Sunday, May 23, 2004
Staving Off Starvation: When Real Food Isn’t An Option
In Haiti's slums, round swirls of dough can be found baking in the sun. They look almost appetizing until you learn the ingredients: butter, salt, water and dirt.
In a world where the rich spend millions on ways to avoid carbohydrates and the United Nations declares obesity a global health threat, the cruel reality is that far more people struggle each day just to get enough calories.
In Malawi, children stand on the roadsides selling skewers of roasted mice.
In Mozambique, when grasshoppers eat the crops, people turn the tables and eat them, calling the fishy-tasting bugs "flying shrimp."
In Liberia during the 1989 civil war, every animal in the national zoo was devoured but a one-eyed lion. Dogs and cats disappeared from the streets of the capital.
But all that is, at least, fresh protein. During the siege of Kuito, Angola, in the early 1990's, Carlos Sicato, a World Food Program worker, described a man producing an old chair and promising his family, "If we don't die today, we can survive for four more." He soaked its leather for 15 hours to soften it and remove the tanning chemicals. Then, with boiling water, he made "lamb soup."
An informal survey of World Food Program experts produced many examples of resourcefulness.
Africans dig up anthills and termite mounds to sieve out the tiny grains the insects have gathered. Some seeds, however, provoke fatal allergic reactions.
Like Chad's mukhet bush, wild cassava in tropical regions and baucia Senegalensis in West Africa are poisonous, but can be made edible by pounding and soaking for days.
In Bangladesh, a type of lentil known to slowly destroy the nervous system is eaten when people are hungry enough.
...
Marula fruit is so tasty that elephants knock trees down to get at it, but in battered Zimbabwe, once the fruit is gone people may be reduced to eating the tough seeds by cracking them with rocks and fishing out tiny kernels with a pin.
Plants with very little nutritional value are eaten, like seaweed, tree bark and grass in North Korea or corn stalks in Africa.
Plants that are hard to harvest, like cactus (because of thorns) or water hyacinths (because of crocodiles), become worth the risk.
The skins and bones of dead animals that even vultures are finished with may be boiled for soup.
The danger of all these substitutes is that they can cause diarrhea, which can kill more quickly than starvation, or irritate the gut so much that it has a hard time digesting better food if it does arrive.
Under those circumstances, people can "lose more than they gain from eating," Mr. Webb said.
Even dirt-eating is a coping mechanism that shows its worth when times are tough. The medical name for dirt-eating is pica, and while it is considered a pathology among the well fed, among the poor it can add minerals to a diet that even in good times may only be corn or sorghum mush.
In Zambia, balls of edible clay are sold in street markets. In Angola, a dark dirt called "black salt" is sprinkled on cold food, but cannot be cooked because it loses its tang.
And the dirt biscuits of Haiti - called "argile," meaning clay, or "terre," meaning earth - are not exactly a final cri de coeur against starvation.
Like the mice in Malawi, they are a staple of the very poor, somewhere between a snack and a desperation measure. Making them has been a regular business for years. The clay is trucked in plastic sacks from Hinche, on the central plateau. Blended with margarine or butter, they are flavored with salt, pepper and bouillon cubes and spooned out by the thousands on cotton sheets in sunny courtyards that are kept swept as "bakeries." They cost about a penny apiece.
In Haiti's slums, round swirls of dough can be found baking in the sun. They look almost appetizing until you learn the ingredients: butter, salt, water and dirt.
In a world where the rich spend millions on ways to avoid carbohydrates and the United Nations declares obesity a global health threat, the cruel reality is that far more people struggle each day just to get enough calories.
In Malawi, children stand on the roadsides selling skewers of roasted mice.
In Mozambique, when grasshoppers eat the crops, people turn the tables and eat them, calling the fishy-tasting bugs "flying shrimp."
In Liberia during the 1989 civil war, every animal in the national zoo was devoured but a one-eyed lion. Dogs and cats disappeared from the streets of the capital.
But all that is, at least, fresh protein. During the siege of Kuito, Angola, in the early 1990's, Carlos Sicato, a World Food Program worker, described a man producing an old chair and promising his family, "If we don't die today, we can survive for four more." He soaked its leather for 15 hours to soften it and remove the tanning chemicals. Then, with boiling water, he made "lamb soup."
An informal survey of World Food Program experts produced many examples of resourcefulness.
Africans dig up anthills and termite mounds to sieve out the tiny grains the insects have gathered. Some seeds, however, provoke fatal allergic reactions.
Like Chad's mukhet bush, wild cassava in tropical regions and baucia Senegalensis in West Africa are poisonous, but can be made edible by pounding and soaking for days.
In Bangladesh, a type of lentil known to slowly destroy the nervous system is eaten when people are hungry enough.
...
Marula fruit is so tasty that elephants knock trees down to get at it, but in battered Zimbabwe, once the fruit is gone people may be reduced to eating the tough seeds by cracking them with rocks and fishing out tiny kernels with a pin.
Plants with very little nutritional value are eaten, like seaweed, tree bark and grass in North Korea or corn stalks in Africa.
Plants that are hard to harvest, like cactus (because of thorns) or water hyacinths (because of crocodiles), become worth the risk.
The skins and bones of dead animals that even vultures are finished with may be boiled for soup.
The danger of all these substitutes is that they can cause diarrhea, which can kill more quickly than starvation, or irritate the gut so much that it has a hard time digesting better food if it does arrive.
Under those circumstances, people can "lose more than they gain from eating," Mr. Webb said.
Even dirt-eating is a coping mechanism that shows its worth when times are tough. The medical name for dirt-eating is pica, and while it is considered a pathology among the well fed, among the poor it can add minerals to a diet that even in good times may only be corn or sorghum mush.
In Zambia, balls of edible clay are sold in street markets. In Angola, a dark dirt called "black salt" is sprinkled on cold food, but cannot be cooked because it loses its tang.
And the dirt biscuits of Haiti - called "argile," meaning clay, or "terre," meaning earth - are not exactly a final cri de coeur against starvation.
Like the mice in Malawi, they are a staple of the very poor, somewhere between a snack and a desperation measure. Making them has been a regular business for years. The clay is trucked in plastic sacks from Hinche, on the central plateau. Blended with margarine or butter, they are flavored with salt, pepper and bouillon cubes and spooned out by the thousands on cotton sheets in sunny courtyards that are kept swept as "bakeries." They cost about a penny apiece.
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