{"id":6596,"date":"2019-11-15T11:00:49","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T08:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6596"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:41","slug":"kenyas-ugali-scare-how-safe-is-your-maize-flour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/11\/15\/kenyas-ugali-scare-how-safe-is-your-maize-flour\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenya&#8217;s Ugali Scare: How Safe Is Your Maize Flour?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By Basillioh Mutahi<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Several well-known brands\nof maize flour have been taken off supermarket shelves in Kenya, after a\nwarning about unsafe levels of a poisonous substance known as aflatoxin.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This has led to widespread concern, as maize is the country&#8217;s\nmain staple. The flour is used to prepare ugali, a cooked starchy paste the key\ningredients of which are just the flour and water. Maize is also used to\nprepare another variant of the staple, githeri, which is maize and beans,\ncooked whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maize is not only a common dish in most\nhouseholds in Kenya but it is also a familiar food across east, central and\nsouthern Africa, going by different names such as nshima, sima, sadza, mealie\nmeal or posho. In fact Africa consumes&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mordorintelligence.com\/industry-reports\/african-maize-market\"><strong>30% of maize produced in the world, research shows<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it is not just maize that is often contaminated with the\npoisonous substance. In East Africa, maize, milk and groundnuts are the main\nsources of aflatoxin exposure. These are commonly mixed together to make a\nporridge for infants and children, putting them at particular risk of aflatoxin\npoisoning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Kenya, aflatoxin contamination is a long-standing problem. The country is considered&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/news.ilri.org\/2014\/05\/06\/aflatoxins-in-kens-food-chain\/\"><strong>a world hotspot, with incidents of acute toxicity recorded in 2004 and 2010<\/strong><\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-africa-50407159\">Read more&gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Basillioh Mutahi Several well-known brands of maize flour have been taken off supermarket shelves in Kenya, after a warning about unsafe levels of a poisonous substance known as aflatoxin.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}