Colombian-Caribean Darien’s promising plants for nourishing use

Abstract

This article analyzes the knowledge, uses and practices of 21 promising species for nutrition use, reported in successional forests, kitchen gardens, borders and yards in the town of San Francisco de Asís, Acandí, Chocó. This project is the result of five months of fieldwork using ethnobotanical methods followed by a systemic analysis that inquired about socioecological aspects of the edible species through ethnographic methods. The nutritional contribution of these species to food security was validated by means of standard bromatologic techniques. Many of them are in risk of disappearing from local cuisine and from the agroecosystems, due to deforestation processes, livestock, the introduction of industrially-processed food and the transformation from a self-sufficient small scale economy into an economy linked to the traffic of illegal drugs. Agroecology labels species such as the chupamelon, the cacaona, the oreja de Judas, and the papocho as local innocuous foods.