Nutrition
Palmnut soup
Palmnut soup
Palm nut soup is a popular soup in West Africa. In Ghana it is one of the most consumed soups.
Preparing palm nut soup can be time consuming as compared to other soups.It can be eaten with ampesi, fufu, rice balls, banku etc.
Ingredients
– An olonka of palmnuts
-Two pounds of meat
-Five pieces ofcrabs
-One smoked of salmon
-Three pieces of large onions
-Five pieces of medium-sized garden eggs
-Five pieces of red bell pepper
-Four pieces of garlic gloves
-Two Maggi cubes
-One pound of wele
-One ginger
-One tablespoonful of salt
Preparation
-Pour palmnuts into a clean bowl and wash thoroughly with clean water.
-Place in a large cooking pot and boil under high heat for about 30
minutes until its soften
-Remove from fire, drain water and pour into a mortar.
-Pound gently until all the covering of the palmnuts fall off the nuts.
-Place the pounded mixture into a bowl and cover it.
-Wash meat and cut into smaller pieces and place into a clean cooking pot.
-Wash ginger, garlic and onions and blend together.
-Pour the blended ingredients over the chopped meat.
-Add some spice and steam until the meat softens.
-Clean the crabs Salmon and set aside.
-Add fresh tomatoes, garden eggs, pepper and onions into the steaming pot.
-Add little amount of water and increase heat to boil.
-Add a litre of hot water to the pounded palmnut you set aside earlier.
-The water should be moderately hot so that you can put your hands inside.
-Mix thoroughly with your hands.
-Take the fiber part of the mixture bit by bit and squeeze the liquid out and
set aside.
-Sieve the mixture until you have enough liquid with no fibers in it.
-Place a colander over the pot of meat and gently pour the palmnut mixture
into it.
-Allow the soup to cook over high heat.
-Remove the tomatoes, onions, garden eggs and pepper and mash together.
-Add it back into the cooking pot.
-Add Maggi cubes
-Add crabs
Add salmon
Stir gently to avoid mashing the fish.
Cook for over 15 to 20 minutes until the surface turns oily.
Source: recipejoint
Soya beans is a highly nutritious plant-based food with several health benefits:
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-High protein and fibre content can increase fullness and reduce hunger
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-Good for blood sugar control
-Has a low glycemic index
-Protein and fibre can help stabilise blood sugar levels
Ghana has nutrition policies. Ghana has nutrition targets. Ghana has nutrition programmes spread across multiple ministries and dozens of implementing partners.
What Ghana does not have is a single, empowered body responsible for leading, coordinating, and holding all this together. That is the gap a National Nutrition Council would fill, and stakeholders are calling for one now.
The case for a council
At a stakeholder engagement convened under the Nourish Ghana project in 2025, participants proposed the establishment of a National Nutrition Council to provide effective leadership and a governance framework for addressing malnutrition in Ghana. The meeting, which brought together policymakers, development partners, civil society organisations, and the media, highlighted a fundamental problem: nutrition responsibilities are fragmented across various ministries. Without a dedicated coordination body, efforts are duplicated, accountability is diffuse, and nutrition consistently loses out when budgets are tight.
The proposal echoes a model used in several countries that have made the fastest progress against malnutrition. Nigeria’s National Council on Nutrition, for example, recently pledged $107 million at the 2025 N4G Summit, a level of coordinated ambition that Ghana has struggled to match.
Ghana does have existing coordination structures worth acknowledging. The Scaling Up Nutrition Cross-Sectoral Planning Group (CSPG), established in 2012, was set up to harmonise planning, implementation, and monitoring of nutrition actions across sectors. It has produced real gains. But the challenge has been institutionalising those gains beyond project cycles, and analysts have called for an elevated national coordination body with presidential oversight to ensure genuine cross-sector accountability. A National Nutrition Council would go further, providing the dedicated financing and convening authority that the CSPG, as currently structured, does not have.
What a Council would do
A National Nutrition Council would provide political oversight and coordination across all sectors involved in nutrition, health, agriculture, education, social protection, and finance. It would track Ghana’s nutrition commitments, hold ministries accountable for delivery, and ensure that nutrition budgets are protected and spent effectively. Most importantly, it would give nutrition a permanent seat at the table where national development decisions are made.
The Time Is Now
Ghana made 10 commitments at the 2025 N4G Paris Summit. Translating those commitments into results requires a governance structure that does not currently exist. Establishing a National Nutrition Council is not a bureaucratic exercise. It is the institutional foundation without which Ghana’s nutrition ambitions will remain promises on paper. Leaders must act on this proposal without delay.
Feature article by Women, Media and Change under its Nourish Ghana: Advocating for Increased Leadership to Combat Malnutrition project
