It’s quite ironic, however, how the continent with the most alarming malnutrition statistics also happens to be where the tree grows best!  Moringa has been on the continent for decades and in most African countries the leaves are picked and boiled like spinach or eaten raw in salads.  Raw Moringa leaves have a spicy-bitter taste resembling that of watercress and when cooked the leaves taste like bitter spinach-which is why Moringa is referred to as “mboga chungu” in Kiswahili, meaning bitter greens.

 

With the Eastern Cape fast becoming entrenched as South Africa’s most poverty-stricken province, a Moringa food forest could be the simple and readily available solution to the problem of malnutrition, deforestation, impure water and poverty as a whole.