Nutrition mini-series: November 2021

Exploring traditional foods in Ethiopia

Part of our focus on nutrition in our comprehensive cleft care programme, includes delivering training workshops to Government Health and Social Workers. As well as covering breast feeding information, the workshops raise awareness about the importance of a varied, nutrient rich diet. It is really important that nutrition and health is optimised before and after an infant or a child receives cleft lip or palate surgery, to ensure they are healthy and strong enough to receive the surgery — and then make a fast recovery afterwards. 

The traditional Ethiopian diet — although products range from region to region — is rich in nutrients, however, in rural areas there are often environmental, social and economic factors, that cause food insecurity. For example, flooding and drought can lead to crop destruction and although a large portion of the populations lively hoods are built on agriculture, families who are experiencing economic hardships are sometimes inclined to sell the majority of their produce on, meaning their diets can become scarce and limited. 

We encourage Government heath and Social Workers to pass on information to families about foods that are easily accessible to them that are rich in nutrients, for example, teff, pulses and certain vegetables. Read about other areas of nutritional support that we provide here.

In November of 2021 Ababo and Saron, interns at Project Harar, delved into some of the different types of produce that is available in Ethiopia and looked into the nutritional values of these foods. 

Choose from the articles below to read about teff, pulses and vegetables in Ethiopia.