Title: Best of Mauritian Cuisine
Description: Mauritian Cuisine
Among the Best Cuisine Worldwide
Mauritian cuisine is loved by everyone who has tasted Mauritian foods. Mauritian cuisine has been recognised as being within the top four dietary patterns based on more healthful foods / nutrients from 187 countries. A systematic assessment conducted by the Global Burden of Diseases Nutrition and Chronic Diseases Expert Group (NutriCODE). Dietary quality among men and women in 187 countries in 1990 and 2010: a systematic assessment. Lancet Glob Health 2015; 3:e132-142, has confirmed that Mauritian Cuisine is very healthy.

This finding is correlated with common observations that Mauritians, women in particular, maintain their youthfulness until very late in their lives. This high rating is driven by the high consumption of ten healthy items consumed within traditional Mauritian cuisine. Those ten healthy items include the consumption of fruits, vegetables, beans and legumes, nuts and seeds, whole grains, milk, total polyunsaturated fatty acids, fish, plant omega-3’s and dietary fibre. This is very evident within the wide spectrum of Mauritian everyday foods that include Indian, Tamil, Muslim, Chinese, French and African cuisines. African cuisine is very undefined as the African slaves who were forcibly taken to the island had no say in the foods available to them. They had to make do with what was available to them and prepared foods in accordance with the preference of their masters. Some of the foods like manioc (cassava), taro leaves and tangues (porcupine) have been associated with the foods eaten by the Mauritian slaves, but no clear distinction has been ever made or identified. English foods just did not make any lasting impression. 

Other cuisines like Italian pasta dishes were introduced by passing sailors and travellers on ships, and other immigrants who stopped and settled in Mauritius. After the second world war, many expatriates from Europe were sent to Mauritius and they also introduced their cuisines to others. Expatriate soldiers from the colonising countries also never returned home and called Mauritius home. Similarly, English expatriate soldiers, civil servants and traders in India also settled to Mauritius when changes in the administration of East India Company took place and it was no longer safe for them to stay in India. One of my ancestors was born to an English trader who moved from the Bengal region in India to Mauritius. They also brought in their contribution to Mauritian cuisine.

The successive settlement in Mauritius by the Dutch, French and British, brought into the island people and products from very many diverse places, including South America, France, England, Africa, India, China and to a lesser extent other countries such as Italy, Germany and Portugal. These people carried with them their dietary habits and introduced foods from their motherlands and other places. The current Mauritian cuisine has evolved from such settlement that reconciled cultural habits with the availability of products. In particular, inhabitants from very different culinary backgrounds learned from each other how to use available products to feed themselves when supplies were low and they had to survive droughts, cyclones and crop failures. That was the first blueprint for the original Mauritian cuisine that was to evolve through the colonial settlement periods and after.
Subjects: Mauritius, Mauritian, Cuisine, Cooking, Cookbook
Places: Mauritius
People: Madeleine Philippe
Time periods: 2017