“Every day it’s tuo zaafi”: considering food preference in a food insecure region of Ghana

Jessica R. Ham ()
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Jessica R. Ham: Oxford College of Emory University

Agriculture and Human Values, 2020, vol. 37, issue 3, No 87, 907-917

Abstract: Abstract This study takes the role of food preference in food insecurity analysis seriously. Guided by feminist political ecology, I do so by underscoring bodily relationships to tuo zaafi a cereal based porridge upheld as a culturally important meal across semi-arid West Africa. Drawing from 12 months of mixed methods fieldwork in Upper West Ghana, I look at perceptions of this salient meal as well as rates of consumption of it to uncover how food preference features in food insecurity. I use the refrain routinely evoked by my interlocutors during the height of the food insecure season—“Every day it’s tuo zaafi” as an anchoring datum point, an affectively effective statement. In this examination, I argue that when effectively acknowledged and assessed, food preference is a facet of food security that helps to not only identify hunger, but also articulate the experience with it. This articulation is important because it provides a necessarily broader perspective on the relationship between culture, food and health that challenge neo-liberal hued solutions to hunger.

Keywords: Food insecurity; Food preference; Tuo zaafi; Upper West Ghana; Feminist political ecology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1007/s10460-020-10027-7

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