African Foods Essay

1102 Words5 Pages
As human beings, we love to eat our tails off. There is soul food, Cajun, Creole, and African- American foods. African foods originated from the exotic countries of Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia (east part), Central African Republic, Chad (center), Nigeria, Benin, Guinea, Ghana, and Congo (west part). These countries brought in so many types and kinds of food which inspired the mixture of African cuisines. Some African cultures felt that people could not eat fish even though they lived by a river. Fish was disgusting to them as snakes or lizards are to us. While others, would eat nothing but fish. Also in some African countries, chicken and eggs were sacred. The climate also influenced the types of founds that was grown or eaten. It was also very unpredictable. Sometimes rain would not come for 3 to 4 years, although down pours would come and floods for months. The plants would wither and animals would die of starvation. The climate really made it hard to grow crops , due to the weather being unpredictable. Africans learned how to survive this ridiculous climate. For the day yours, their food came from the excess food from the wet years. The types of plants that they saved from the wet years range into 4 types of food: grains, legumes, vegetables, and meat. The grains included wheat, barley, rice, millet, sorghum, and sesame seeds. Dry beans, lentils, and black-eyed are legumes. The tasty yams, taro roots, manioc, beets, and egg plants. Croat, chicken, fish with beef and wild game were their meat plants. The other native plants that were part of the African cuisine include coffee, lemons, olives, many tropical fruits, and sugar cane. The Portuguese introduced cocoa, corn, tomatoes, peanuts, cassava and chilies to Africa. Out of those new and unusual foods at the time, corn became very popular. It was easy to grow, did well in poor soil and harsh climates,
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