March 2, 2020

Eat This Podcast: Orange-fleshed sweet potato

Hello

You can be perfectly well fed, maybe even too well fed, and yet still malnourished. Hidden hunger reflects a lack of essential micronutrients in the diet, but tackling the lack of micronutrients is tricky because people do not really feel their hidden hunger.

“No-one wakes up saying ‘I crave vitamin A today’,” as a recent paper put it.

In this episode I talk to Dr Jan Low, one of the authors of that paper, which looks back over the 25-year history of the most successful effort to feed hidden hunger to date: the introduction of orange-fleshed sweet potatoes to subSaharan Africa.

Jan was there at the start, and she’s still there now.

Take a listen.

All the best

Jeremy