Traditional African dishes like Nigerian isiewu and Ghanaian waakye use specific ingredients to improve digestion and nutrient absorption. Millet leaves added to beans reduce gas, and peeling in akara and moi moi aids digestion. Ancestors understood chemistry and bioavailability through practice, long before modern processed foods replaced these methods.
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Now let's go local. Let's go back to our ancestors. They were actually very scientific. They actually— they were very scientific. Your ancestors were more civilized this time. True, they were more particularly in Africa. Yes, in Africa. When the children of Israel were having the Passover, what was the thing God said they should eat the roasted lamb with?
Bitter herbs.
Good. Do you know why? Why? For digestion. Hey, that nobody's going to have either constipation or acid reflux while they were going.
No, I didn't think about that.
The Bible is not only a spiritual book, it's also scientific. Yes. Let me go to the eastern part of Nigeria. They make isiewu.
I was gonna go there.
Yes. And they make nkobi. What do they put on top?
Some bitter herbs.
Some bitter herbs.
Yes.
Why? So that you— your— that bitter herbs helps in the digestion of the food.
And we just eat it and don't eat those bitter herbs.
Yes, eat it. I don't eat the bitter herbs. That's the reason for it. They knew this thing. They knew bioavailability. They knew chemistry. They knew physics, how it works.
They might not have been able to explain it.
They might not be able to explain it. Yes.
I think one of the ways they— what they did was that they were able to study their body.
They studied their body. Have you found out that Ghana. Yeah, their most favorite food is waakye.
Waakye, nice.
And it's cooked with what? Sogum leaves? Yes, millet leaves.
Yes, they put it there to make it red.
To make it red. Do you know what that thing does? Your body will be able to absorb it because for beans, it doesn't— your body takes time to digest beans. So the sogum leaf helps your body to assimilate it and digest it properly. That is why you will eat beans You will be having gaseous emissions.
Yes.
You eat waakye?
You don't.
You don't. Ah, now let's come to kose, which is akara.
Yes.
And moi moi. What do we do? What's the process?
We peel the—
Have you asked why?
Why?
It's because the peel, when they take it out, your body digests it properly. So when you look at the methods of preparation of our African food, they were actually in line with our digestive systems. But what do we do? We want quick, quick, quick. Oh no, oh, highly processed. But our ancestors took their time to do it. Declassified Podcast is now streaming on YouTube and Spotify.
