Any Liberians on here (or Congoleses)? Need help with Liber

jetsetmaven

I'm curious if anyone has been able to find caloric info for Liberian dishes such as palm butter, torborghee (sp?), cassava leaves, etc. Other dishes such as potato greens and palava sauce I create my own recipe and estimate based on the ingredients. If I can even figure out how many calories and the nutritional contents of one can of palm butter (noix de palme or Moambe) it will be extremely helpful. Then I can create my own recipe.

Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!

TropicalKitty

I'm not from one of those cultures, but I'll share what I've learned in hopes it will help you.

First, this is based on what I know from living in the US. All of our foods have to be labeled. So when you buy ghee (like I did the other day, so good!) It's on the label. You can also try Googling your item of interest and then create an entry in the database for you to use, or you can make it public for other people to use.

There is a database from the USDA that might help you as well. Here is the link: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

They have a bunch of info in there for all sorts of foods in different forms.

Enjoy!

jetsetmaven

Thanks TropicalKitty. This is a great site to have handy. Unfortunately, I still can't find my food items. Palm butter pulls up palm oil with is not the same thing. Palm butter produces palm oil, which I skim of the top when I prepare it to lower my cholesterol. Most food products purchased at African stores (in the US) do not provide nutritional labels. So, not sure which food groups have to be labelled, but not all are. Just to clarify, I have googled my eyes out for some time now so I'm reaching out to the MFP community. There are many receipes on the net, but I cannot find the nutritional data for the main (native) ingredients. I really don't need receipes as I know how to cook these dishes, but I can't add the ingredients to the database....so frustrationg.

TropicalKitty

I'll look around too and see if I can find any information for you. I'll check back shortly and let you know if I find anything else to help.

Is this similar to the palm butter: http://www.tropicaltraditions.com/organic_palm_shortening.htm?gclid=CPTbwqCBp6oCFQsS2god43TcZA

Or are you talking about that soup kind of thing? I found a blog where a lady was talking about making palm butter, but it was like a soupish thing that is made with palm cream and squash...

TropicalKitty

I found this thread where they talk about traditional African dishes that they all love. Perhaps this forum might have some of the answers you are looking for? I'm not sure what everything is, so I don't know how much help I can really be, as much as I'd love to solve your question!

http://www.naijarules.com/vb/food-drinks-nutrition-recipes/30127-nigerians-ghanians-name-some-your-national-dishes.html

Using the example of the palm butter dish, if you are making the soup but just skim the oil off of the top, I would just go ahead and use the normal amount of calories and such for it, since you really don't know how much oil/fat you are removing when you do that and what is actually in it. I guess the closest thing I can think of is someone blotting a slice of pizza to remove the fat, but really you remove water, spices, carbs, and fat.

Anyway, I hope you find what you are looking for. Sorry I couldn't be more of a help!

jetsetmaven

The last link you found (www.naijarules.com/...." shows the right foods and pictures. Palm butter is the soup dish, not the shortening in the other link. I don't even mind adding all the calories including the oil. Although removing 3-4 cups of paln oil is a lot different than blotting a slice of pizza...lol.. I'm still trying to figure out what the calories are. But you are resourceful and quick. I'll keep guesstimating using quick calories until this mission is complete.

I may have just found a side gig adding nutritional info to Liberian dishes. Let me go see how I can pitch this idea to the Liberian Ministry of Health and Welfare. Some value has to come out of this madness.

TropicalKitty

If it's any help, palm oil is pretty good for you. Despite the stigmas associated with oil, there are some great benefits to palm oil. Of course that doesn't mean that eating 3-4 cups of it is that great.
Here's an article about what's in palm fruits (they even mention the benefits for cholesterol)
http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/APJCN/volume12/vol12.3/fullArticles/Sundram.pdf

You've helped me a bit too, I found some interesting things that sound really yummy to make. I just might try to see if I can find the ingredients around here.

I did find a page in my searches called concern-liberians.com (or .org). That might be a good place to start to look into what you might need to do or to get a backing for proposing it to the government.