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In keeping with the spirit of the first part of this series in which I acknowledged that Masai society has always been in a dynamic state of transition, I’d like to offer a “glimpse” of the traditional Masai diet as it was recorded by the German military officer Moritz Merker at the turn of the twentieth century.
Merker’s extensive study reveals a people who herded cattle for a living, not simply to consume milk, meat, and blood, but to trade with neighboring tribes for a great variety of plant foods and other goods. It reveals a people who used hundreds of local plants for a great variety of purposes, and who regularly consumed wild honey.
The myth that the Masai eat nothing but milk, blood and meat is derived from the idealized diet of young warriors called moran, a diet that men only eat for 15 years of their life and that women never eat. Contrary to popular myth, women exist, and Masai women are just as Masai as Masai men. Indeed, it was the women who conducted most trade during that time, so ignoring the parts of the Masai diet obtained from foreign trade is particularly insulting to the memory of these women. Merker’s study, moreover, shows that even the supposed exclusivity of the warrior diet is a gross exaggeration and ignores their extensive use of herbs and tree barks, as well as the fact that necessity often drove them to consume honey, roots, tubers and fruit as sources of water and calories while on the march.
Merker’s study is incredibly enlightening, and I consider it a great privilege to be able to share this information from it, for which I owe the modern network of university libraries a significant debt of gratitude.
The Setting: Colonialism Is Knocking at the Door
Merker first published his more than 400-page, German-language Die Masai: Ethnographische Monographie eines ostafrikanischen Semitenvolkes in 1904, after having spent eight years among the Masai beginning in 1895. He published a revised and expanded edition in 1910. Although Merker’s work was translated into English in 1950 as The Masai: Ethnographic Monograph of an East African Semite People, the translation was never published. I have obtained a copy of it on microfiche and hope to publish it online in pdf format later this year.
Merker investigated the Masai on the cusp of the transition into colonialism. Devastating cattle epidemics beginning in the 1880s and lasting through part of the 1890s had recently ravaged Masailand, and the recent death of the great prophet Mbatyan fragmented Masai power and dominance in the region as his two sons, Sendeu and Lenana, vied for power.
The British had established influence over what is now Kenya, where they were negotiating with Lenana to build a railroad through Masailand so they could exploit the potential riches of Uganda, and where they employed young Masai warriors as mercenaries, allowing them to rebuild their families’ herds with the spoils of stolen cattle. The Germans, by contrast, had no intentions of making friends with the Masai and thus penetrated much more slowly into the southern region of Masailand, which is now Tanzania. Merker was stationed near Mt. Meru in Moshi on the very edge of German influence, and thus was able to study the uncolonized Masai who lived to the south.
Ethnobotanists continue to cite Merker’s work, and in his book Time, Space, and the Unknown: Maasai configurations of power and providence (2003), anthropologist Paul Spencer called it “a perceptive and meticulous ethnography” and an “extraordinary achievement” that “towered above any other account of the Maasai during the colonial period.” Since Merker lived among elderly Masai who grew up during the nineteenth century Golden Age of Masai power, his detailed ethnography is our best resource for reconstructing what precolonial Masai society may have been like. It is thus also our best insight into how the Masai may have eaten in precolonial times.
A Land of Milk and Honey
If we fail to understand that the Masai live not simply in a land of milk but in a land of milk and honey, we fail to understand one of the central themes of Masai culture.
The principle staple of the Masai diet was milk from their herds. They treated their cattle “like companions and friends,” Merker tells us, and gave them all proper names. They drank milk from their beloved Zebu cattle, but especially loved sheep milk because of its high fat content. Healthy Masai always consumed milk raw, in the fresh or soured state, often mixed with fresh or cooked blood. When people were sick, however, they would consume boiled milk mixed with the ground fruits of Maesa lanceolata, which have anti-parasitic properties.
Wild honey was abundant in the region. Fermented into a beer, it served as a drink for male elders or as a sacred component of religious rituals. Mixed with plant extracts, it was an important component of many medicines. Masai men and women of all ages would eat unmixed honey as a regular part of their diet.
The gift that a man would give to the parents of his bride when arranging a marriage included five pots of honey. Incidentally, Merker also stated in contrast to most later reports that the consent of the bride was essential to any marriage. He even reported a mechanism whereby a couple could elope without the permission of their parents. If they could escape to the forest, no one could touch them. If they managed to consume a whole cow together, they could emerge from the forest recognized as married.
One of the most frequent themes of Masai ritual is the pairing of milk with honey beer. In installment three of part I of this series, I described the fertility ritual wherein the celebrating elder sprinkles each woman with a mixture of milk, honey beer, and saliva, which is considered a mystical form of insemination. Merker reported many other rituals wherein milk and honey beer were paired. For example, when the moran would go off to war, the women would hold milk and the men would hold honey beer. They would then pour these out as offerings to God and sprinkle them on the departing warriors.
In times of peace, the moran consumed milk in the village and meat in the forest. On the march to war, however, they often consumed roots, tubers, and honey for food and as sources of water. Merker described the honey cuckoo as their helper:
A cuckoo bird, the honey indicator (Cuculus indicator, called en johoroi by the Masai), leads the Masai to the concealed honey holes. As soon as it sees human beings it calls with a strident sound and then flies slowly to the nearest honey place, to which the people follow it in order to take out the honey. If the amount found is still not sufficient for the warriors, they bury the chewed comb, whereupon the bird, after a little while, will then lead them farther. Otherwise they leave it the rest.
Meker also reported a particular expedition wherein the moran became so desperate for food that they ate tree fruit.
By consuming nothing but milk, honey, and roasted goat liver, the legendary prophet Mbatyan was said not only to have unified the Masai and subdued the surrounding peoples, but also to have performed hundreds of miracles, able to fell trees by the sheer power of his will and to emerge from fire unscathed. The Masai credited Mbatyan with inventing a vaccine against bovine tuberculosis, which they successfully used on a large scale at the end of the 1880s. A rinderpest epidemic of proportions so great it has been woven indelibly into the fabric of Masai memory as the Disaster nevertheless devastated them soon after, though Mbatyan had allegedly prophesied of this horrific event years before it happened.
Great is the power of milk and honey, and great is their esteem in the mind of the Masai.
With Bitter Herbs They Shall Eat It
Quite frequently, writers in the past have failed to emphasize the Masai’s extensive use of herbs because they saw these as minor components of the diet. For example, George Mann’s research team wrote in 1964 that the moran are “bound by tribal tradition to a diet of milk and meat,” that “no vegetable products are taken,” and that it is “among this warrior class that animal fat intake is high.” Towards the end of this article the team acknowledged that the moran drank abundant quantities of tea made from acacia bark whenever they ate meat. Either these authors did not regard bark as a “vegetable product” (the US Forest Service seems to disagree) or they assumed that since acacia tea is unlikely to provide a meaningful source of calories it must not be relevant enough to include when summarizing the diet (a dubious assumption, to put it mildly).
Merker reported that the Masai cooked their meat with various spices, never cooking it without adding the bark of Albizzia anthelmintica, which derives its name from its ability to kill parasites. On great feasts, they would consume large quantities of meat, and a portion would be raw or half-cooked.
The moran would go into the forest for meat banquets lasting three to four days, once or twice a month. When they would first enter moranhood, when the milk supply was low during the dry season, or when they would prepare for war against an especially powerful enemy, they would extend the meat fest up to a month. In addition to the typical spices, the moran would add roots and barks with stimulant properties in order to develop their courage and virility. They would use the stomach or bladder of the slaughtered animal to hang concoctions made from these herbs, which any of them would drink whenever they were thirsty.
But With Milk, They Shall Not
The Masai would never consume milk and meat together, in part because they believed that mixing milk with the Albizzia anthelmintica used in cooking the meat would cause horrible diarrhea. Yet they also believed that letting milk so much as touch meat could poison the udders of the cow the milk came from and plague the cow with disease. They were hesitant even to sell extra milk because the buyer might let it touch meat.
One could speculate that they may have enforced this separation to preserve the sacredness of the principles of male and female, of death and life. Milk is associated with the female principle of life because women give birth and nurse their young, and women milk female cattle to provide the Masai with their principle staple. Meat is associated with the male principle of death because men control the slaughter of male animals and the conduct of war. Indeed, nature itself makes it impossible to milk an ox, and the Masai considered it a divine commandment that they should never kill a female animal to consume its meat.
Blood Is on His Lips, But Hunting Is Beneath Him
The favorite foods of the Masai, Merker tells us, were milk, meat, and blood. They would drink the blood of cattle, sheep, or goats in the fresh or clotted state. Milk mixed with fresh or cooked blood formed a particularly effective healing soup for the wounded. A new mother would drink the blood of an ox if she bore a son, or the blood of a heifer if she bore a daughter.
Their desire for animal products, however, stopped cold at the boundaries of their herds. They scorned any kind of game meat, birds, or fish. Many species of fish occurred “almost everywhere in larger brooks,” but they dwelled in peaceful waters, for the Masai had no interest in their flesh.
Caravans Are Coming — And They’re Full of Bananas
The Masai, according to Merker, conducted extensive trade with neighboring peoples. It was the women who conducted this trade:
What is not used in her own household in the way of milk, meat, and skins is her housekeeping money, with which she buys vegetable foods and such household objects as she does not make herself. She is not supervised in this in any way by her husband. It is beneath his dignity to interfere in these affairs.
Approximately every three to six days caravans of old women, accompanied by a few old men and laden with maize, bananas, batatas, etc., arrive in the Masai kraals. Then there begins an hours-long haggling and bargaining with the customary market-woman shouting. Each one tries to sell her goods as advantageously as possible, that is, exchange them for just the articles that she needs. Often the caravans come from a distance of four to five days march and then remain in the kraal for a couple of days before they set out for home.
Yes, far from eating nothing but milk, blood, and meat at the turn of the twentieth century, Masai women were coming into the village with caravans full of bananas, corn, and sweet potatoes every three to six days!
They cooked sweet potatoes (Ipomea batatas) in water with a little steppe salt, drained them, mashed them with a whisk, and stirred in fresh milk. They cooked unripe dried bananas (Musa paradisiaca) in water, drained them, and stirred in milk and butter. They cooked beans with salt, but corn without salt. They cooked yams (Discorea abyssinica) and taro in salted water, and cooked sorghum into a thick porridge and lightly salted it afterwards.
In addition to their strongly intoxicating home-brewed honey beer, the Masai also purchased much milder beers from the surrounding tribes made from bananas, millet, corn, or sorghum.
What the Masai have eaten has always been an economic choice dependent on the supply and demand of the particular goods they possessed or needed. Without doubt, the Masai needed to obtain a greater amount of plant foods from their trading partners after the great Disaster decimated their herds in the 1880s and 1890s. Merker’s predecessors writing less detailed and more superficial accounts published twenty years before his own also described Masai women as trading with neighboring peoples, but documentation before this time is scant. Merker himself talked in depth with many elderly people who lived through the nineteenth century Golden Age of Masai power, and Merker believed that trade had always been part of Masai history, at least on an intermittent basis. Merker was probably right, and there is no evidence to the contrary.
A Day in the Life
The Masai numbered their days after the phases of the moon, and thus the day began in the evening when the sun would set and the moon would appear, just as it always has for Jews and Christians.
When the sun would set, the Masai would have quiet conversations outside their huts and then retire to bed around 8:00-8:30, waking up about eight hours later at 4:00 in the morning.
After milking the calves, they would have fresh milk, soups, and porridge drunk from gourds, with a variety of finger foods. The women would boil any of the great variety of plant foods discussed above for lunch. Come evening, they would milk the herds again, and afterwards drink milk for dinner.
During the dry seasons when the milk supply was low, they would rely less on milk and more on other foods. If cattle were abundant, this might mean more meat. If not, it might mean more plant foods, gathered wild or purchased from neighboring tribes. The Masai love their religious rituals and feasts, and these would often punctuate their diet with yet more meat. In sum, the Masai diet at the turn of the twentieth century was diverse, rich in both animal and plant foods.
Read more about the author, Chris Masterjohn, PhD, here.
Hi Chris!
Great article.
Chris said:
“…Merker’s work was translated into English in 1950 as The Masai: Ethnographic Monograph of an East African Semite People, the translation was never published. I have obtained a copy of it on microfiche and hope to publish it online in pdf format later this year.”
If you can provide the book as image files, (.PNG preferably)I’ll be glad to OCR and optimize a PDF of it for you.
Be well,
Ben Fury
Hi Ben,
Thanks!
Right now I have 230 pages in PDF (the English microfiche is spread across more pages than the original, so I’m not as half-done as it first appears). The microfiche scanner I’m using makes PDFs directly so that’s the easiest thing to do for me. When the time comes, though, I’ll give you a holler and see if you can help. Thanks for the offer!
Chris
Hello Chris-Just wondering, did you ever finish converting the book to PDF and is there any chance you’d be willing to share a copy of it? Thanks so much. Cheers!
Nice article, thanks Chris.
You’re welcome Elliot and thanks!
Chris
Thanks for this Chris. Really makes me question the epidemiological citations used to support the claims in so many books. The eating habits of a lot of these often-cited cultures are so much more complicated than they’re made out to be.
Hey Josh,
Indeed. You’re welcome!
Chris
And then there is “Atherosclerosis in the Masai” (!972 Mann et al.) which shows that the moran period (eating meat/blood/milk almost exclusively) is where the Masai diet shines.
Fits nicely with your report here to show that more honey/beer and maize/bananas and less meat/milk is a bad idea for health.
Hi Franco,
That’s a good point, although I think it’s a substantial over interpretation of Mann’s data. But we’re getting their… onward march!
Chris
Looking forward to the next installment.
I personally would rather like bananas and honey to turn out to be healthy. I eat those withtout ill effects anyways.
But I’m not so sure about beer and maize(corn).
Hi Franco,
Thanks. I don’t think they’re so sure of the beer either — it’s not drunk by everyone, mainly by male elders. But they recognize the problem with drinking too much of it.
Chris
More details salepe?Why do you believe that you don’t have enough milk?How often is baby nursing? (Most newborns eat 10-14 times a day, and may have stretches where they nurse for several hours at a time.)How many wet and dirty diapers does he have each day? (At least 6 wet diapers? At least one dirty diaper each day?)Are you supplementing with bottles? (Not a good idea, and can cause the very problems you are worried about.)Is he latching well? Do you see/hear him swallowing when he nurses?It’s VERY uncommon for women to have too little milk but it’s very common for mothers to THINK they have too little. There is no particular food you need to be eating eat a reasonably healthy diet and drink enough fluid that you arent’ thirsty.
Many years ago (1997, I think), I went on a medical safari in Kenya and spent three fantastic weeks with the Maasai (and also with some of the other local tribes). I ended up writing an abstract called “The Medicinal Plants of the Kikuyu and Ndorobo Tribes and Maasai Healing Traditions.” As I was not interested in nutrition back then, I can only say that they ate a lot of milk, blood and meat because that’s what the warriors I mainly hung out with ate (which seems to still be their staple).
I was quite impressed with their use of plants–as medicines. Anyway, I’m finding this series quite interesting. Thanks for the in depth analysis.
Hi Stipetic,
Thanks so much for sharing your experience. That sounds consonant with my understanding. As the moran do not practice much warfare anymore, they are quite unlikely to be forced by necessity into eating other things, and they do strictly adhere to meat, blood, milk, and herbs when possible. I’m glad you’re enjoying the series. Thanks!
Chris
Stipetic,
Anything useful or particularly interesting, you think, to Westerners?
Ed
Thanks for this wonderful series. Attentive, detailed, elegant; richly rewarding scholarship. Rare qualities this day and age. Please keep it up!
Hi Jacob,
You’re welcome. Thank you so much for your kind words. Keep it up I’ll do.
Chris
Great article. I had always thought, based on what I always read, that the Maasai only ate meat, milk and blood.
The more the onion layers are peeled away the more we see just how omnivorous human diets are. But the one constant is always a diet devoid of factory food.
Hi Stephen,
Thanks! I hope to peel back lots of onion layers. 🙂
Chris
This really is a revelation.
I’ve been wondering for years how the Maasai avoid iron overload, with all that meat they eat, and it’s obvious now that the answer is, they eat a lot of plant foods as well.
I remember reading that they flavour their ‘meat soups’ with Acacia nilotica bark, which is apparently full of tannins. Tannins prevent iron absorption. I’ve now looked up Albizia anthelmintica to see if it too is high in tannins but couldn’t find anything. People do say withholding iron from parasites is a good idea.
Hi Jane,
I’m glad you’ve found it revelatory. I think the answer about iron is simply that the Maasai don’t eat all that much meat. Milk is their staple, not meat. They use a number of herbs on their meat, but I think the main function of the anthelmintics is to kill worms in human health, even if it were to chelate iron.
Chris
Seems my husband may be somehow related to the Massai. This greatly resembles our relationship:
What is not used in her own household in the way of milk, meat, and skins is her housekeeping money, with which she buys vegetable foods and such household objects as she does not make herself. She is not supervised in this in any way by her husband. It is beneath his dignity to interfere in these affairs.
Great info on the truth about the variety of foods the Massai eat/ate. Seriously, why would we ever believe that ANY tribe/people would eat a boring diet of the same old stuff day in and day out when variety (and beer) is the spice of life?
xo deb
Haha, Deb, well that’s the bright side of a Maasai marriage. You probably wouldn’t want the whole package. Thanks for the props!
xo Chris 🙂
“Contrary to popular myth, women exist, and Masai women are just as Masai as Masai men.”
Correction: The anthropological record clearly shows that there was only one female Masai, and she was known as “Masette.”
Otherwise, fabulous post! 😉
Ahahaha, thanks Helen for finding that little blooper of mine. We should all be thankful to Papa Maasai for taking in Massette as a ritual dependent.
Thanks for the props!
Chris
http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional-diets/nasty-brutish-short
http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional-diets/ancient-dietary-wisdom
http://www.westonaprice.org/thumbs-up-reviews/nutrition-and-physical-degeneration
In the above 3 articles, Sally says “Masai consumed no plant foods at all”
http://www.westonaprice.org/thumbs-up-dvdmedia/garage-strength-with-gary-taubes
Tim says “Masai tribes of Kenya ate practically no fiber”
And now you say they did eat plant foods……
Mark,
I didn’t attempt to conform my article to any others. Thank you for pointing out the discrepancies.
Chris
mark808 says ‘Tim says “Masai tribes of Kenya ate practically no fiber”’
— Nope, that’s what Gary Taubes says:
“Taubes provides other examples of scientific delusion, mentioning Ancel Keys and his data cherry-picking ways. He also points out the lack of evidence that a high fiber diet is essential. The traditional Masai tribes of Kenya ate practically no fiber and yet suffered no constipation.”
https://www.westonaprice.org/garage-strength-with-gary-taubes
I seem to recall Weston Price reporting the Massai felt vegetable foods were for cows
Let me just say: wow, what a relief it is to find someone who actually know what they are talking about on the internet! More people need to read this.
Thanks for your appreciation! Of course, there are many other great people writing on the internet, many smarter and wiser than I am.
Chris
Hello Chris.
Just wanted to show my appreciation for your work on the Masai–loved all the details.
And curious of whether you have finished putting Merker’s work on PDF? Can’t wait to read it!
Fascinating article.
It sounds as if they consumed most of their milk fresh – or is there any evidence that they made milk products of any sort out of it?
It seems like disease in the cattle was a potentially very serious issue for them.
Did they suffer from brucellosis or foot and mouth disease?
Hi Mike,
It was all raw (unless the person was sick), and it was both fresh and fermented. I’m not sure what the specific cattle diseases were at this point.
Chris
Hi Chris. Thank you for this article, very insightful. I understand that the Masai traded and consumed plant food. However, they did not stay on a higher plant food when meat and milk were available in abundance… I might be wrong. Maybe the women stayed on such diet.
I love reading your articles!
Hi Ilona,
Right but this was seasonal, so they always ate plant foods for major portions of the year, and some years when the rainy seasons were not so rainy relied especially heavily on them, and at no time of the year did men or women eat a 100% animal product diet.
Chris
Chris,
I am extremely curious to know what typically the Masaai die from? And what is their life expectancy? Many times I read articles where authors will say that Masaai live short lives, and that its because of all the animal products they eat. What say you?
RYAN
Everything I’ve read about the Masai generally point to a diet that consists of about 2/3 fat. With everything you spoke about in this article do you think this is correct? Any more insight into what their macronutrient ratio was?
The link to Part 1 of the series needs to be updated to http://www.westonaprice.org/the-masai-part-i-a-glimpse-of-gender-sexuality-and-spirituality-in-the-loita-masai/
Did the English translation of Merker’s work get published? This is the second place I’ve learned that the Maassai in fact do not eat meat everyday as has been told. The other source was a video of the maasai admitting this. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pD_AUdVSySY&pp