For years the Mediterranean diet has been lauded as the best way to prevent disease, but a new study has found that the African diet reduces inflammation. Given all the recent attention to inflammation, as the root of many conditions, this could be a game changer.
Lifestyle diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and chronic inflammatory conditions are surging across Africa, posing a growing challenge to healthcare systems throughout the continent. Increasing economic development, urbanization, and wider availability of processed foods have accelerated the adoption of Western eating habits in Africa.
To study this shift, researchers from Radboud University Medical Center and KCMC University in Tanzania looked at the effects of such dietary changes on health. The team noted that this is the first study to comprehensively map the health effects of a traditional African diet.
They recruited seventy-seven healthy men from Tanzania, both urban and rural residents. Some, who regularly ate a traditional African diet, switched to a Western diet for two weeks. Others who ate a Western diet adopted a traditional African diet for the study. A third group consumed a fermented banana drink daily. As a control, ten participants maintained their usual diet. The researchers comprehensively analyzed the function of the immune system, blood inflammation markers, and metabolic processes at baseline, after the two-week intervention, and again four weeks later.
The researchers found that participants who switched to a Western diet had an increase in inflammatory proteins in their blood, alongside activation of biological processes linked to lifestyle diseases. Their immune cells also responded less effectively to pathogens. Meanwhile, those who switched to a traditional African diet or consumed the fermented drink showed a reduction in inflammatory markers. Some of these effects persisted even four weeks later, indicating that short-term dietary changes can have long-lasting effects.
“Previous research has focused on other traditional diets, such as the Japanese or Mediterranean diet,” said internist Quirijn de Mast from Radboudumc. “However, there is just as much to learn from traditional African diets, especially now, as lifestyles in many African regions are rapidly changing and lifestyle diseases are increasing. Africa’s rich diversity in traditional diets offers unique opportunities to gain valuable insights into how food influences health.”
De Mast finds it remarkable how significant the effects of diet are, even after just two weeks. “The African diet includes plenty of vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains, and fermented foods. Our study highlights the benefits of these traditional food products for inflammation and metabolic processes in the body. At the same time, we show how harmful an unhealthy Western diet can be. It typically consists of processed and high-calorie foods, such as French fries and white bread, with excessive salt, refined sugars, and saturated fats. Inflammation is at the root of many chronic conditions, which makes this study highly relevant for Western countries as well.”
