Pix: A woman on the outskirts of Kintampo town in central Ghana, making garri from cassavas for sale. Courtesy www.geog.cam.ac.uk
UNEP showcases traditional ways of
preserving food, ahead of this year’s world environmental day in June. This goes
a long way in preventing waste of food, which is one of the world’s most precious
resources.
It is estimated that every year,
about 1.3 billion tonnes of food produced ends up rotting in bins of consumers
and retailers or spoil due to poor transportation and harvesting practices. Varying
implications of the waste of food range from hunger to waste of energy put into
growing the wood and fuel spent on transporting produce across various
distances. In addition to this, significant amounts of methane gas emanate from
food decomposition on landfills while while livestock and forests cleared for food production
contribute to global warming.
World
Environment Day 2013, whose global host is the government and people of
Mongolia, is focused on the new UN Environment Programme and UN Food and
Agricultural Organization (FAO) campaign Think.Eat.Save. Reduce Your
Foodprint, which is aimed at slashing this wastage.
Mongolia, one
of the fastest-growing countries in the world is aiming to ensure this growth
goes hand in hand with a green economy and civilization. It neither wastes nor
loses food at any significant level, but the nomadic life of many of its people
does offer some ancient answers to the modern-day challenge of food waste.
The UN
Environment Programme (UNEP) has asked people to submit examples of traditional
ways in which food is preserved. The methods demonstrate how humanity once
valued food far more than it does today.
They also
highlight the irony that, in an era where technology makes it ever easier to
store food for longer, most people make less effort to conserve food and thus
waste money-all the more surprising considering the financial crisis that has
forced many to tighten their belts and recent reports that world food prices
are at a 40-year high.
The ways
that indigenous peoples create preserved dishes are as many and varied as the
cultures and food sources that form the basis of the recipes.
Mongolian
general Chinggis Khan
and his troops utilized a traditional food called borts to gallop across Asia
without depending on elaborate supply chains. Borts is basically concentrated
beef equal to the protein of an entire cow condensed and ground down to the
size of a human fist. This remarkable method of food preservation, without
refrigeration, produced a meal equivalent to several steaks when the protein
was shaved into hot water to make soup.
Not too
far away, the Turkish horsemen of Central Asia had their own solution. They
would preserve meat by placing it in pockets on their saddles to be compressed
by their legs as they rode.
Further in
the frozen north, the Inuit from Greenland dine on a dish called Kiviak-a
traditional wintertime food made from Auks, a small bird that bears a
superficial resemblance to a penguin. Hundreds of whole birds are wrapped in a
seal skin, which then has the air removed before being sewn up. The skin is
placed in the permafrost under a stone to help keep the air out. The birds then
ferment for around seven months before they are dug up and eaten, often at
celebrations..
In many
countries of South America, a freeze-dried potato delicacy known as chuño,
which pre-dates the Inca Empire, is widely eaten. The potatoes are alternately
exposed to the freezing night air and hot daytime sun for five days, being
trampled to squeeze out all moisture. Chuño can last for months or years.
In Nigeria
and several other western African countries, a dry granular foodstuff
called garri is produced from cassava tubers that are peeled, washed and
grated. The resultant mash is placed in a porous bag and allowed to ferment as
weights press out the water. Finally it is sieved and roasted for long-term storage.
There are
so many more dishes to choose from: ghee, a type of butter that needs no
refrigeration, milk powders and curds, biltong and other dried meats, pickles,
jams, sauerkraut and dozens more.
These
methods show just how much room there is for individual consumers to take the
lead from their forebears and change the way they buy, store and consume food.
More at UNEP
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