While
growing up in my part of the country, cassava-based foods were scorned
as lazy man’s foods. Back then, people rarely ate cassava-based foods
(lafun and eba) if offered at funerals or yearly thanksgiving. Worse
still, anybody who offered such foods would be the scorn of the whole
community for months. Then, the aversion to cassava-based foods was so
strong that our parents used to discourage our girls from picking
husbands from a neighbouring community renowned for serving eba (garri)
at social events.
Basically, cassava was cultivated to
demarcate farms and provide animal feed. Pigs love raw cassava as
monkeys love banana. While cassava still carries this unenviable toga in
the realm of human nutrition globally, the Federal Government is
promoting cassava bread in order to reduce foreign exchange spending on
importation of wheat. No doubt, the intention of government is good, but
it is not realizable given certain facts on the chemistry and
processing of cassava. In other words, promoting cassava in the realm of
human nutrition beyond the familiar staples like eba, fufu and lafun is like flying a kite against the wind. It’s labourous and fruitless.
Unless it bothers on health and safety
matters for the citizenry, there is no country where consumption of any
food is governed by legislation or promoted by campaign. Food is a
personal choice and everybody determines what he/she likes to eat or
otherwise. Though Nigerians know cassava as edible tuber, it is
certainly not the first pick among our staple foods, and using it to
make bread will not change its low rating.
What are the factors responsible for the
low rating of cassava in the realm of human nutrition? One, cassava is
rated as one of the 10 most dangerous foods. Cassava contains toxins
including cyanide, linamarin and lotaustralin, which can damage the
liver, kidneys and the brain. Some of the effects of cyanide poisoning
are headache, dizziness, agitation, confusion, coma and convulsions. In
the regions of Africa and Latin America where cassava is a main staple
food, illnesses due to consuming cyanide in cassava over a long period
include paralysis of the legs, trouble walking, and poor vision and
hearing.
Do the promoters of cassava bread also
know that the Japanese Ministry of Health prohibits the use of cassava
as human food? One of the reasons why Japan banned consumption of
cassava is based on the fact that toxic components of the crop may cause
brain damage related to pituitary gland that causes other damage to
various organs.
Secondly, cassava can be a serious
health hazard if it is not processed properly. The question is: who
determines and monitors the proper processing of cassava flour to bake
bread for mass consumption in a country like Nigeria where anything
goes? The best way to process cassava for human consumption is to
extract its starch by condensation method. Our traditional method of
grating and soaking cassava for days to make garri and lafun is also
good, because soaking leaches out the cyanide, a poison that can be
deadly to humans. How is the cassava flour to bake bread being
processed?
Another factor that makes cassava
unsuitable for making bread is that once cassava is harvested,
deterioration of its nutritional value begins immediately. Yet, we all
know that harvested cassava tubers are often stacked in the sun for days
due to lack of roads and transport to evacuate farm products to the
processing centres.
Another challenge to making cassava
bread acceptable is the diversity of cassava plant species with some
species having higher level of cyanide and other toxic elements than the
others. The questions again are: what is the level of cyanide in the
specie of cassava being planted in Nigeria? How many species of cassava
are being cultivated by farmers across the country? Where do the
farmers get the cuttings of good cassava species to plant?
Also, cassava is low in protein and
other essential micronutrients to the extent that malnutrition can occur
if it is made a major part of one’s diet. Otherwise, why did the
Federal Ministry of Agriculture and International Institute of Tropical
Agriculture IITA embark on a futile fortification of cassava with
vitamin A? Still another question for the promoters of cassava bread:
where else in the world is cassava being used to make bread for mass
consumption if it is nutritious and dense in nutrients as claimed by the
Minister of Agriculture, Dr, Adesina Akinwunmi?
As an acid-forming food, regular
consumption of cassava can cause pH imbalance and make the body prone to
degenerative diseases like diabetes, cancer, heart disease,
hypertension, glaucoma and arthritis.
Here is a documented data validating the
fact that, if possible, cassava should be left out of one’s menus. Over
100 years ago, a group of Japanese immigrants went to Brazil for coffee
planting in search of greener pasture when Japan was down the ladder
economically. However, the Japanese immigrants did not get the initial
support of foods and farmlands promised by the Brazilian government.
Consequently, the Japanese immigrants planted cassava just to survive
and many of them died due to cassava poisoning. In fact, in the records
of Japanese immigrants to Brazil, only three Japanese survived up to the
end of Second World War.
Given these facts, I will not eat
cassava bread. But this is not to discount cassava as a crop with huge
potential to create jobs and wealth especially if our energy and
resources are committed to its mass cultivation and processing for
animal feed and industrial uses outside the scope of human nutrition.
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