A tribute to Lois Englberger

Source: The National-Tuesday, 25th October 2011 By JAMES LARAKI WE pay tribute to Dr Lois Englberger, a dedicated scientist, nutritionist and advocate of local food. She was a great scientist, teacher, a passionate campaigner and a friend. Dr Englberger was dedicated to her work. She is indeed an icon on Vitamin A-rich bananas and a very strong advocator on local foods in the Pacific. Her “Go Local, Grow Local and Eat Local” campaign to promote local foods will be remembered. Dr Englberger passed away on Sept 29, 2011, aged 62, at her home in Pasco, USA. Dr Englberger was born and raised on a small farm in northwestern Missouri, USA. After obtaining a bachelor of science from the University of Missouri in 1970, she was chosen as the state’s delegate by International Farm Youth Exchange and was sent to India. On her return to the United States, she joined the International Nutrition programme at Cornell University to do her masters on lactose intolerance in children. Her field work took her to Bogota, Colombia, and Yemen, which she visited at the invitation of a German agriculturist she had met in India, who later became her husband. After finishing her thesis, she returned to Yemen to work in health clinics with the International Voluntary Services and Catholic Relief Services. In 1980, Dr Englberger and her husband moved to Tonga, where she assisted the National Food and Nutrition Committee in organising activities, including a national weight loss competition. The couple moved to Pohnpei in 1997 where she worked as a United Nations volunteer with Unicef and the Federated State of Micronesia (FSM) government. At that time, conditions related to vitamin A deficiency had started to emerge in children. In an attempt to alleviate the problem, the population was encouraged to eat green leafy vegetables and other foods recommended by international bodies, only to find out that many Micronesians considered green vegetables as food for pigs and had no tradition of eating them. Dr Englberger and her colleagues noticed that since vitamin A deficiency surfaced only recently, something in the traditional diet must have protected the local population against this type of deficiency. They started to look for clues in the traditional diet. It was part of this exercise that led to the discovery for the first time that banana cultivars had scientifically shown to being rich in vitamin A. This finding took her on a hunt for other food sources of vitamin A, the topic of her PhD at the University of Queensland, Australia. Her search led to the identification of many carotenoid-rich types of banana, giant swamp taro, pandanus, and breadfruit. In addition to her work on other foods, she went on to produce a series of articles on vitamin A in bananas. Further analyses showed that bananas also have high levels of riboflavin and other micronutrients. Carotenoids and riboflavin were also examined in bananas from the Solomon Islands. With her PhD in hand, Dr Englberger started planning with Pohnpei colleagues the promotion of local foods to reduce the prevalence of health problems such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity, which had taken on epidemic proportions following a shift in diet towards more imported processed foods. In 2004, they formed the Island Food Community of Pohnpei (IFCP) as a non-government organisation. Its first challenge was to change entrenched attitudes regarding local foods. Many islanders saw the consumption of local foods as a sign of poverty. That people were only eating them because they had no money to buy rice or other processed foods. In 2005, IFCP joined the global health project led by the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment based at McGill University in Canada. Besides helping document the traditional food system, IFCP promoted local foods using the ‘Let’s Go Local’ slogan. The successes in Pohnpei allowed her to take the Let’s Go Local concept to other Pacific countries. She ran a series of popular nutrition workshops in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. In PNG, the workshop was held in 2008 at West Taraka, Lae, in association with the Family Poverty Rehabilitation Association Mama, a dedicated women’s group. During the workshop, she encouraged people to grow and eat local food. The workshop with the theme ‘Let’s Go-Grow-Eat and Stay Local’ was aimed at making awareness on the importance of eating and growing local food to stay healthier, contribute to the economy, environment friendly, uphold cultural significance and promote food security. Dr Englberger inspired the people of the pacific countries to return to their indigenous ways of living, with much emphasis on the cultivation, preparation, and consumption of local food. Without her work, we will not have realised the nutritional content of locally grown produce. We are grateful for her tireless efforts. We will always remember her in our thoughts and will continue to keep her legacy alive by promoting the go local and stay local theme. Her legacy lives through our efforts, the work she began will also live on. The enduring devotion and passion that symbolised the life of Lois Englberger is an inspiration for all of us to continue her good work. Those of us who are involved in agriculture research for development are fortunate to continue the work she started to make a difference in the lives of local communities by carrying on the work she began as a tribute to her courageous efforts to improve human nutrition by promoting local foods in the region.