This article was produced in collaboration with The Objective. This piece is a part of its series “The Food Media Reckoning” — a collection of reporting, essays, and criticism about the holes that still exist in food media — and what its future could look like when we look to its past. Read more here.
There’s an East African proverb that says “The mouth is stupid; after eating, it forgets who gave it food.”
Through its ingredients, cooking methods, and preservation techniques, Africa has defined the global diet. Coffee, rice, yams, and okra are pillars of the American diet. Hidden agricultural exchanges during the trans-Atlantic slave trade reflect West African influences and have led to the “re-discovery” of crops like Caroline Gold, a variant of rice that has seen an explosive resurgence over the years.
But despite the growing popularity of food media in recent years, African stories are sparingly included — leaving media coverage of food history incomplete.