Feeding the Yanomami with canned food is not ideal, but it is urgent, say experts

Suffering from hunger and malnutrition, indigenous Yanomami have received food kits containing rice, sardines, corn flour, water flour, powdered whole milk and salt. The emergency action raises doubts about how industrialized products can affect the already fragile health of the original people.

In normal times, the Yanomami food culture is based on agriculture. Semi-nomadic, they are always in search of more fertile land for cultivation. Proceeds from the land are supplemented with hunting and fishing proteins.

Now, Yanomami livelihoods have been exchanged for processed food. For nutritionist Vanille Cardoso, director of the Associação Brasileira de Nutrição, the introduction of non-natural foods in the indigenous diet is not the healthiest, but at the moment it is the most viable solution.

“Packed and canned goods that arrive there are not part of the food culture of that people, but at this moment we must accept that there is an immediate need to provide some source of nutrition, even if not the best”, says Cardoso.

Health professionals used to caring for the severely malnourished Yanomami claim that the indigenous people have lost fish in their diets due to the contamination of rivers by mining residues, such as mercury. There is also a shortage of flour, cassava and other nutritious foods, such as potatoes, because entire villages have been taken over by mining and plantations have disappeared in these communities.

“The current diet of the Yanomamis is not the best and completely deviates from their customs, but it is necessary. There is hunger and death”, says Alvaro Gonzaga, an indigenous Guarani-Kaiowá ethnicity, professor at PUC-SP (Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo ) and a specialist in the history of indigenous peoples.

The professor recalls that the contamination of the waters that bathe the Yanomami territory also affects the fish, making them unfit for human consumption. The consumption of the water itself is also impaired.

“The big question is the following: between the sodium in sardines and the mercury in river fish, it is clear that we have to choose the sodium in canned food. However, a program must be created to resume the food culture of that people. that recovers their means of survival: the soil, for planting, and the water, for fishing”, says Gonzaga.

High amounts of mercury in the human body can attack the nervous system, causing neurological problems, and damage the liver.

There is also the so-called death of watercourses caused by mining. The transformation of the river into a slimy, muddy mass by the constant dumping of debris prevents any fishing activity.

Thiago Mendes, a biologist specializing in animal behavior —an area that studies the interaction of beings, including humans, with other organisms and the physical environment— and professor at Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, says that the biological system of the Yanomami land should take between 20 and 30 years to be rebalanced.

“What happened there was a perverse conjuncture. When you extract minerals, problems accumulate in the rivers. First, there is the turbidity caused by materials discarded in the water. This material interferes with the breathing of fish and the photosynthesis of algae, ending with that ecosystem. Recovering is very costly”, explains Mendes.

The professor says that the first step in recovery is to stop mining activity immediately. “Only in this way will there be a chance of having edible fish again, with acceptable levels of mercury, but that should take a long time”, he ponders.

Gonzaga, from PUC-SP, recalls that his ethnic group, the Guarani-Kaiowá, went through a similar food situation during the pandemic period due to Covid-19. “My people, who also needed help during isolation, received parabolized rice. We ate, but it was sad. Eating something we don’t grow is like letting go of mother nature, which we believe provides everything for us, which is why we protect the environment so much .”

He says he believes that the Yanomami people are relieved to know that he is not going to die now. “The joy of an indigenous people is planting and harvesting. But, due to the rage of mining, their land and waters cannot provide anything.”