Measuring food consumption

Georgius J.A. Koppert (1) , Claude Marcel Hladik (1)

1 EAE - Eco-Anthropologie et Ethnobiologie

In southern Cameroon, in each of the forest populations, Yassa, Mvae and Kola Pygmies, a sample of at least 30 families were visited at three characteristic periods of the year. As these communities respect a weekly schedule, it was necessary to weigh their food consumption for seven consecutive days (resulting in a total of 1,900 survey days), and to estimate with reasonable accuracy the amount of food consumed in between meals. In the Central African Republic, in order to simplify this method, the total amount of food entering a Ngbaka village was weighed at characteristic periods of the seasonal cycle, and, at the same time, food consumption was measured in a small subsample of families. This method. derived from one that Lee used with the Kalahari hunter-gatherers, allows a global estimate of the food consumption of a community to be made.

Domaines: Anthropologie biologique

Georgius J.A. Koppert, Claude Marcel Hladik. Measuring food consumption. Food and nutrition in the African rain forest, UNESCO, Paris, pp.58-61, 1990. ⟨hal-00586857⟩