A lot of the research read and discussed in class talks about the global problem of vitamin deficiencies. Vitamin A deficiency stuck out to me, because it is not one of the problems usually discussed on a day-to-day basis in America. There is a lot of discussion in the health care profession about vitamin B & D deficiencies, the necessity of having enough calcium in your diet, and the benefits of vitamin C when you are sick. On a global scale, those vitamins (to me) do not seem as big of a deal.
So I started to wonder what are the sources of vitamin A. Is it hard to come by? Is that why there is a large deficiency? Turns out that there a plenty of sources of vitamin A--sweet potatoes, carrots, spinach, kale, squash, collard greens, and others. (http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=nutrient&dbid=106)
The largest source of vitamin A is found in sweet potatoes. The weird thing to me is that sweet potatoes are a hardy vegetable and can grow in a multitude of climates. "The sweet potato is a warm-season, spreading vegetable
of tropical origin. It is a good choice for a garden because it is easy
to grow, is drought- / heat-tolerant, and has few pests or diseases" (http://www.almanac.com/plant/sweet-potato).To me, it sounds like a good food source to solve the issue of vitamin A deficiency.
Do places with high vitamin A deficiencies have the capacity to start growing/eating more sweet potatoes? Why or why not? Is it known that this could be a solution to the problem?
Shelly, this is a really good point. When I was living in both South Africa and Jamaica, sweet potatoes were a staple food with fields and fields of them everywhere. But both of these are fertile places. I have been places where "nothing grows," where people have to buy their maize and travel for hours with it, but I'm wondering if "nothing' includes things like sweet potatoes or yams. It would be nice if we had an ag person in our class to offer some input! It's fascinating how some communities gravitate towards growing certain foods while not growing others, and I wonder if it's a problem of awareness. For example, in South Africa, I could only buy carrots in the supermarket; I could never find them in the open air market. People always commented to me in the supermarket that "only rich white people can afford carrots." I always wondered why, in such an optimal climate, no one thought to grow carrots.
ReplyDeleteVitamin deficiency problem some times is not due to lower intake, you might find a lot of vitamin and mineral deficiencies that has a simple supply source, despite that it is a global problem. lower intake, degradation, lower absorption, counteracting effect by another food, and increase body needs are all a causes of vitamins and mineral deficiencies. some vitamin deficiencies have genetic basis, others have some environmental cause. So, it is not due to lower intake most of the time.
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