What do the Masai really eat (and does this change your views)

[Jane Michel]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...m?sms_ss=email

Yet another finding was the outcome of the fieldwork in Africa. Nadja Knoll´s study shows that the traditional story patterns about the Maasai diet are wrong. Travelers in Africa like Gustav Adolf Fischer (1848-1886) and the Englishman Joseph Thomson (1858-1895) spread the image of the blood thirsty Maasai. According to their reports the herdsmen consume mainly meat, milk and blood. A particularly high percentage of fermented milk -- a kind of yoghurt -- was also said to be part of their diet. Nadja Knoll´s findings paint a very different picture. The scientist of Jena University discovered that the Maasai have strongly sweetened milk tea for breakfast. Some Maasai eat a kind of "porridge" in the morning, a liquid mixture of cormeal, water, some milk and sugar.

For lunch there will be milk and "Ugali," a kind of polenta being made from cormeal and water. "Dinner is similar to lunch," says Knoll who points out that she did her field study at the end of the dry season. There may be slightly different results in the -- remarkably shorter -- rainy season, because then the Maasai livestock produces more milk. This milk will then ferment in calabashes. The outcome of the fermenting process will be a yoghurt-like drink that might have pro-biotic benefits.

[Garrett Smith]

So Knoll is suggesting that the Maasai diet hasn't possibly changed in the last, oh say, 150 years? Especially when two other people back then painted similar pictures of their diet?

I don't buy this. Smells like an agenda to me.

[Arien Malec]

Plus their 150 year old stable native staple diet requires access to refined sugar and corn products, neither of them native to the region.

[Garrett Smith]

Good point. Think they had the pot to boil the porridge in 150 years ago either? Or a teapot for sweetened tea?