Students promoting Zulu food

A group of students at the University of Zululand, in KwaZulu-Natal, have joined forces with local rural women to highlight the importance of indigenous food.

To make the health-enhancing properties of local specialities appeal to their peers, the members of the Students in Free Enterprise group have devised a menu of low-fat tasty dishes.

Wild green fritters with maize bread, pumpkin and amadumbe (African potatoes), steamed wheat flour bread with ox-head slices, and chicken with jugo bean salad are some of the dishes promoted by the students.

A home-brewed non-alcoholic ginger and pineapple beer provides a refreshing accompaniment to the menu.

The president of the group, Nxolisane Cebekhulu, said the project's aim was to encourage people to eat food prepared with fresh ingredients. He said he was grateful to the rural women who provided his team with information on traditional Zulu cuisine.

"Indigenous food is healthy food. Our dishes are made up of food that is full of vitamins because the vegetables are raw from the soil and have not been kept in cold storage," he said.

Cebekhulu said the recipes did not call for the use of cooking oil.

He said that, as well as promoting healthy eating, the group was giving business tips to emerging entrepreneurs.

"We are also involved with developing business ideas to sustain businesses.

"We host workshops aimed at teaching rural entrepreneurs about marketing their businesses in order to reach their target markets," said Cebekhulu.

Durban dietician Dr Mathew van Zyl applauded the students' move and said that fresh vegetables were essential in building new cells.

"Eating vegetables is an easy way to help a poor diet become healthy again.

It had been proved that vegetables contain a number of antioxidants that might even stop cancer from forming in the body. Antioxidants such as vitamin C also help the body to repair itself after a period of stress and protect it in the future," he said.