The Food Cultures of the Shifting Cultivators in Central Africa: The Diversity in Slection of Food Materials

Abstract

This paper sketches out the food culture characteristics among three groups of shifting cultivators in the forest areas of central Africa to investigate the principles of food selection and food diversity. The food cultures in this region commonly combine ball-shaped principal starch food (PSF) and some side dish of sauce with stewed materials. While all the people of three groups conduct cultivation with vegetatively reproductive crops in and around the tropical forest, there is a difference in the materials actually used in their diet. From the food diaries recorded for an entire year, the ratio for each food materials of the principal starchy food and the side dish wis calculated and compared. Food selection in each group is analyzed through the factors of 1)availability, 2)utility and 3)acceptability. While all the three groups show strong preference for maintaining variety in the diet, each group generates the variety in a different way.