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Ecuador's comida típicaSince arriving in Ecuador, food has been a struggle for me. The typical diet here consists of beans, rice, cheese, meat, fresh fish, and every kind of starch you can think of- white flour, white rice, yuca, potato, and green plantains. So the first half is automatically ruled out for me, which has left me eating a diet largely composed of starch. This, so different from my normal diet, has left me hungry and wanting for fiber. I have traveled to countries with similar diets, but I am having a much harder time in Equador – though it is not for lack of produce. The area is actually rich in fruits and vegetables, but in the local diet fruit is commonly consumed in the form of highly sweetened juice. Though fresh and delicious, all the sugar can begin to affect you after your fifth glass. However, thanks to a project that I have been invited to work on, I am getting to see a different side of food-life here in Bahía de Caráquez. Though my principal responsibility with La Poderosa Media Project is to help manage organizational communications such as Youtube videos, Facebook albums, blog posts, etc., I have been invited to be photographer for a documentary project a few people here are working on. This ethnographic project will record and preserve traditional recipes of this area and, through interviews, track some of the changes that have affected its cuisine and nutrition. For this project I will accompany an anthropologist, one of our interns, and a teenager from Bahia as they interview older women in town and in the rural outskirts. I have heard that the anthropologist is an excellent interviewer, so I am very excited to get to participate in this process and witness an anthropologist at work. We also plan on visiting local street-food vendors to record the array of things available here (ranging from the most commercial, such as the “natural” yogurt loaded with sugar and powdered milk, to the super fresh and healthy: young green conocunts, sliced open in front of you to drink).
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