Food culture, lifestyle & traditional food festivals: a narrative on the public health relevance of the traditional yam recipes in the Afikpo New Yam Festival

Abstract

Food culture has over the years remained the centre for socio-cultural linkages among people in a community, with generational transmission giving birth to cultural affinity and cultural heritage. Besides its primary aim of nourishment, enhancement of growth and body functions, it also defines religious and traditional belief systems. Several communities, tribes and nation states such as China, Italy, Japan, India, Europe and Americas, have been associated with unique food cultures. In North and West African countries like Tunisia and Nigeria respectively, food cultures abound. In South-East Nigeria, the Igbo tribe conduct yam rituals as food cultural festivals. Afikpo, a community in the Igbo-speaking part of Nigeria, celebrates an annual yam ritual called Ikeji Festival, part of which, as the new yam is harvested, is preparation of traditional yam recipes. This article reviews the nutritional content of the various traditional yam recipes consumed in such ceremonies and the associated drinks. A literature search revealed that yam, an energy-giving food with a carbohydrate content of 15 – 40.6%, could be prepared with vegetables, legumes, fish, meat, melon seeds, red palm oil, African black beans, pumpkin fruit pulp, eggplants, African oil bean, piper guineese, plantain, solanum americanum, vitex donians, pterocarpus santalinoids, which are sources of minerals, vitamins, antioxidants, dietary fibres and polyunsaturated fatty acids, all of which have been documented as beneficial in the management of chronic diseases. Alcoholic and various soft drinks are consumed with the yam recipes during the ceremony and there are possibilities that if awareness is not created, overindulgence could constitute to abuse.