Africa the healing continent.
Disclaimer: I’m neither a nutritionist or a doctor, therefore, the content of this article may not be professionally correct medically, neither is it a medical advice. Please do your own research!
Note: Pictures used are mine and original. They’re free to be used by anyone as long that they’re used to reflect same purpose as it relates to natural medicine, organic foods and herbs.
When I was a child, my mama tried her best to feed me well with the little things available. And what was those things that she fed me with? They’re more of vegetable varieties! Even though she tried, But now I’ve come to understand that many things has gone wrong in history even before I was born, mostly in the area of what we eat. Africa is known in history for their natural way of life; good living, natural healing and healthy foods that kept our fathers free from diseases.
Alkaline food raised organically in my garden
But now, what are we eating? If you evaluate the food that we eat now, you will see that our food is far away from what is known for human in history. In the past nobody eats the things that we eat now, it is totally different and totally opposite.
Nowadays we eat a lot but less varieties and less diversities, we eat large amount of food, but they’re just a repetition of one type of food throughout our live time. When you look at Africa now, most of what we eat are carbohydrates foods; cassava, yam, potatoes, then beans and rice. Even Americans and what they eat, also with other developed countries, we can see that most of what they eat is from corn, 🌾 wheat, and soybean. Then when you look at Asia countries, they’re known for rice consumption, chicken, pork meat and beef .
What we eat now is different from what we used to eat 25 years ago. I could still recall that 25 years ago, we used to consume over 100 vegetable varieties per annum. We eat at each season a unique vegetable which is exclusive to that season. It means that we consume over 20 varieties of vegetable per season. Then, there were lots of fish species that was available in the river for food. One river then could have up to 1500 of fish species in Africa and around the world.
Each year, we used to eat over 100 varieties of fish, fresh water that sustained fish were available in those days, but now for instance, in Africa like I’ve said before, we consume a lots of carbohydrates. Though we eat different foods, but most of them are high in carbohydrates. But it were not so in our history. These four foods has become the main food that we eat daily; Rice, Yam, Beans and Cassava. We keep looping around these foods year in and out. Please brothers, this is not normal at all, but we may think it’s normal. We may think that all these processed food in the market are prosperity and civilization but it’s not normal. When you go to the market, you see big heaps of vegetables, but they’re all same types of vegetables in each stand/shop that you turn to year in and year out. You can see lettuce 🥬 cabbage, pumpkin leafs etc. but every shop sells the same things.
When you walk to restaurants nowadays, they may have numerous lists in their menu but if you look at those foods, you’ll agree with me that most of them are with same ingredients. To eat less varieties but higher amount could cause a lots of problems; health problem is number one, this is because we consume one type of food and as result has stored one particular nutrient in our body than it’s needed. We eat too much meat, too much carbohydrates, we drink and eat one particular thing a lot, even though we eat very much, but our body is actually being starved for other minerals and nutrients needed which only varieties of food, fruits and vegetables can give us.
This is the first problem because when our body have too much of something but lacked in others, it causes a lot of health problems. I’m not a nutritionist, but I’m saying from experience. This is what I’ve passed through and still experiencing till date. This was why I decided not to depend on the food that money can buy for me because my little money may not be enough to buy those necessary food for my family that our body needs. Now I try to raise gardens with different vegetables in it; not necessarily to make money from them, but first; to be able to feed my family and my poor neighbors with sufficient alkaline foods.
I surround myself with vegetables varieties
To eat little but from a lots of variety , in such eating pattern, people gets all the nutrients that the body need.
Before in history, people die a lot, but from germs 🦠 from pathogens and from natural disasters, they died from malaria, fever etc just because they didn’t know much on managing those problems. But now, people doesn’t die from germs 🦠 like before, nevertheless, people die much more from things that doesn’t relate to germs. Diabetic patient in almost every home, people have diabetes now, we have lots of hypertensive people around us, we have cancer patients around us, low blood pressure, respiratory problems, kidney problems, all because of what we consume nowadays.
We have so many sickness that aren’t traced to germs. We have so many doctors in the world who we’ve built so much trust over our lives; we think that we’ve developed because we have a lots of drugs and we’ve advanced in medicine, medical laboratories and technology. Now we can change our body parts like we do with cars and other machines yet we still die faster. Many people die young these days, from diabetes, cancer and many others but not germs. These are all indications that we’re not eating and living well.
Why are we eating less and less varieties in the world today?
We eat less varieties of food because our lives is not in our hands anymore. We’ve handed our lives to few companies that produce food, who controls the seas and our water ways. So these companies decides food for everyone according to how it’ll favor their economic and financial targets and not as it’ll impact our lives and health as humans. These companies has systematically trained everyone to eat their prescribed foods, they own the seeds and of course few varieties of them; corn seeds, watermelon seeds, soybeans seeds and wheat 🌾. These are few things they have, but the irony is that they’ve trained the whole world to eat only these few things that they produce.
In Africa, I’m happy that nature and our fathers has managed to preserve some of these ancient varieties of food especially alkaline foods. But nevertheless, things has gone so wrong over the years.
Thirty years back, no body eats soybeans in Africa but now, we consume fermented soybeans like no body’s business. Our children has lost their root foods; how can they eat tasteless mushrooms when there’s sugar and all manner of spices and flavors in the market?
Mamas of Africa will be crying in their graves over how we eat now if it’s up to them. We consume beans too much these days, not natural and organic beans, but beans full of chemicals! Recently, Nigeria beans exports were banned and proscribed by foreign countries because of many chemicals traced in their beans. We eat a lot of corn, not natural and organic raised ones, but processed things from corn, cassava, yam, and others. In Nigeria for example, we have huge landmass that are good for agriculture. But why are we importing almost everything that we eat?
We import from other countries, and when you look at those imported goods, they’re are more on processed sugar, sweetened foods. But we have what it takes to produce more organic food and vegetables. We have sugarcane in Nigeria, we have original bee 🐝 honey 🍯 but people doesn’t use them much, they prefer those processed high fructose corn syrups from strange lands.
I have coconut trees around my compound
We have many sources of natural sugar like sugar from coconut trees , palm trees, bee honey 🍯, So many natural things that our body can interpret better, but we now choose to consume those high fructose corn syrups from foreign lands.
How could these things happen so quick that we’ve forgotten our history and what made us strong and happy people on earth? It’s quite interesting to see that we have best natural food recorded in the history, but we don’t eat them anymore. Few hundreds years ago, our mamas of Africa had above 2000 varieties of vegetables and herbs that served as their food and medicine. But now, it’s not so, we want to live like the westerners but without medical advancement like them.
My own organic farm. No fertilizers added
For me, prevention is preferable to cure! We can through science and technology, discover those few harmful food in our diet, like eating excess of palm oils. But then, we should also trace back in history the eating habits that left our predecessors stronger and healthier than us their offsprings.
We can no longer be restricted to eat only few vegetables when our land is filled with thousands of natural healing herbs 🌿 and vegetables. We need a total mind revamp from how we’re trained by these companies on what we eat. They’ve directed us to love eating meats; more of chicken and pork, you finds out that some people eat three square meal that contains pork and chicken daily. It’s a new introduced slavery system when few companies control our rivers and seas and then force people to eat what they dictate.
Now everybody must pay them to eat from those few foods continuously. When we reject our ancient foods, we reject our ancient wisdom also, and the memories of them are lost completely from our brain leaving our children vulnerable without a trace to good, natural, and eco lifestyle.
This is why we have many health challenges in Africa, diseases that doesn’t exist before are now upon us just because we abandoned our roots and history as regards to foods that we eat.
We have so many hospitals and medical practitioners but yet they’re never enough for the rate of disease coming from our way of life.
In conclusion
I think it’s right and important that we think about what we’re eating now.
Do we eat for our health, or do we eat to our own detriment? And in the process making these companies richer while we end up in hospitals?
Each country has their own vegetables originated from the ancient times, made specifically for them by the creator, kept and preserve by nature for their healing and for food. Let’s search for those inestimable heritage. That’s wisdom and the beauty of life. Food crisis is war that we must fight and win before we can be able to fix other problems and mistakes that mankind has made during all these years of life experimentation.
The new world has trained us to eat what we don’t like until we master it and like it as if we have no choice. But it’s time to retrace our footsteps towards good and natural foods that our ancestors ate in the past. We really need to bring those natural healing processes back through what we eat. Let the ancient wisdom come back, let’s search for those seeds and herbs 🌿 and bring them back to life!
Africans are herbalists by nature.
Africans are created to be herbalists by nature; meaning that all of us should be able to study and understand our natural environment; what all those grasses, vegetables and herbs 🌿 are meant for. There’s purpose for each of them. Don’t consider it superstitious each time you hear that someone is a herbalist. It’s not a bad thing that one understands his natural habitat.
Soursop tree in my compound being enhanced with biochar and ashes
We can be independent again, we can have good health again, we can live longer again, and mindful of the business of our creator. Freedom is when we’re able to simplify life through things around us, without depending on those things far away from us, and which may not be the best for us considering our own unique environment and structure.
Freedom is in what we eat! Eat good food and have good life.
Yours Max.
Excellent article that makes me reflect and see how in Latin America we have the same situation, that is why I am so interested in emphasizing that we must preserve our customs, which includes the gastronomy of the regions, because there is condensed a wise and important knowledge not to be missed, such as the one related to the sowing, harvesting and consumption of native vegetable crops. A great greeting.
Excelente artículo que me pone a reflexionar y ver cómo en América Latina tenemos la misma situación, por eso es que me interesa tanto recalcar que debemos conservar nuestras costumbres, lo que incluye la gastronomía de las regiones, porque allí se condensa un conocimiento sabio e importante que no debe perderse, como es el relativo a la siembra, cosecha y consumo de rubros vegetales autóctonos. Un gran saludo.
Thanks for taking out your time to read this article. I hope it’ll help my readers especially from Africa to think and do the needful.
What an excellent post. It is so true that so many have handed over the responsibility of their health and nutrition to a few companies that make highly processed foods that really make us sick. It is time to grow our own and introduce a more diverse diet into our lives. I see it too in Europe how food has changed. Here's hoping many more people begin to grow their own xxx
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Aww 🥰
Thanks for your constant support and encouragement. This is how I feel about the whole thing, glad I was able to put them in writing.
Next thing is to work on changing the said norms. I’m already on it, and there’s joy in learning and unlearning things.
Thanks so much for showing support @qurator
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Glad you bought this to our attention for it is a sad state that the mojority of peoples diets are in! There is such abundance around if we only open our eyes to see it.
Here's to more people growing and consuming the many organic varieties of fruits and vegetables that can be available to them!
Thanks a lot your sincere concern, I appreciate that so much @porters