People around the world are growing increasingly aware of African Cuisine and it’s purity and benefits to health. Unfortunately whilst this is happening, Africans are buying into the idea that their food is not healthy, tasty or worthy of being put up on a pedestal. Instead they are turning to inferior and highly processed commercial foods and imports from the West. Sadly, if we don’t celebrate the riches of our culture and secrets of the local ingredients we select to make our traditional foods, someone more powerful will come along, scoop it up and mark up the price a hundredfold that we can no longer afford our regular humble chops.
I recently discovered that Dr Oz has got excited about something that West Africans have known and guarded stubbornly for centuries. Over the years palm oil has been dubbed evil, unethical and unhealthy, but let us not get it twisted. Ours is not the bleached type that is destroying forests in Indonesia only to be highly processed, refined and commercialised as vegetable fat in supermarkets across the globe. It is the raw Red Palm Oil as beautiful as burnt orange and these days it has been dubbed as the miracle food. Anti oxidant rich, super boosted in superior quality Vitamin E, it now trumps the glorified olive oil. But… would you buy this **”NEW”** miracle product for $14 per jar????? As much as we love you Dr Oz and friends oooooh, I beg, do not impoverish those who have always had access to this pure burnt orange gold.
We love that our food is starting to be recognised as the elixir of longevity around the world but remember that it was ours first. May we continue to be able to enjoy the simple things that we can get from many a market woman on the streets of Accra or Abuja. Food for the everyday man and woman, may you forever remain within reach, including Zomi Palm Oil, the one my mother always uses. Click here for an inexpensive recipe with palm oil.
Take a look at the video here: http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/why-you-should-give-red-palm-oil-try
1 Comment
doc dj
November 2, 2014 at 10:53 pmNow that the health benefits have been cleared up circa cholesterol etc. the main issue with red palm oil is that it is packed with calories. 1 table spoon contains about 130 calories. Thus if you are using one cup = 16 tablespoons, 16 x 130= 2080 calories, which is more than the recommended daily calorie intake for women (2000).
Granted or should I say hopefully one will not be eating the whole pot of soup in one sitting, but what amount/ how many servings is one having? This does not include the caloric / nutritional contents of all the other ingredients in the soup lest to mention the ‘swallow’ nor other meals that need to be consumed for the day. Thus, if your aim is weight loss, no more than 1-2 tablespoons/day is recommended.
Even if you are not aiming to lose weight, if you are consuming more calories than you are burning chances are you will put on weight and if that’s not checked, one may become obese and the body fat from obesity on its own greatly increases the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease that our dear red palm oil tried to prevent in the first place.
I hope I’ve been able to clear some misconceptions. I’ve also been reading around the subject lately and as a fellow doc feel that people should be rightly informed so as to avoid committing ‘health blunders’. Sorry for the long post. Take care.