By DAVID KANDUZA –

TRADITIONAL leaders have been urged to encourage their subjects to preserve food varieties grown in their areas if they are to eradicate hunger.
Copperbelt Museum director Charity Salasini said traditional foods were unique to Zambia and should be preserved at all costs.
“Some of our pressing health matters are being moderated using traditional foods and we believe more is yet to come. We therefore, implore all our royal highnesses to document our histories, ethnographies and our traditional foods,” she said.
Ms Salasini was speaking during the Mutanfya Nsala Traditional Ceremony of the Lamba speaking people recently, when she presented a book called Catching the Culture of Food to Vice-president Inonge Wina.
The book is aimed at documenting and popularising traditional foods from the chiefdoms on the Copperbelt for purposes of promoting good health and income generation.
“We need material evidence to showcase the richness of chiefdoms and the nation. Traditional foods are our heritage, it is our life,” Ms Salasini said.
The Shimukunami chiefdom requested Copperbelt Museum to document the Mutanfya Nsala Traditional Ceremony which was based on food heritage.
Ms Salasini said traditional foods of Shimukunami were a fundamental reminder to all as food reserve agency begun at home, in chiefdoms.
The 52 food varieties contained in the book was documented during the dry season.
“If all the seasons of the year were covered, we could be talking of over 100 food varieties for the Shimukunami chiefdom. The food varieties include cultivated and wild fruits, vegetables, grains and tubers,” she said.