Food as medicine: Making ‘better bananas’ in Uganda

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dc.contributor.authorCalkins, Sandra
dc.date.accessioned2023-05-31T10:04:53Z
dc.date.available2023-05-31T10:04:53Z
dc.date.issued2021-05
dc.description.abstractAbstract Cooking bananas (matooke) are a main staple in central Uganda and are very important to well-being and health. Recently, matooke have also been associated with micronutrient deficiencies among children and women. For a number of years, this fruit has been at the heart of a public health strategy that seeks to create ‘better bananas’, that is, biofortified or nutritionally enriched bananas. The efforts to biofortify food crops are part of a recent trend in the nutrition world towards improving the quality and not only the quantity of food. This article unpacks recent configurations of philanthropy, plant science and global public health and the ways in which they make conventional food crops thinkable, for instance, as cost-effective medicines. This emergent and economized form of valuing bananas is in tension with how Ugandans appreciate bananas in everyday life. I show that emerging valuations of food matter but still should not be mistaken for changes on the ground. This article thereby searches for a middle ground between critiques of global public health and everyday practice in Uganda as well as between praxeological and structuralist/culturalist approaches to food. Instead of dismissing this banana as part of a mere paternalistic project, I show that it also is ‘good’ conceptually in that it makes bananas and health thinkable in new ways.en_US
dc.identifier.citationCalkins, Sandra. 'Food as Medicine: Making ‘better Bananas’ in Uganda', The Sociological Review (Keele), vol. 69/no. 3, (2021), pp. 560-579.en_US
dc.identifier.issnISSN 0038-0261
dc.identifier.issnEISSN 1467-954X
dc.identifier.urihttps://nru.uncst.go.ug/handle/123456789/8850
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherSAGE Publicationsen_US
dc.subjectCooking; bananas (matooke); central Uganda; plant science; global public healthen_US
dc.titleFood as medicine: Making ‘better bananas’ in Ugandaen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
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