The Truth about Nshima or Pap: It’s a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

I did not write this blog to amuse or offend but to provide historical and scientific facts that show that the nutriment we call nshima or pap; this meal we treasure so much as the essence of our daily nourishment, family and social feasts; the food that’s rooted in tradition; from a crop we believe is our “own”, was actually born of an old human evil and has and continues to cause so much silent destruction that labelling it a weapon of mass destruction seems appropriate so take heed. I am not an agricultural economist or scientist but a student of curiosity and wrote this because it is worth sharing the knowledge discovery that excessive maize intake is part of the Zambian problem. The adverse effects on economic development, soil fertility and individual (in turn national) IQ are real and proven. This blog will challenge everything you know about maize and nshima so brace yourself but please read with an open mind.

Over the past 100 to 500 years, nshima (or nsima and in some other countries pap, ugali, sadza or the similar West African staple fufu) has, in some instances, taken a religious form of its own to the point that refusing or avoiding it in a host’s house is not only viewed as a great but the ultimate insult. Some interesting views on nshima that come to mind are that: a meal without nshima is not really a meal; a woman who cannot cook it cannot be a good wife; a child who does not eat it will not grow strong and a man who has not had it cannot work well. When viewed with an out-of-the-box lens, one wonders whether the grip nshima has on our society’s psyche is comparable to substance addiction.

Maize and the Slave Trade.

Maize (Zea mays, colonial name: American Indian corn) is the most important food crop in Africa but that’s already well known. Less known is that maize is not indigenous to Africa but was brought from the Americas by the Portuguese between 200 and 500 years ago. Even less known and unknown is that maize was cultivated as a food for slaves. If you thought maize was introduced for benign horticultural reasons then know now that in those days - several hundred years ago - when Europeans explored Africa and the Americas, very few deeds were innocent, kind or sincere. The times were brutal and exploitation with the barrel of a gun was the order of the day and so was the idea behind the cultivation of maize in Africa. But why maize as the base crop and not say rice? On Asian rice (Oryza sativa), Sir Hans Sloane, a physician noted in 1707 that:

“Rice is here planted by some Negros in their own Plantations, and thrives well, but because it requires much beating, and a particular Art to separate the Grain from the Husk, tis thought too troublesome for its price, and so neglected by most Planters.”

Another species of rice (Oryza glaberrima) which is indigenous to Africa and had been cultivated for 1500 to 2000 years was overlooked despite being more tolerant to infertile soils, severe climatic change and diseases. There isn’t a lot of information on why this rice was not commercially produced and one can only speculate that it is due to its low yielding nature or because it is more brittle than Asian rice. Interestingly, Professor Judith A. Carneys’ research concludes that the enslavers’ racism played a part in the eventual destruction of the once thriving African rice irrigation system and culture.

On maize, Patrick Browne, a physician and botanist wrote in 1756:

“This plant is much cultivated in all parts of Jamaica, and thrives very luxuriantly every where. It is generally planted among the young canes, and grows to a perfection before these shoot to any considerable height.”

Back to the question – why maize? Simple – compared to the two species of rice, it had a relatively high yield, was easier to grow and provided sufficient energy to keep slaves alive. As historical records show, maize was fed to slaves not just in Africa but on slave ships and in the new colonies in the Americas.

According to records at the UK Natural History Museum, African slaves initially rejected the “new-world” maize but the enslavers’ determination to keep them alive was matched only with their inhumane ingenuity. In 1737, John Atkins, a naval surgeon, elaborated on one “forced feeding” method:

“The common, cheapest, and most commodious Diet, is with Vegetables, Horse-Beans, Rice, Indian Corn, and Farine… This Food is accounted more salutary to Slaves, and nearer to their accustomed way of Feeding than salt Flesh. One or other is boiled on board at constant times, twice a day, into a Dab-a-Dab (sometimes with Meat in it) and have an Overseer with a Catof-nine tails, to force it upon those that are sullen and refuse.”

The UK Natural History Museum further states:

It is likely that the Portuguese introduced maize to West Africa and to Santiago, Cape Verde Islands between 1535 and 1550. In addition to loading slaves in West Africa for the West Indian islands or the mainland, the native black merchants provided the ships with the necessary staple food, maize, to feed the slaves for a voyage that might last 60-70 days. The maize on board was fed in the form of gruel. However, by 1900 maize had become the staple grain of most of sub-Saharan Africa.

This accounts for the origin of our maize cultivation and nshima. It is shocking that today a nshima meal is prepared using the same “enslavers forced feeding” method. Remember this, the next time you lunch into a lump of pap. It was indeed born of an old human evil but today we call it traditional food. Should we really?

Historians have argued that enslavers used food such as maize as a form of control. Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary defines a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) as a weapon that can cause a lot of destruction. Considering the role this “control agent” maize played in the continent wide destructive slave trade, does it still seem out of place to call it a WMD albeit an old medieval one? Ignoring any possible petty arguments on labels or definitions, there is no doubt that nshima is a legacy of the African slave trade.

Maize and IQ.

Since maize is now our “own” and the slave trade was abolished over a hundred years ago let us move on and look at what really matters today - nshima’s nutritional value. Checking food nutritional value and content is important as recent scientific studies have found a correlation between diet, cooking styles and IQ. For instance, it has now been proven that foods rich in omega-3 and iodine (such as fish in the Japanese diet) can help brain development and IQ. According to a UNICEF/WHO/USAID 2009 report called, “Investing in the future – A united call to action on vitamin and mineral deficiencies”:

In communities where iodine intake is sufficient, average IQ is shown to be on average 13 points higher than in iodine-deficient communities.

The good news is that uncooked maize is rich in carbohydrate and several vitamins and minerals. Infact, it is a good source of thiamine (vitamin B1), providing about 24% of the daily value for this nutrient in a single cup. Scientists have found that vitamin B1 is an integral participant in enzymatic reactions which convert carbohydrates to energy, helping the functioning of the heart, muscles, nervous system and is also critical for brain cell/cognitive function. Vitamin B1 is needed for the synthesis of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter essential for memory. Unfortunately, to be eaten, maize must be cooked and there lies the problem. Vitamin B1 is easily destroyed by light, heat and when soaked in water. In essence, the nshima water-heating preparation method destroys the vitamin which is essential for natural memory development. There is more bad news. Excessive intake of maize leads to niacin (vitamin B3) deficiency which causes pellagra (known as the disease of the three “D”s – dermatitis, diarrhoea and dementia). The UK National Heath Services describes the last “D” dementia as:

A group of related symptoms that is associated with an ongoing decline of the brain and its abilities. These include: memory; thinking; language; understanding and judgement. People with dementia may also become apathetic, have problems controlling their emotions or behaving appropriately in social situations.

Other medical symptoms of Pellagra include mental confusion, aggression and emotional disturbances.

One is tempted to wonder whether the mentioned dietary effects have in turn had some kind of effect on our ability to develop “in-house” problem solving institutions and build a self sufficient nation. Has our diet somehow made us comparatively apathetic and indifferent to solving ALL our own problems? How much damage does our diet have on our collective intellectual capabilities? Studies have already been done on national IQ levels but I will leave that for another article. However, my friend K. Kibalabala could not have put it any better when he said:

“Nshima certainly keeps us very dull. Reason being, it gives us a false sense of achievement. Just check out how much you will dose and relax after brutalizing that white stuff.”

Native American’s ate maize for thousands of years without any side effects. It is now known that they were aware of the dangers of excessive intake and developed a preventative cooking method now called nixtamalization where maize was mixed with pot-ash, lime or alkali solutions and consumed with leguminous vegetables which tended to increase the vitamin B3 availability, thus greatly improving its nutritional value. When maize was brought to the “old-world” Europe and “slave-mine” Africa, nixtamalization was ignored because the benefits were not yet understood. As K.J. Carpenter put it:

“It seems possible that if the traditional method of processing corn—developed in America by those who had used it as a safe staple food for millennia—had been brought back to the Old World by Columbus along with the grain itself, and generally adopted, pellagra might never have developed, and the suffering of hundreds of thousands in southern Europe would have been avoided.”

Today, pellagra is no longer common in developed Europe or North America due to advances in food science and government policies to have micronutrients such as vitamin B3 in certain foods. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for developing Africa where even maize nixtamalization is still not generally practiced. Despite lower prevalence rate than 100 to 300 years ago due in part to broader diets, pellagra is still a health risk. For instance, according to WHO, Africa’s largest maize producer, South Africa, has the largest per capita pellagra deaths in the World. Additionally, over the past 25 years, all but one emergency pellagra outbreaks have been in Southern Africa (particularly Malawi).

Professor Christiaan Eijkman, one of the pioneers of nutritional science and the joint winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine wrote, “white rice can be poisonous”. Considering the now known effects of vitamin deficiency in a maize rich diet, he might as well have also said, “nshima can be poisonous”. But this is not an exaggeration. By the 1800’s pellagra outbreaks became so common amongst Africans and Europeans who started consuming maize as the dominant food that it was thought that the crop carried a toxic substance. Professor Alfred J. Bollet wrote in his 1992 paper:

“The association of pellagra with corn resulted in many theories to explain the origin of the new disease, often called "Zeism," based on the Latin name for maize, Zea mays. The "spoiled corn" theory was analogous to the cause of ergotism, which results from a toxin produced by a mold that contaminates rye.”

Other micronutrients absent in a nshima rich diet are iron, zinc and vitamin A. Zinc helps learning and memory and it helps detoxify heavy metals such as lead, which is one of the biggest environmental threats to IQ. Studies from a lead-smelting community in Australia showed that low-level lead exposure during childhood could cause an IQ deficit of between 4 and 5%.

If we took these scientific findings seriously, maize (meali-meal) bags would come with a health warning:

“Excessive maize (nshima) eating affects brain development and stunts IQ.”

Maize and the Economy.

According to USAID, maize accounts for 60% of Zambia’s calorie intake. Production has not been mechanised and still dependent on rainfall patterns. In effect, maize production is as volatile as the rain and drought cycles. Between 1990 and 2005, Zambia had twice as many bad harvests as excellent ones. The actual economic effects of a bad harvest can be staggering on the economy and mortality rate of any country. For instance, the 1999 to 2001 drought in Kenya cost its economy about USD2.5 billion. In Zimbabwe, the drought of 1990 to 1991 resulted in an 11% drop in the GDP and the drought of 1988 in the US caused an estimated damage of USD40 billion. The United States can absorb these shocks but the same cannot be said of Zambia. Just one bad harvest year can easily have a double whammy effect and the disaster response could wipe out Zambia’s foreign reserves which stood at over USD1.8 billion in 2010. The alternative is food aid which further negates Zambia’s ability to be self sufficient. The reality today is - the United States is the largest food aid donor of maize; followed by the EU and China whilst on the recipient side, many countries in Africa occupy the top ten positions.

Fortunately, over the past 20 years, the government food policy has been to diversify to other staple foods to help reduce crop failure risk. Cassava is one such crop in part due to its drought resistant properties. FAO data shows that between 1990 and 2005, cassava production steadily increased by as much as 250% whilst maize production was erratic and declined by as much as 50%.

However, like maize, cassava was brought to Africa by the Portuguese as slave food and studies show that too much cassava intake in combination with dried or salted meat and fish, and a shortage of fats and oils (as is the case in some rural areas) inhibits the uptake of vitamin B1, leading to beriberi. Professor Christiaan Eijkman wrote in his Nobel Lecture notes:

“Beriberi is a disease prevalent, epidemically, in tropical and subtropical regions of Eastern Asia, where rice is the staple food of the natives; it is found elsewhere among sago-eating peoples (Molucca Islands), as well as in South America, in places where rice or cassava meal is the staple diet, as in certain parts of Brazil.”

Beriberi takes several forms and can cause among other things, emotional disturbances, tiredness, heart problems, impaired senses and severe mental illness. Like maize, when cassava is soaked and dried in the sun, vitamin B1 is destroyed. Surely, how can this be the maize alternative? It’s a vicious cycle as this alternative takes us back to the health and low IQ issues. Interestingly, Beriberi literally means "I can't, I can't" in Singhalese due to the crippling effect it has on its victims. Reminds me of a local joke that if a problem is too big, don’t think too much or else you will get a headache as it can’t be done anyway.

The overall GDP impact of vitamin and mineral deficiency due to our nshima rich diet was summed up in a UNICEF report:

Micronutrient deficiencies debilitate minds and bodies. The lack of iron alone is so widespread in adults that it is lowering overall labour productivity, resulting in estimated losses of up to 2 per cent of GDP in the countries most affected. Currently, Zambia’s estimated % total of GDP lost to all forms of vitamin and mineral deficiency is 1.3%.

It’s also worth mentioning the adverse effects maize has on soil fertility. East African studies have shown that maize must be grown in rotation with nitrogen producing legumes in order to maintain soil productivity and improve subsequent yields which in turn rely on the uncertainty of rain fall. It’s another vicious cycle. Further research would be needed to determine the exact economic cost of the maize-land degradation effect.

Considering all this, I am once again drawn to write that maize is a WMD albeit a none militarised one. It is unfortunate that most of these facts are still generally unknown to the population.

What next?

With the realisation of nshima’s origin and the fact that it not only has negligible nutritional value but excessive intake can be harmful, the question is, what next? One would argue that if you looked hard enough at any food item, you would find something wrong. That’s probably correct, the problem though is that in Zambia and most parts of Africa, nshima or pap intake is excessive. Having the same meal two to three times per day, seven days a week is extreme. As they say, too much of anything is bad.

How does one change the eating habits/culture of society, especially when it has existed for hundreds of years? That’s a tough one. Celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver’s tireless campaigns to change the eating culture and diet habits in the UK comes to mind. The Zambian government can not suddenly change its crop production and diet policies as have governments in developed countries due to several reasons including the lack of infrastructure and advanced multi-nutrition research centres and scientists who would holistically monitor and help enforce such policies. But with will-power the change process can begin.

Fortunately, that is the case with the introduction of the “Zambia Maize Meal Fortification Programme”. It’s a progressive step to fortify maize, flour and other grains with iron, vitamins, folic acid and zinc. This programme was developed in partnership with NEPAD after UN studies revealed the weakened physical and mental development state of malnourished children in developing countries. Is fortification the answer? According to a USAID/WFP paper, the success of the fortification programme depends on several factors including stability of the micronutrients, physical and chemical factors such as heat, moisture, exposure to air, light and acid or alkaline environments all of which are present during the processing, distribution and storage stage. Cooking also has an effect. Studies at Roche Laboratories in Isando compared two cooking methods mothers would use to prepare maize meals for 1-3 year old children and found that between 29 and 45% of fortified vitamin A was lost during the process. Of the two previously mentioned memory enhancing and brain developing vitamins, B1 is the least stable. A WFP paper showed that under controlled conditions, bread baking of fortified flour lost up to 5% vitamin B3 whilst the loss rate went up to 25% for vitamin B1. Considering all these physical and chemical factors, one wonders what the real total fortification loss rate is in uncontrolled traditional environments. Moreover, since adults prefer their nshima “well done” i.e. after prolonged, intense-hot-water-boiling cooking which in effect destroys the micronutrients; one wonders whether the fortification programme is redundant. Besides, fortification resources are externally sourced meaning a continuation of aid dependency and inability to develop self sufficient methods.

What are the alternatives and are they sustainable? For starters, with will-power, individuals can start changing their own eating habits. It has always been my opinion that the onus is always on the individual and not the system to take the first step. And individuals eventually make and determine the system i.e. the government. I wonder though, what the response would be if Zambian’s where told to completely diversify their diets by limiting nshima rich meals to only two or three times per week or two? An example and lesson from the past can be found in a paragraph from the Nobel Prize website:

Even if people hadn't heard of vitamins before the 20th century, many understood that it was important to eat varied food. And most people did. Problems with malnutrition usually occurred when people were on long journeys at sea, working for the army or imprisoned. In Japan a doctor in the navy, Takaki, understood that beriberi could be avoided if the men ate less rice and more vegetables, barley, fish and meat. When he showed how successful this method was, it was made into a naval regulation in Japan.

Remember, rather than living on monotonous maize based thus “poisonous” meals, it is up to each individual to proactively research on (document and share the knowledge discovery of) Zambia’s many indigenous fruits, vegetables, fish and other foods. All this can be creatively mixed to make new, more diverse and varied diets which are beneficial to the body and mind. That’s my take, what’s yours?

Thank you.

Main references:

National History Museum (UK)

National Health Service (UK)

Nobel Prize Organisation

World Food Programme

The World Bank

UNICEF

USAID

UN

Full references can be provided on request.