a common basis, they begin to equate this with the diet that defines them and their experience. When this happens, you have an erosion of culture and health with the increase of the consumption of bad foods.

When this happens, you have an erosion of culture and health with the increase of the consumption of bad foods
Within the fabric of the diets, there are important cultural differences to note between the two diets. The traditional diet is embedded within all of our customs, family gatherings, and in the way we invite guests not only to the household but brothers and sisters from other African countries to each other. It has a healthy way of flowing and provides a familiarity with our people that contributes to their psychological and even spiritual health. One could never imagine catering a wedding with Coca Cola or McDonalds, but as times change, these foods become more institutionalized, and we lose a grip on traditional foods, causing this activity to become more morally acceptable. The neo-liberal diet, on the other hand, is one that lacks a character or ability to have important events or traditions revolve around it. It is in essence quick, convenient, and meant to be prepared, purchased and/or consumed in a lazy manner. Of course, I cannot speak too broadly about the rich array of customs and cultural institutions revolving around the diet of a continent with over a billion people but prompting broad examples/processes can help the African readers engaging with this piece to think about the influences either diet could have on them and their way of life.


The truth is, our traditional diets are much more healthier than their neo-liberal renditions, both in terms of consumption and in its relation to non-health matters
Health Impacts
The neo-liberal diet causes significant harm to health and social institutions through two means: eroding a diet that is healthy and replacing it with elevated amounts of salts, sugars, fats, preservatives, and more, as well as promoting a lazy, sedentary culture that incites obesity and chronic disease (Moss 2014). To specify this “lazy, sedentary culture”, people who consume these types of foods tend to stay home more often, not be as physically active (as they do not have to cook) and begin to prioritize convenience and leisure leading to a decreased willingness (and subsequent decreased ability) to exercise, walk, and all the other activities that maintain better physical and mental wellbeing (Hu 2003). It is a lifestyle change that is quite evident in the world’s advanced economies. You will never see vibrant streets and markets in the United States with people walking, talking, and socializing now: they just have groceries and food delivered while video-chatting people who live in the same house as them. These two combine to plunge people into modern-day pandemic health outcomes – countries like the United States are experiencing a reduction in life expectancy, something unprecedented for a country in the modern era, let alone a country as wealthy as it, and is a ticking time bomb for younger aged cohorts. Obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancers, and more will all increase commensurately with the lifestyle and dietary choices that are becoming ingrained in their cultures (Hu 2003).

To qualify the health changes from these neo-liberal diets, we outlined key outcomes of one ingredient used as well as the ancillary health outcomes. For example, using excessive amounts of sugar leads to weight gain, inflammation in the body, and increased kidney fat . Weight gain affects your mobility, making injury easier, as well as reduces your ability to be physically active; increased kidney fat and weight gain are paralleled with increased risk for strokes and heart attacks. Not only does sugar cause direct disease like obesity, but it causes conditions in the body that further lead to other health issues (Bray 1985). This list is not exhaustive but is a basic sketch of the potential health outcomes (of only one of the additives, not including salt and the others). Additionally, due to how it interacts with the human palette from birth (as babies prefer sugary foods due to high caloric needs), it becomes increasingly addictive, and shifts individual’s food palettes, meaning, the more you eat as an individual, the more you must eat to maintain the same taste euphoria. This compounds problems and increases their scale as time progresses.

as times change, these foods become more institutionalized, and we lose a grip on traditional foods, causing this activity to become more morally acceptable
The truth is, our traditional diets are much more healthier than their neo-liberal renditions, both in terms of consumption and in its relation to non-health matters (like environmental degradation and pollution stemming from industrial farming). A great Cameroonian meal, for example, would consist of fufu, a lean meat, and a green of choice. There is not much fat, nor added sugar or excessive amounts of salt in this meal. It is typically seasoned with a myriad of spices, that all have positive health benefits (capsaicin is the primary chemical in peppers and has countless health benefits such as serving as an anti-inflammatory).

Another great meal would be Okra soup, made of the best vegetables to offer and fish, in which fish is the healthiest of the possible meat-protein options. These foods have an incredible lack of saturated fats (which are very bad), and a healthy amount of unsaturated fats (which are good for you). The diet lacks sugar, salt, and preservatives structurally, which reduces its propensity to cause the above mentioned (as well as a large list of unmentioned) negative health effects.

There are benefits to a traditional diet over a neo-liberal diet that extend past the arena of health into the environment. Servicing the needs of a neo-liberal diet, that is, growing cash crops and importing the rest, predicates itself on the fact that extensive fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals are being used. These cause runoff into water sources causing cultural eutrophication and the permanent migration and/or death of many fish and local wildlife (Leo et al 2002). Moreover, those wildlife that inhabit the vast expanses of land or even migrate through the land used to cultivate cash crops are exterminated or at best prohibited from being anywhere remotely close to crops, and local fauna are controlled to prevent competition with crops as well as the propagation of pests. All these affect the local environment to an extent that is harmful for the overall identity of the country and local environment, and, in conjunction with the health effects, constitute a major problem that must be addressed.

There are benefits to a traditional diet over a neo-liberal diet that extend past the arena of health into the environment
Lastly, there are some challenges we face that make the dietary issue a possible “straw that can break the camel’s back”. According to Salim Slim of the UK, the topographical nature of the African continent broadly serves as the best natural habitat for many microbes and tropical diseases. These manifest from insect life and spawn illnesses like malaria or dengue fever, and while already crippling many health systems could in conjunction with a dietary-induced health epidemic overrun the effectiveness of health institutions on the continent. This launches us into a conversation where we need to develop comprehensive systems to measure and monitor health outcomes, especially from dietary causes, and if the continent does become plagued with western health issues, how these interact with mortality rates (for example) when comorbidities are taken into account. Thus, research, while only briefly mentioned here, is an important component to maintaining health in relation to dietary changes and hopefully preservation.

In conclusion, we know that there are two types of dietary paradigms which, while they could be broken down into subcategories, are most appropriately dichotomized for now to launch a conversation around these trends. We need to prioritize our indigenous diets to stave off health conditions that would be imposed by neo-liberal constraints onto the African continent and her people. These will protect not only our health, but our environment and cultural expression as a beautiful group of people.