Move over Mediterranean food. Experts say this East African diet could be key to better health
The Mediterranean diet may be a favourite among nutritionists, but a new study suggests that sticking to a diet local to a community in East Africa could be another key to good health.
The new study, which included 77 men and was published in the
journal Nature Medicine
, focused on the diet of the Chagga people, who live in northern Tanzania in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro.
It's rich in plants and fibres, featuring lots of whole grains, beans, and green vegetables.
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For two weeks, men living in rural areas who usually followed the traditional diet switched to a Western-style diet full of
processed foods
and salt, such as sausages, white bread, and fried chicken.
Meanwhile, town-dwelling men whose diets were more Western either switched to traditional foods for two weeks or added Mbege, a fermented banana drink with an alcohol content of 1 to 3 per cent, to their diets for a week.
The researchers then measured inflammation-related biomarkers in the men's blood, as well as changes to their gut microbiomes.
Switching from a traditional to a Western diet led to more inflammation, they found – but replacing a Western diet with traditional foods or drinking Mbege helped bring down inflammation, which is tied to health issues like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and autoimmune diseases.
Some of these changes were still apparent a month after the experiment, the study found.
The results suggest that preserving traditional diets in sub-Saharan Africa – and adopting a similar diet for those further afield – could help reduce people's risk factors for chronic conditions linked to inflammation.
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"What people eat has a large impact on the immune and metabolic system," Dr Quirijn de Mast, the study's senior author and an associate professor at Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, told Euronews Health.
"It was quite unexpected that many of these effects really persisted," he added.
Diversity in diet
The researchers said that the benefits of the Chagga people's diet are likely due to how the key foods interact with each other, rather than any single superfood – similar to the Mediterranean diet, which emphasises fruits, vegetables, olive oil, and moderate amounts of fish and dairy.
"It's probably not one thing," de Mast said. "I think it's the entire diet".
Meanwhile, the fermentation process appears to enrich banana drink Mbege with microbes and chemical compounds that are good for the gut – but the researchers warned that the health benefits of the drink should be weighed against the alcohol content and possible contamination.
For people looking to incorporate the benefits of Mbege, de Mast recommends eating more fermented foods in general.
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Notably, the findings might not hold for diets across the East African region. There are more than 100 tribes in Tanzania, the study said, each with their own eating habits.
The researchers called for more studies on how various traditional diets across Africa affect people's health – especially because international nutrition guidelines don't always consider regional differences in food, culture, and genetics.
Timing is key. The rapid urbanisation of sub-Saharan Africa has come with dietary changes and less physical activity, and the region is now grappling with rising rates of obesity and related health problems.
"These heritage diets and their diversity really deserve more attention before they disappear, because I think we can really learn a lot," de Mast said.
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