Dietician Mpho Tshukudu and food anthropologist Anna Trapido have joined forces to battle our "lucky problems" - the complications of having an overabundance of dangerously delicious food. They've done this by creating a book of tasty and healthy choices. Their book, Eat.Ting, published by Quivertree, is as fun, local and accessible as its name - ''Ting" refers to traditional fermented porridge made out of sorghum, one of the indigenous, drought-resistant grains that's explored in the book. The authors aim to break our destructive eating habits including our reliance on cheap fast foods, wheat products and heavy starches. They want us to go back to more traditional ingredients and cooking methods for our health's sake."People are alienated from their origins and this plays out in the things they eat," says Trapido. "It's become a common myth that traditional ingredients and traditional cooking methods are somehow bad for you, that African food is bad for you, but it's just not true."Their collaboration started when Tshukudu sent Trapido an e-mail inviting the popular chef, who also trained as an anthropologist, to help her research traditional African food and what people eat in this country.Part of their mission was to address dietary problems at their source, referencing the adage: prevention is better than cure.The initial e-mail exchange has become a beautifully designed and well-researched book divided into three sections.The first details their research and includes interviews they conducted to explain our dietary problems, the history of our traditional food and the seven reasons we struggle to eat healthily.The second part has tips for maintaining health and losing weight."Food may as well be good for you and it certainly shouldn't kill you," asserts Trapido. "What people are currently doing is not sustainable - either ecologically or socially or in heath terms - something's got to give."The last part of the book is dedicated to recipes and "Guidance from Grandmothers". There are some traditional recipes and others that use traditional methods. For instance, the green apple, macadamia nut and whole-grain sorghum salad is a take on the traditional Venda pairing of sorghum and macadamia nut with a blob of home-made butter.Trapido and Tshukudu interviewed older women to access their cooking techniques, recipes and food knowledge. One of the practices involves bashing dried sorghum until it's fine and baking the powder on the lid of a cast-iron pot to form "cakes".The altered version of their recipe is in the book - the "cakes" have become flapjacks, and egg is added to make modern kitchen life easier. Although slightly more dense than its wheat-based cousin, the flapjack is fluffier than expected and tastes amazing, ready to drag through some Asmasi cheese curd or - if I had anything to do with it - smothered in raw honey and bacon, which I expect is half the problem.Eat.Ting by Mpho Tshukudu and Anna Trapido, R320..