Delicacy Of Fried Yam And The New Yam Season

Fried yam is a delicacy for many in Ghana. I love it too. It is best taken with hot pepper or boiled beans.

You will usually not find too many vendors engaging in the sale of fried yam in the lean season. However, at this time of the year you would see many vendors springing up at every corner of our villages, towns and cities, including transit points or toll booths on our highways.

It’s not a bad idea for people to earn a living out of this business, but I think we should be worried about food handling practices adopted by some of these vendors. My observation across most villages, towns and cities shows that almost all of these vendors serve the ready-to-eat fried yam with their unwashed bare hands. This practice is highly unhygienic and could be contributing to several food borne diseases – cholera, typhoid, etc.

One other worrying development is that most of these vendors are children who step in occasionally to operate these businesses for their mothers and have little knowledge on food and personal hygiene.

Study has shown that our currencies – notes and coins are highly contaminated. Ironically, most of these vendors handle monies and the foods they sell to the unsuspecting public concurrently. Who knows, that GHC 2 note handed to the fried yam vendor might be coming from the public toilet attendant or any possible contaminated source.

I have also seen some [vendors] change the diapers of their kids and served customers without washing their hands at all or properly.

It is also possible that your fried yam vendor might have also visited the toilet while carrying out business, and might have not washed her hands at all or properly before you arrived to purchase your fried yam.

Foods which are ready-to-eat and need no further cooking/heating before eating should not be served or eaten with unwashed bare hands.

If you ever want to enjoy your fried yam, do insist on the vendor to serve you with a fork or washed hand or wrap a rubber around the hand before serving. It [fried yam] should be best taken while hot!

Sending children to buy this kind of food for you is not the best idea, since they cannot see to it that the vendor observes the ideal food hygiene practice when serving them. My encounter with these vendors reveals that they can ignorantly be rude to a customer who insists on best food handling practices.

Significant number of Ghanaians – friends, passengers, families, staff etc. have also enjoyed fried yam without observing basic hygiene, by washing their hands before eating them. I have lost count of the number of people on-board commercial vehicles who bought fried yam while travelling on a car, especially toll booths and ate without washing their hands. Only God knows the number of contaminated hands this person might have shaken [popular Ghanaian courtesy] or the number of contaminated objects [including monies] he/she might have handled.

Eating safe foods the safe way is a shared responsibility between you the consumer and the server. Play your part well and stay healthy always.

Choose healthy foods. Choose preventive health. Live a healthy life.

Gbolu Samson
Founder & Executive Director
(PHAN-Ghana)
[email protected]
[email protected]