staple food

San people started to paint “richly embellished” eland at sites in the Drakensberg Mountains during a period of cooler climate that began around 1500 B.C.E., when the animals—previously a staple food source—were becoming more scarce, as Challis and anthropologist Brian Stewart of the University of Michigan wrote in a 2023 paper.

The wider area, called Trans-Nzoia county, is well known as Kenya’s biggest producer of maize, which is the main ingredient for the country’s staple food.

Food prices have risen even faster - for example, in the commercial hub, Lagos, yams, a staple food, are almost four times more expensive than last year.

For hundreds of thousands of years our species has incorporated it as a staple food, and its preparation has been perfected throughout history.

These results, to be read in the Plant Biotechnology Journal, could help solve a major public health problem in regions where rice is the staple food.