There has been an explosion of food images posted online since Kenyans were ordered to ‘stay home to remain safe.’
‘Guys, in the midst of all the #quarantine trouble; I have discovered my talent in the kitchen.’ posted Rawbeena Kenya on Facebook last week
“Learning a new, but tough kitchen career,” tweeted Jared, while busy in an impossibly smoky kitchen.
“Such images were many in the first few days of the curfew, but are now tapering off as men and office women find the kitchen is no picnic,” says Abby Olendo, a nutrition consultant in Nairobi.
The images coming through, she says are telling a very unhealthy story on how Kenyans are eating.
“When men are cooking, it is almost certainly to do with meat while ‘mamas’ are mainly shown doing chapatis, chips or frying chicken,” explained Olendo.
Where the man is involved, he is likely also to be accompanied by some alcohol nearby. “Extremely unhealthy eating; but this is just a reflection of what Kenyans are consuming in general.”
Data from the Internet shows cakes and roasted meat the most popular food among Kenya’s Internet generation and not just in urban areas.
Cake takes the cake
“Cake is the most popular food type for Instagram uploads in many counties of Kenya, as well as in urban areas such as Nairobi and Mombasa,” shows the first online food database in Kenya.
The database being developed by a team of experts from Boston University, US provides information on what Kenyan are eating in real-time.
“Data on food and location from Instagram can allow researchers to establish eating patterns and their possible associations to conditions like obesity,” says the study.
The researchers including Sankara Jefferson, a machine-learning expert with a logistics company in Nairobi had analysed 52,000 food images posted on Instagram by Kenyans for a 20-day period.
“Our food trend analysis revealed that cakes and roasted meats were the most popular foods in photographs on Instagram in Kenya in March 2019.”
Cake, the authors found to be the most popular food type for Instagram uploads and not just in major towns, but across all the counties.
A likely reason, for the popularity of the cake the authors suggest is that people enjoy sharing images of cakes on social media, especially during celebrations such as birthdays and weddings.
“If only a half of the 47 million Kenyans celebrated their birthdays with a cake, then that is a helluva mountain of a helping,” says Cali of Sweet Cakes shop near Tea Room in Nairobi.
Using some specially developed web tools, the Boston University team was able to identify and name Kenya foods from images posted on Instagram within the study period.
They were also able to identify from where the images were posted, by whom and at what time. By machine reading accompanying captions, they were also able to tell the mood of the intagramer at the time of posting.
Central Kenya and Mandazis
Consequently for the first time it emerges that some Western delicacies such as pizza are not a preserve of urban elites.
“Interestingly, other Western foods, such as pizza and sandwiches, are popular in some remote areas.”
People living in Central Kenya prefer to upload images of classic Kenyan foods such as nyama choma and mandazi,” wrote the authors. The study appears in the open access database arXiv operated by Cornell University, US.
Central Kenya has the second-highest rate of obesity after Nairobi in the country, and high rates of cancers, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart conditions.
A map developed from the Boston University study shows the most-posted Kenyan foods on Instagram by counties with pizza, for example most popular in Mombasa and sandwiches a big take in Samburu County.
The map shows cakes popular all over the country followed by nyama choma, the latter with highest postings from Nairobi and parts of Central Kenya, Kajiado, Kilifi, Kakamega and Kisumu .
Most posting for pilau came from Samburu County with Wajir County claiming the highest posting for the vegetable salad – kachumbari
Bad bad Kachumbari
Kachumbari with almost 3,000 postings countrywide is largely considered a healthy food, but highly prone to bacterial contamination.
In 2018 a study by Meru University of Science and Technology found kachumbari, which normally accompanies roasted meat, highly contaminated with disease-causing germs.
The team had collected kachumbari samples from Meru, Chuka, Nanyuki, Isiolo and Maua and found the salad very popular but also being poorly handled making it a danger to human health.
Worryingly, says Olendo with whom we had shared the Instagram study is the little interest shown by the internet generation on Kenyans conventional foods such as ugali, githeri, sweet potatoes or muthokoi.
For example, while cake had 7,559 postings, at the top of the table, followed by nyama choma with 3,220 postings, kachumbari 2,990 and mandazi, pizza, sandwich and masala chips all with over 1,000 posts, traditional foods performed dismally.
Ugali despite being regarded as ‘the food’ in Kenya was posted only 785 times, githeri 894, pilau 728, matoke 604, mukimo 266 and kuku choma 219 times.
The database, which is available to the public, the authors say will be developed further to inform users of the dietary values of the meals they are eating in real time or are interested in eating.
This, Olendo say may be an important tool in reaching the Internet generation; “because it looks like our current messaging on healthy eating are not getting through.”
For example, of the more than 52,000 Kenyans food postings only 2,530 images were of fruits or vegetables despite repeated messages on their importance.
“You can’t just analyse pictures on Instagram and conclude we are all eating bad, this is only a fad of a few people and not representative,” said Miriam Mutai, a student at the Kenya Medical Training College.
But Mutai may be wrong: The Ministry of Health reports high intake of dietary salt, sugar, alcohol, unhealthy fats with only about seven per cent of Kenyans taking the recommended minimum of five servings of both fruits and vegetables.