Food cooked in ‘kaveera’ bad

Nov 10, 2003

IT is lunchtime, the local shed where local dishes are sold is packed to capacity. A customer calls out and makes his order, loud enough for everyone to hear. The cook, with beads of sweat trickling down her face, lifts the cover of one of the saucepans and proceeds to unwrap the huge polythene bag

IT is lunchtime, the local shed where local dishes are sold is packed to capacity. A customer calls out and makes his order, loud enough for everyone to hear. The cook, with beads of sweat trickling down her face, lifts the cover of one of the saucepans and proceeds to unwrap the huge polythene bag covering the food, picks a plate and piles on some steaming matooke.

She then uncovers another saucepan, undoes the polythene covering, wipes her hand on her apron, picks a sweet potato and lays it on the plate with the matooke. The cook then opens the lid of another saucepan and serves some groundnut sauce before walking through the benches to deliver the order to the customer.

Has it ever occurred to you that such meals could lead to illness for the rest of your life.

In many of the local food stalls, the food is covered with buveera as it cooks. The ‘logic’ behind this method of cooking is that the food gets ready faster and is kept steaming hot. Once in a while, there have been complaints of the food assuming the colour of the buveera, but this has not stopped people from going ahead and eating it.

However, research has revealed that under certain temperatures, polythene can disintegrate and release chemicals that are detrimental to human health.

Polythene is made up a combination of carbon and hydrogen and thus is a hydrocarbon. It is a tough, translucent, waxy and thermoplastic (can be repeatedly softened by heating).
According to Andrew Othieno, the senior environmental inspector of National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), when polythene bags are made certain properties with different compounds are added to make them suit the purpose for which they are made.

One of the components that are added include chlorine. Buveera disintegrate under temperatures of less than 1,000 degrees centigrade and begin to release some toxic fumes.

These toxic fumes contain chemical compounds known as dioxins and furans. They are also called unintentional by-products because they are released by mistake as a result of combustion. These chemical can also be created by car exhaust fumes, and emissions from the incineration of hospital waste, municipal waste, hazardous waste and wood.

Dioxins and furans have been blacklisted internationally because they pose a serious threat to human health and the environment.

These categories are known as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP’s). There is scientific evidence that exposure to even low doses of POP’s can lead to cancer, damage to the nervous and immune systems, reproductive disorders and interference with normal infant and child development.

Thus many countries have come together to put an end to the production of this unintentional combustion by-products, together with 10 other POP’s including pesticides and industrial chemicals.

This has led to the (POP’s) Stockholm Convention, a treaty that sets out control the production, import, export, disposal and use of POP’s.

In Uganda, efforts have been made both by NEMA and Government to try and reduce the use of polythene for instance in the last budget, a high tax was imposed on buveera to serve as an economic disincentive. Alternative measures have been proposed such as using paper bags or totally banning the use of polythene.

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