Research into a nutritious Tongan food

Research into a nutritious Tongan food

Faikakai ngou'a, prepared mainly from taro leaves and cassava flour, with boiling coconut milk and sugar as a sauce (lolo), is a dessert prepared for special occasions by Tongans and other people living around the Pacific Basin.

Food scientists at Lincoln University have a long-standing research interest in a number of compounds that occur naturally in foods, in particular, those containing oxalates. Plants produce oxalates to protect themselves from predators such as birds and insects. When people eat plants containing oxalates as food (e.g. taro) the oxalates are not used by the body and pass out in urine.

Taro leaves retain a bitter taste when cooked if the leaves are not treated in order to reduce the oxalate levels in the final product.

Using locally available taro leaves produced in greenhouses by local Tongan Community Trust called Kahoa Tauleva Christchurch Trust, research student Lotta Dahlgren, originally from Sweden, undertook a study to produce faikakai using common kitchen utensils available in New Zealand.

When Lotta began her research project she discovered that there were no recipes available for making faikakai as Tongans traditionally learn to make different foods by watching their parents or experts in the community make them.

Lotta learned the traditional way people in the islands learn, by working and watching alongside experience faikakai makers. She soon found out that making good faikakai was not a straightforward task.

As a special dessert it is very important how the final product tastes. Faikakai must retain the essential taste and acceptable brown-black green colour of taro leaves without the background sharp taste of oxalates and have a firm, non-sticky texture.

“I am very grateful to the Tongan people who worked alongside me and helped me learn how to make faikakai,” said Lotta. “I had not heard of taro or eaten faikakai before beginning this project. I really enjoy eating it but don’t expect to be able to make it once I return to Sweden.

Analysis of the final product showed that as well as being having acceptable colour, flavour and texture the bitter taste was reduced by the substantial reduction of removal of oxalates during the preparation and the loss of moisture increasing the food value of the finished product.

“The preparation of faikakai was a good example of the quality of a food being improved during traditional processing and cooking, “said Professor Geoffrey Savage from the Food Group, who supervised Lotta’s project.

Lotta came to New Zealand to undertake her Industrial Project requirements for her Bachelor of Food Science Technology degree from Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Skara, Sweden.

Taro is widely eaten as a staple food throughout the Pacific Basin and originated in South Central Asia.

ENDS

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