Contact Nick Houtman, 207-581-3777.
A nutrition project being conducted by Pauline Samuda, a University of Maine graduate student, has global implications, particularly for developing countries struggling with malnutrition and hunger. Samuda, who grew up in Manchester, Jamaica, is on leave from her job as a public health nutitionist in the Jamaican Ministry of Health.
The result of her efforts will be the most accurate picture to date of the nutrients in the foods Jamaicans eat. The bottom line, Samuda says, is improved food and nutrition information to guide school lunch programs, food import policies, nutrition education and special diets for people with diabetes, heart disease and other health problems.
Samuda will receive her Ph.D. this December in food science and human nutrition. With partial financial support from the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute (CFNI) in Kingston, Jamaica, she has been working with UMaine associate professor Richard Cook to collect information on foods commonly eaten in Jamaican households.
She has also brought food samples back to the Orono campus for chemical analysis. She and Cook will present the results of their work at the 16th International Congress of Nutrition July 27-August 1 in Montreal.
Like most other countries, Jamaica has a food composition database, but prior to Samuda's work, it was out of date and based largely on information from other countries. By analyzing foods as they are prepared and consumed and combining that information with data on foods common throughout the West Indies and Latin American countries, Samuda has established a model which can be used to benefit millions of people in the developing world.
"This project could stimulate research in other underdeveloped countries. Iπm hoping that in the short-term we can provide information not just for Jamaica but for other West Indian islands. With such data, nutrition intervention is possible," says Samuda. "Thatπs what makes it particularly interesting and what makes you ask a lot of other questions."
To determine foods and cooked dishes common to Jamaican households, Samuda conducted 20 focus groups with people from geographically and socioeconomically diverse parts of the island. The 130 people in the focus groups were those responsible for feeding a total of 623 members in their respective households.
From the interviews, Samuda identified 70 commonly consumed foods. She also discovered native dishes that were surprisingly universal.
"I didnπt know some of the dishes were so common throughout the island," she says. "That includes the Sunday menu. If you go anywhere in Jamaica on a Sunday, youπre bound to get rice and peas, chicken, vegetable and a drink. The weekend food consumption is different than it is during the week. And on Friday afternoons, the food consumption is more Americanized, with urban people eating more commercially prepared food."
Samuda chose to do chemical analyses on four of the foods for which no analytical data had been compiled ≠rice and peas (kidney beans), cooked with coconut and spices; brown stewed chicken (the most common meat), cooked with vegetables and spices; calalloo (a spinach-like vegetable); and bread fruit (a potato-like starch fruit), both roasted and boiled. The foods are being analyzed for moisture content, protein, dietary fiber, fats, cholesterol, fatty acids, ash, minerals and oils, and carbohydrates.
Samuda is the first college-educated member of her family. She studied home economics education at the University of Sussex in England and has a masterπs degree in community nutrition from the University of Queensland, Australia. Research for her thesis included fieldwork in Malaysia where she studied the nutritional status of children under age 3 in a poor fishing village. The health issues ranged from lack of sanitation and contaminated water to worm infestation. -30-
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