The truth about Meal/Food Time table for a Nigerian family, Food time for a typical Nigerian Family, Dinner ideas for Nigerian family, igbo food time table, Nigerian food culture.
Are you a Nigerian? What is your meal plan like?
Don’t be deceived, no matter the diet plan you choose to follow, all food classes would still be important for your body.
Lets look at Nigerian foods good for you.
Yam ,cassava and potato are tubers. Yes high in carbs but these are good carbs. Your body always need carbs to balance itself. Cassava flour is now being praised as a suitable replacement for white flour in pastries. Fufu is fermented cassava.
Fermented foods are best for gut healing
For good carbs, especially in form of swallow, varieties are yam, fufu, plantain flour, amala, potato flour, eba, these foods are not your enemy. How you eat them is the issue.
Rice is a whole grain and is hardly over processed. Rice is also a good carb. Whole grains are the best kind of foods to eat. In Nigeria we have Rice, the Millet family, Oats is not grown in Nigeria but its a great whole grain. These are gluten free.
Alot of people are allergic to gluten but are not aware because Nigerians are not enlightened about food allergies. Next I’ll touch is leafy greens. A typical Igbo soup is the best meal you can have as a Nigerian. Our soups are garnished with fresh leafy greens.
Most of our meat is from free range grass fed cows and goats. With dry fish, fresh sea food like isam, crayfish etc. Our palm oil has no oil contesting with it. Our spices are deep healing anti inflammatory spices.
Have you had a real plate of peppersoup when you got a fever, noticed the difference in your health immediately? Best antiviral and inflammatory properties from our traditional Nigerian spices. We just don’t have substantial written internet information on our foods.
But from word of the ancestors passed down to the generations and recent research coming out, our foods are going places. Almost every Asian spice has a family in our African spices and herbs.
Before you go out to spend on bulgur wheat and those foreign meals, look for their Nigerian related siblings. Acha is a whole grain. A rich Northern meal that proudly replaces couscous, bulgur wheat and other foreign foods.
Acha can be made to porridge, stir fry, smoothies, swallow, you name. Its very versatile and very nutritious. Corn is a whole grain and its so healthy to eat.Even popcorn well made without bad sugar and other things tops the chat of healthy snacking options.
Please don’t go replacing palm oil for olive oil or coconut oil in egusi soup or okra soup or any soup at all. You should be arrested for that blunder. Coconut oil also in the palm family you know. Its a healthy oil but its better for sauces and stir fries than 9ja soup.
Egusi, ogbono, are top healthy seeds in the world. Sesame seeds also are wonderful seeds. Great for hormonal imbalance. Nigeria is the 3rd exporter of sesame seeds in the world. But do you find then in the local market? Lol. Hardly.
Sesame seeds are a Northern crop. Cept you’re ordering in bulk from the North you hardly see it locally. They’re massively exported, then we import them in foreign package thinking its a foreign thing.LOL.
More to come another day. Best advice. Eat foods moderately and try to eat more of Locally grown foods. They are richer than their foreign families. Short travel time to get to you also. Little or no preservatives and pesticides in them also.
Eat clean stay healthy.
Nigerian veggies/herbs to bank on: Ugu, waterleaf, scent leaf, curry leaf, efo, achara, uziza, utazi, atama, bitterleaf, oha,
Spices: all local spices, they have different names
Fermented meals: palm wine, fufu, pap, yogurt,
Seeds to snack on: roaated sesame seeds, cashew, groundnut, roasted ukwa, pop corn, etc
Soups: all Nigerian local soups plus peppersoup
Protein: goat meat, beef, free range local chicken,animal parts-liver,kidney,shaki,heart, eggs,
Sweetener: raw honey, brown sugar sugar cane molasses.
Carbs: yam,potato,cassava(eba,fufu),amala
Fats: beef tallow, palm oils(red oil and palm kernel oil-best for deep frying), coconut oil, olive oil.
Written by Sane Nigerian
