Trying to cook Nigerian food in Ghana has allowed me to make some discoveries. Our finished food may be very different but we largely depend on the same plant ingredients and used to have a very healthy plant-based diet.

I discovered the same between Nigerisn tribes.

We need an African food mapping project to reveal the secrets and benefits of our diet. Each time I see a Nigerian recipe, I start looking for alternate names for the ingredients in Ghana. There are some items that are universal even by name but most are called different things.

Our WaterLeaf or ”Ebodondon” in Edo is called ”BokoBoko” here. The Efik or Ibibio people use it for Afang. Kontomire here are just cocoyam leaves. Bolhiya are called ”Awolowo Leaves” in Nigeria. A lot of the items also have a history and were introduced from outside.

Knowing our food is part of knowing our identity. I hardly eat Western food, even when outside Africa. If I can, I choose hotels or apartments with a kitchen and I look for an African shop. I started doing this when my friend told me a story of her family and the effect of food.

He three-year-old son became suddenly epileptic same time as her 55-year-old mum who later died. After the mum died and her son became fully autistic, she set out to find if there was a genetic link. What she found was stunning.

There was an epigenetic problem linked to food allergies. Her son was allergic to all the foods he was eating in America except for yam and plantains. She tested and her entire household had food allergies to things like cheese, dairy and wheat gluten etc.

Her research is so profound and she started the company @Livewello together with her husband who is a doctor. They tried farm to table food for a while and later moved out of America to England and closer to easily sourced ethnic food.

Her work made me now also realize why we have all the health issues in African American communities. If we can introduce our African diet to them, we may be able to save them. That is now my mission. I was not joking about that ”OnlyFans” for food. Look at @PadmaLakshmi?