Recognizing native foods and determining their raw materials and methods of cooking in Gonabad

Because of availability of raw materials, freshness, preservative free and low price, native foods are the best kind of foods in different areas of Iran. In addition native foods can carry cultural customs and play an important role in communication among generations. This cross sectional study was performed to recognize and renew native foods of Gonabad city.

Recognizing native foods was done by interview, literature review and studying native food resources in that area. Interview tags, check lists, data recording, writing and video recording were used for data collection.

This study showed that, there were more than 97 types of native foods in that society. The majority of food groups that had been used to prepare native foods were as follows: breads and cereals (71%), fruits and vegetable (48%) and dairy products (32%). Fifty-two percent of the native foods were served as lunch, 23% as dinner and 13% as breakfast. Seventy-seven percent of native foods were served as meals, 11% for ceremonies and celebrations, 9% for treatment and 3% for gestation and child-birth. These native foods were used by other foods like dairy products and raw vegetables (69%), drinking water (45%), pickles (36%), soft beverage (24.5%) and salted products (5%). The most important reasons that people dont use native foods nowadays are as follows: they aren’t customary foods (82%), they don’t know how to prepare them (78%) or raw materials are not available (37%).

The results of this study showed that we can increase people choices of foods by recognizing and renewing native foods. By increasing the use of native foods we can balance the nutrition patterns and improve health of the society.