Picturing Global Health With LAUNCH Food

September 14, 2016
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September 14, 2016 casper

By Kendra Yoshinaga

Update September 19, 2016 at 1 p.m. Pacific Standard Time:

The Global Food Diary response has been fantastic! Tweets & stories continue coming in from around the world for our Global Food Diary. The #LAUNCHFood hashtag has reached some 370,000 people so far. Here are just a few of the responses we've received coming now from the Pacific.

Original post: September 14, 2016

The LAUNCH team is reporting from the SOCAP16 impact investment conference this week, where we’re teeing up the LAUNCH Food challenge with a crowdsourced Global Food Diary. Together with our partners from World Pulse, we asked people from around the world to answer one question: What does a healthy meal look like in your community? We received responses from Cambodia to Cameroon– this post features just a few of them.

Inspired? Show us what you're eating! Starting today and ending on World Food Day (October 16), the LAUNCH Food team will be posting Global Food Diary submissions from around the world. Follow along on Twitter and Facebook, and post your own meals with the hashtag #LAUNCHFood.

Soumya Vilekar, India

Soumya Vilekar writes to us from the Indian state of Maharashtra to share a recipe for modak, a regional specialty. “This Indian dessert is one of the healthiest, as it is steamed and requires a small amount of ghee/butter only to be greased,” Vilekar says.

Modak is traditionally eaten during Ganesh Chaturthi, a Hindu festival celebrating the god Ganesha. It’s a sweet dumpling made of rice flour, jaggery, and coconut. “Coconut and jaggery are known to have medicinal properties of cleansing and hydrating our body,” Vilekar says. “[A small] amount of poppy seeds and nutmeg powder acts as a stress reliever and insinuates a kind of calmness.”

World Vision, Burundi

This photo is from the Christian humanitarian aid group World Vision, which is implementing a program on biofortified crops in Burundi. These crops “can drive increased nutrition directly, and also increase income and sustainability,” World Vision’s Brian Hilton explains. The children pictured are eating an enriched porridge made of biofortified beans, which can be up to 70% higher in iron than conventional beans.

Aimee Knight, United States of America

From San Antonio, Texas, Aimee Knight brings us a recipe for guacamole. “This is a common side dish in South Texas and it was very popular at my Grandma Adele’s house,” Knight writes. “It’s the only dish of hers that I can make. I still daydream about her tortillas and Spanish rice but I could never make them quite the same.”

Knight’s version of guacamole has avocados, tomato, red onion, salt, pepper, and a little lemon juice to help keep it fresh longer. “You can also add cilantro or jalapeño,” she writes. “I never measure the ingredients, just chop, mix, and mash together, to your happiness!”

Precious Nkieh, Cameroon

Cameroonian blogger Precious Nkieh shares a recipe for a complete and nutritious meal: fufu, njamma jamma, and baked chicken.

Fufu is a staple food often made out of cassava flour. Nkieh serves it with njamma jamma, a leafy green sauteed with tomatoes and onions. Nkieh rounds out the dish with a portion of baked chicken: “Insanely delicious!”

"My approach to healthy eating is to cook the things my mother taught me,” Nkieh tells LAUNCH. Her vision, she says, is to create a cookbook showcasing healthy Cameroonian dishes: “I hope to change the world one recipe at a time."