Food is needed to live and everyone needs it. People’s diet, however, differs from place to place around the world. While some are relatable, there are others which are downright shocking.
One of these is the blood-drinking Maasai tribe who live in Kenya and Northern Tanzania. Their traditional diet consists almost entirely of milk, meat, and blood.
For the most part, the Maasai people live on the milk and meat their cattle. This how they get most of their protein and calories.https://youtu.be/un06OwY468M
Two-thirds of their calories come from fat, and they consume 600 – 2000 mg of cholesterol a day. In spite of a high fat, high cholesterol diet, the Maasai have low rates of diseases typically associated with such diets.
They tend to have low blood pressure, their overall cholesterol levels are low. Maasai people drink blood on various occasions: when they are sick, have just been circumcised, or have just given birth.
Some ilamerak (the Maasai word for ‘elders’) also drink blood to prevent or alleviate hangovers after they’ve been drinking. Not only is blood very rich in protein, it’s also great for the immune system.
In Maasai culture, cattle are highly valued. The size of your herd indicates your status in the community, and accumulating animals—rather than consuming them—is common practice.
That means that milk plays a huge role in a traditional Maasai diet. Drunk raw (or soured), drunk in tea, or turned into butter (which is especially important as a food for infants), milk is a part of almost every meal for Maasai herders.
Raw beef is also consumed, however the most fascinating of this tribe’s diet is the tradition of drinking raw blood, cooked blood, and blood-milk mixtures.
Of course, blood and milk aren’t the only things Maasai eat; the diet has always been supplemented with tubers, honey, and foraged plants that are most often used in soups and stews.
In more recent years, some Maasai people have introduced other types of food into their diet: maize meal, potatoes, rice, and cabbage. Traditionally this is frowned upon, though.
This is because the Maasai see using the land for crop farming as a crime against nature, as it makes the ground no longer suitable for grazing.
