Do street food provide consumers with the basic nutrients that they need to stay healthy?
There are no easy answers to this question, but understanding the nutritional potential of the street food sector can unlock the doors to improving the health of the world’s poorest food consumers.
One approach is for street foods to address micronutrient deficiencies.
Micronutrients are an anomaly as the body only needs tiny amounts, but those amounts are essential for the production of enzymes and the hormones required for proper growth and development.
Street foods present two fortification opportunities - ingredient-based and food-based:
Ingredient-based stems from using ingredients such as flour and sugar
Food-based comes from using local food.
Food-based fortification advocates the use of locally available micronutrient-rich foods. CI favours this approach.
For street food to be incorporated into fortification programmes, local patterns of consumption must be taken into account and wider food safety programmes considered.
For specific recipes, visit the countries in Streetfood.org by clicking on the links in the blue column.
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