Move over Mediterranean food. Experts say this East African diet could be key to better health
ADVERTISEMENT
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.
Related
Want to live better in old age? Scientists advise following these eating habits
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.
Related
Lower risk of diabetes to bone fractures: What are the benefits and drawbacks of being vegetarian?
"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.
ADVERTISEMENT
Related
Butter linked to higher death risk while plant-based oils may boost health
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.
ADVERTISEMENT
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
LeMonde
2 days ago
- LeMonde
Elon Musk's father, a guest of honor in Moscow, praises Vladimir Putin and blames his son for falling out with Donald Trump
In Moscow, Elon Musk's father made an appearance to talk about the future. As guest of honor at a forum organized by Russian figures known for Orthodox conservatism and patriotic education, 79-year-old Errol Musk spoke about the "future" on Tuesday, June 10, before a select audience. The broad topic allowed the South African businessman to share a few platitudes on various subjects. Along the way, he offered a real-or-imagined scoop about the unexpected origins of SpaceX and his son's space ventures. "[Elon] was in Russia, trying to buy a rocket in Russia, where, as we all know, the best rockets were made. They did not give him a rocket, they thought he was joking," Musk said with a laugh. This unusual conference aimed to be as grand as its title: "Future Forum 2050." It was organized and funded by conservative tycoon Konstantin Malofeev and ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin. Malofeev owns Tsargrad, an Orthodox television channel promoting traditional Russian values in opposition to what it sees as Western decline. Dugin is the author of numerous essays celebrating Russian imperialism and military expansionism. Both men – known to wield influence within the Kremlin and under Western sanctions – also invited American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and British populist political figure George Galloway.
France 24
04-06-2025
- France 24
Paris seeks personhood status for River Seine
In a resolution adopted on Wednesday, the Paris City Council called on parliament to pass a law granting the Seine legal personhood to enable "an independent guardian authority to defend its rights in court". "The Seine must be able to defend itself, as a subject of law and not as an object, because it will always be under attack," said Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. Conservationists have backed granting fragile ecosystems such as rivers and mountains basic legal rights to better protect them. In a world first, New Zealand in 2017 recognised the Whanganui River revered by Indigenous people as a living entity, with legislation combining Western legal precedent and Maori beliefs. In 2022, Spain granted personhood status to the Mar Menor, one of Europe's largest saltwater lagoons, to give its threatened ecosystem better protection. The Paris Council based its decision on the conclusions of a citizens' convention on the future of the Seine held between March and May. Fifty citizens chosen at random proposed granting the Seine fundamental rights such as "the right to exist, to flow and to regenerate". The Seine must be considered an ecosystem that "no one can claim ownership of", where the preservation of life must "take precedence over everything", the convention concluded. It also noted "positive" change, with the Seine now home to around 40 species of fish, compared to only four in 1970. French authorities spent $1.5 billion ahead of the 2024 Olympics to clean up the Seine, the 777-kilometre (482-mile) river that flows through Paris past the Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral and other iconic landmarks. However, it is threatened by pollution, rising water temperatures and the use of pesticides in agriculture. The opening of the river to the public for swimming this summer could present "additional risks", warned the convention. Fulfilling a key legacy promise from the Paris Games, authorities are to allow the public to swim from July 5 at three points in the Seine, which is now deemed safe for a dip. © 2025 AFP
Euronews
03-06-2025
- Euronews
Hospitals try to waste less laughing gas in bid to curb climate impact
An Irish hospital is trying to prevent unused laughing gas from escaping into the atmosphere, in a bid to curb waste and go green in healthcare. Nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, has long been used to relieve pain and relax patients ahead of surgery – but outdated hospital infrastructure means much of the anaesthetic gas is actually wasted and released into the atmosphere, where it remains for around 120 years. That's prompted concerns among health experts across Europe, who say leaks and other efficiency problems are worsening the environmental impact of a sector that is already among the heaviest polluters worldwide. This is 'the most important issue for us to look at by quite some distance,' Dr Paul Southall, sustainability lead for the UK's Royal College of Anaesthetists, told Euronews Health. Now, St John's Hospital in Limerick has become one of the first hospitals in Ireland to stop using nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic on a large scale after deactivating the extensive network of pipes that fed the gas directly to the hospital's operating rooms. 'Nitrous oxide is safe to use, but the infrastructure used to deliver it inevitably results in waste,' said Dr Hugh O'Callaghan, a consultant anaesthetist involved with the St John's project. In a statement, he added that modern methods to deliver anaesthesia are making laughing gas increasingly 'obsolete'. St John's will now rely on mobile equipment to bring anaesthetic cylinders directly into the operating room, according to Ireland's health services agency. Other Irish hospitals in the region are expected to follow suit in the coming months as part of a plan to reduce carbon emissions from anaesthetic gases by 50 per cent by 2030, the agency said. Other European hospitals are also phasing out piped-in methods of delivering laughing gas, including those in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In the UK, for example, two hospitals replaced their large centralised nitrous oxide containers with small portable cylinders that could be wheeled into the operating room. This led to a 55 per cent reduction in monthly nitrous oxide emissions, from 333 tonnes to 150 tonnes, according to the National Health Service (NHS) in England. 'It's not about restricting clinical use, it's about creating a less wasteful system,' said Dr Cliff Shelton, a UK-based anaesthetist, professor, and co-chair of the safety, standards, and environmental sustainability committee at the Association of Anaesthetists, a professional group focused on the UK and Ireland. Last year, the group said UK and Irish hospitals should decommission their nitrous oxide pipelines 'as soon as possible,' ideally by 2027. In recent years, the health trust in Manchester, where Shelton works, has switched to a mobile-canister approach for nitrous oxide that he said has reduced the organisation's overall carbon footprint by about three per cent to five per cent. 'We've made it cheaper and greener, and people are still getting the same [anaesthetic] care they always got,' he told Euronews Health. These efforts are part of a broader reckoning among medical workers about how their field is exacerbating climate change, which is linked to a host of health issues, such as asthma, stroke, and mosquito-borne diseases. Globally, the health sector causes 4.4 per cent of net emissions, with the European Union contributing 248 million metric tons of carbon dioxide – behind only the United States and China, according to a 2019 report from the advocacy group Health Care Without Harm. When used as anaesthesia, laughing gas adds an additional one per cent to the EU health sector's carbon footprint, the group found. Other commonly used anaesthetic gases, such as sevoflurane, isoflurane, and desflurane, also contribute. But the vast majority of the health sector's carbon emissions are related to its supply chain – the production, transport, use, and disposal of medicines, medical kits, and other resources. That means minimising waste of nitrous oxide and other gas-based anaesthetics won't be enough for hospitals to offset their climate impact. Even so, sustainability-minded doctors believe it is a good start. 'When we looked into this, we found we were buying 100 times more nitrous oxide than we were actually using,' Shelton said. 'It's a moral imperative, really, to get on top of that [degree of waste],' he added. Organ transplantation, which is often the only way to save a life, is directly dependent on donors. But their sometimes unreliable availability often leads to patients dying before receiving a donated organ. There are two types of organ donations: from a living donor and cadaveric transplants. While options for a living donor are generally restricted to just the kidney and liver, in Kazakhstan it tends to save more lives than a posthumous donation. "Around the world, 80-90% of donations are posthumous, but the same cannot be said about Kazakhstan and the countries in Central Asia. In our country, 80-90% of donors are living relatives of the patients," said Aidar Sitkazinov, Director of the Republican Centre for Coordination of Transplantation and High-Tech Services in Kazakhstan. According to him, the reason many people refuse to donate their organs after death is a lack of trust in the healthcare system. The belief that corruption is everywhere makes them fear that donated organs will be misused or illegally sold, or that doctors will not treat the patients to get to their organs. Sitkazinov notes that selling organs is punishable by law in Kazakhstan. At the same time, dozens of people and several organisations are involved in the procedure for organ transplantation, and hospitals do not benefit monetarily or otherwise if a patient becomes a donor after death. Still, he understands that scandals surrounding organ transplantation often deter people from signing the donation form. Last year alone, there were 15 cases where people attempted to sell donated organs. Religion also plays a role. Many believe Islam or Orthodox Christianity - the two main religions in Central Asia - do not allow posthumous donation. Religious authorities in Kazakhstan all support posthumous donation as a charitable act, but that still has not swayed many people. The religious question is not unique to Kazakhstan or Central Asia. Studies have shown that a reluctance to donate organs after death is a long-standing trend in Islamic countries where living donations prevail. In contrast, in Europe organ donation after death is an established practice, covering up to 50% of the need for organs. Unlike in other parts of the world, Europe also uses organs of donors who died due to heart failure. As of May 2025, 4,226 people in Kazakhstan are on the waiting list for some kind of organ donation, 128 of whom are children. Of the total number of patients, 3,828 are waiting for a kidney, but in the worst case scenario that a donor is not found, those patients also have the option of haemodialysis, which can keep them alive for between 10 and 15 years. "Not everyone who needs an organ transplant is on this list. This category has no other alternative, only an organ transplant can save their lives," highlighted the director of the transplantation coordination body. According to him, on average 300 people die because there simply are not enough organ donors. "I'll give you a simple example – in 2024, we had 86 deceased donors who were diagnosed with brain death. All relatives were approached and only 10 families gave their consent," said Sitkazinov, noting that one deceased person can save seven lives. Kazakhstan has an opt-in consent system, where each citizen has to officially agree to donate their organs after death. However, even if the person gives consent, their relatives must also agree. This system came into place in 2020, after several lawsuits from the relatives of deceased persons, who were outraged that organs were extracted without their consent. In 2024, there were 260 transplantations, of which 237 were from a living donor. "The main problem is refusal of relatives. We also have a very low expression of will. As of January 2025, with an adult population of 11 million, 115,000 people have expressed their will to opt out, and only 8,000 opted in," noted Sitkazinov. All Central Asian countries share similar problems when it comes to posthumous donation; lack of trust in the system and misconceptions about the donations themselves. Until public awareness increases and systems prove to be more transparent and secure the number of organ donations from deceased people is unlikely to grow significantly.
