Food for Thought

Some people eat to live, while others live to eat. I’m definitely part of the latter group, excited to try how different spices and ingredients interact within a dish to create unique flavors and textures. One of my favorite parts of traveling is eating and learning about different methods of preparing foods along with the cultural significance of meals.

When I traveled to Kampala, Uganda last summer to conduct field research, I was looking forward to learning more about their unique cuisine. The first weekend I was there, one of the community health workers I worked with invited us to join her family for a party, where they served us beans stewed in delicate spices, lamb kabobs charred to perfection, creamy matoke, cassava, marinated chicken, and chapati to soak up any lingering sauces. The flavors and colors were all so warm and enticing. Even more than the food, the sincere hospitality of our friend and her family filled us up.

I also planned some excursions outside of Kampala around food and drink. One of my favorites was traveling to the countryside of eastern Uganda to visit a local coffee bean grower. She welcomed us into her home to show us the whole process, from picking the coffee beans and fermenting them for a couple days, to husking the shell, roasting, and finally brewing. The coffee farmers we met demonstrated their sincere hospitality and pride through sharing their culture of coffee with us.

Between meals and coffee breaks, my main purpose of traveling to Kampala was working on a project in public clinics that aimed to integrate diabetes screening and treatment into tuberculosis (TB) care. As diabetes is associated with worse TB treatment outcomes, it has become vitally important to ensure access to screening supplies, treatment options, and necessary lifestyle interventions for those diagnosed with TB. I conducted interviews with community health workers to understand how patients were screened, counseled, and treated for diabetes in public TB clinics in Kampala.

The community health workers taught me that the ability of patients to be screened and treated for diabetes was related to a myriad of factors. But to stick with the theme, I’ll focus on food. One of the main initial interventions for diabetes is diet modification, ideally a diet high in protein and vegetables and low in carbohydrates. As Kampala is a rapidly growing city in Uganda, urbanization has created barriers to accessing fresh produce, similar to food deserts in New Haven. The community health workers shared that many of their patients can afford to eat mostly porridge or rice, which are high carbohydrate foods.

Although the Ugandan cuisine I had the privilege of exploring is highly nutritious, urbanization and the influx of processed foods and fast food chains from the West have profound ramifications for access to nutrient-rich foods. There is so much good in traditional Ugandan cuisine – the vibrant colors, unique flavors, nutrients, culture, and stories. My hope is that through this research, we will be able to critically analyze the rising rates of non-communicable diseases in developing nations and innovate strategies to improve health by preserving traditional food practices that have both nutritional and cultural significance.