When looking at the other various blog posts for inspiration I realized that there weren’t many blog posts concerning the Ghanaian food. This was surprising due to the fact that the food has been such a topic of conversation amongst the Media in Ghana members, and I thought it deserved a blog post to document it.
Being a vegetarian in Ghana I have found myself eating plethora of red red (beans), rice and plantains. This bean and rice dish was also usually served with lettuce/salad, a spicy sauce and chips. I was unable to eat Banku and Fufu because all of the places made it with meat.
I have never been to a place that ate as many starches as Ghana. On a single dish you could find rice, spaghetti meat, yam patty, yam powder, maize, chips and plantains. I started to doubt what previous Media in Ghana students told me about how much weight I was going to lose. It was all fun and games until about the second week when I became very ill from something I ate. I then became untrusting of the food and when your stomach is upset it’s hard to eat the classic spicy Ghanian food. I then became frustrated with the lack of food variety.
I began talking to friends that have travelled to third world countries and they mentioned too that the meals were very starchy as well as lacking the variety I was dearly missing.
I then began to realize that rice and beans isn’t really a Ghana thing— it’s a developing country thing.
Developing nations don’t have access to the things needed to transport fruit, vegetables and all other kinda of food that we readily have access to in developed nations. This can greatly decrease the variety available. Starchy foods and beans can be kept a long time before going bad which is why developing countries tend to eat mostly that.
As far as meat goes, Ghanaians seem to eat basically anything. They eat goat, bat, pork, beef and “bush meat” which can range from reptiles, rodents and birds. Bush meat is a great additive to the Ghanaian trade industry but has been known to spread many diseases including Ebola.
A popular and seemingly the only fish served in Ghana is tilapia. Tilapia is good for a developing nations diet because it is easily produced in mass quantities and is a source of protein. Like bush meat, tilapia has been criticized for often being fed animal feces and being grown in highly polluted areas which can also cause those consuming them health risks.
Food in Ghana although highly repetitive as a vegetarian has proven that one can take a variety of seemingly the same food and make it in every texture possible. The spicy sauce has given the rice and beans a kick and given me a new appreciation for the variety of foods offered in America.