The Traditional African Diet That Reduces Chronic Disease In 2 Weeks

Generally speaking, the world’s go-to gold standard diet for good health is the Mediterranean Diet.

You can read about it here: The Mediterranean Diet: What Is It Good For?

As well as: Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet ← for specific tweaks to focus on certain areas of health in particular

However, it’s far from being the only healthy way of eating; indeed, there are many options to choose from. Granted, not all of the options are good (some popular diets are frankly ruinous to the health), but a good number of them are, especially if you have a particular health goal in mind.

For example: Which Diet? Top Diets Ranked By Experts

Today, we’ll be looking at a traditional dietary approach from Tanzania!

The study

The medium-sized (n=77, so not huge, but certainly statistically significant) study involved healthy Tanzanians from rural and urban areas, comparing traditional diets (including ugali, mchicha, kibiru, and mbege*) with Western diets, by switching these around in groups.

What they found:

• Switching to a Western diet raised inflammatory proteins and weakened infection defense
• Switching to a traditional diet reduced inflammatory biomarkers and symptoms of inflammation
• Some health impacts (from both sides) persisted even four weeks after diet changes, showing lasting effects.

*You may be wondering what these things are, so…

• Ugali is a kind of thick porridge
• Mchicha is a traditional vegetable dish made with okra and greens
• Kibiru is boiled green plantain with kidney beans
• Mbege is a fermented millet and banana-based drink

A special note about mbege: mbege is considered a kind of beer, but its alcohol content is usually very low, more like Eastern European kvass. In terms of culinary experience when drinking it, however, it’s very different from kvass, and is more like a Desi lassi, making it a great accompaniment to spicy food, if you’re so inclined.

You can read the paper in its entirety here (there’s a lot more detail than we can include here):

Immune and metabolic effects of African heritage diets versus Western diets in men: a randomized controlled trial

Want more African inspiration?

This one’s from the other side of Africa (Ghana, to be precise, and from the south of Ghana, to be even more precise, because as with most countries, different parts of the country have different regional variations when it comes to cooking) but is well-worth checking out:

Ghanaian Red Bean & Sweet Potato Groundnut Stew

Enjoy!