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A famine food or poverty food is any inexpensive or readily-available foodstuff used to nourish people in times of extreme poverty or starvation, as during a war or famine. Quite often, the food is thereafter strongly associated with the hardship under which it was eaten, and is therefore socially downplayed or rejected as a food source in times of relative plenty.
Foods associated with famine need not be nutritionally deficient. A number of famine foods are quite nutritious—thus their use to nourish and ward off hunger. However, such foodstuffs usually offer limited variability, may tend toward the less savoury end of the spectrum, yet are still consumed in large amounts and for long periods of time because of the nutritional duress. As such, people often remain averse to them long after the immediate need to consume them has subsided. That remains the case even if such foodstuffs might otherwise constitute a healthy part of a more comprehensive diet.
Examples of famine foods
A number of foodstuffs have been strongly associated with famine, war, or times of hardship throughout history:
- The breadnut or Maya nut was cultivated by the ancient Mayans, but is largely rejected as a poverty food in modern Central America.
- Rutabagas were widely used as a food of last resort in Europe during World War I, and remain particularly unpopular in Germany.
- In Polynesia, the Xanthosoma plant (known locally as 'ape) was considered a famine food and was used only in the event that the taro crop failed.
- The fruit of the Noni, sometimes also called "starvation fruit," has a strong smell and bitter taste which often relegates it to the level of a famine food.
- The nara melon of southern Africa is sometimes eaten as a food of last resort.
- Several species of edible kelp, including dulse and Irish moss (Chondrus crispus), were eaten by coastal peasants during the Irish Potato Famine of 1846-1848.
- Sego lily bulbs were eaten by the Mormon pioneers when their food crops failed.
- Tulip bulbs and Sugar beets were eaten in the German occupied parts of the Netherlands during the "hunger winter" of 1944-45.
- Poorer people in India often subsist largely on rice that has been prepared without being drained of excess starch; this foamy, porridge-like rice is more calorie-dense than normal rice. As such, amongst upper classes in India, there is a strong preference for rice that has been drained of all excess liquid, and cooked to a firm consistency, where each individual grain is separated.
- Pettuleipä is a bread made from a combination of rye flour and pettu, which is in case a combination of dried and milled Vascular cambium and Phloem of the Scots Pine. It constitutes a Finnish example of a famine food.
Positive uses of famine food
The term "famine food" has also been used to describe underutilized crops--edible plants which are not widely cultivated as food, but which could be cultivated as an alternative food source in the event of widespread crop failure.
See also
