128
fruit, banana, taro, yam and pandanus, along with
coconut, fish and seafood, and various fruits. There
has been a great diversity of these staple foods. For
example, there are 133 breadfruit, 171 yam, banana,
and 24 giant swamp taro varieties (Raynor, 1991).
However in recent years there has been a shift to
nutrient-poor imported processed foods, such as
refined white rice, flour, sugar, fatty meats and
other processed foods (Englberger et al.,2003d).
Imported white rice, which is often not enriched, has
become a major staple in the diet. This has changed
the nutrient intake of the population as rice also
contains no provitamin A carotenoids and is low in
fibre, whereas local staples contain at least some
carotenoids and are rich in fibre. Previously there
was also little known about the differences in nutri-
ent content between the many varieties of the sta-
ple crops as few food composition studies had been
carried out on FSM foods.
The shift from traditional foods to imported
processed foods and lifestyle changes in FSM led to
a serious problem of vitamin A deficiency, which
causes vision problems, increased infection and
mortality. The first documentation of vitamin A de-
ficiency in FSM was in Chuuk (Lloyd-Puryear et al.,
1989). Of 60 randomly selected children, 12 percent
had night blindness and 5 percent had Bitot’s spots,
far exceeding the World Health Organization cut-offs
for a public health problem (WHO, 1995). That study
maintained that vitamin A deficiency was an emerg-
ing problem as there was no term for night blind-
ness in the local language and old people did not
know of the problem.
Following the identification of the problem in Chuuk,
studies were done in the other three states, show-
ing that over half of FSM under-5-year olds had vi-
tamin A deficiency (Yamamura, 2004).
To alleviate the vitamin A deficiency problem, green
leafy vegetables were first promoted as these veg-
etables are easy to grow and are rich in beta-
carotene, the most important of the provitamin A
carotenoids. Once consumed, beta-carotene is con-
verted to vitamin A in the body. However, interviewswith local members of the community revealed that
green leafy vegetables had not been consumed pre-
viously as traditional foods, were not well accepted
and were considered as food for the pigs.
It was clear that if people had not consumed green
leafy vegetables in the past and did not have vitamin
A deficiency, there must have been some traditional
foods that had protected people against that health
problem. This question led to the study to identify
those foods that protected Micronesians from vita-
min A deficiency in the past and could also alleviate
the problem currently.2. Methods
Overall an ethnographic participatory community-
based and interagency approach was taken in as-
sessing the foods, documenting the traditional
food system and gaining insight on how to improve
the situation. As vitamin A deficiency was diag-
nosed in the 1 990 s, efforts were first made in iden-
tifying local foods that are rich in provitamin A
carotenoids or vitamin A and would alleviate vitamin
A deficiency.
The results of the analyses were then used to pro-
mote the local foods and an overall approach was
developed to awaken interest in local foods and the
traditional food system. This was helped greatly by
the involvement with a global health study led by
the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and
Environment. Pohnpei was selected as one of the
12 case studies in the CINE programme for docu-
menting and promoting traditional food systems.
Specific guidelines were followed (Kuhnlein et al.,
2005 ).3. Results and discussion
3.1 Analyses of local foods
Karat, a yellow-fleshed variety of banana, was
analysed and found rich in beta-carotene, the most
important of the provitamin A carotenoids. Foods
rich in provitamin A carotenoids protect against vi-
tamin A deficiency (McLaren and Frigg, 2001). Karat
contained up to 2 230 μg beta-carotene/100 g (En-