Beware of that ponmo meat (Kanda)

On a hot afternoon at the popular Oluwa ni Sola Food Canteen at Osho­di, Lagos, Babatunde Samuel settled down at the table to rel­ish his bowl of Amala which was generously drowned in gbegiri and ewedu soup. His prefer­ence for ponmo (cow skin) rath­er than beef and assorted meat as observed on most of the ta­bles in the canteen set him apart from other customers who were equally enjoying their meals at the time. He was indeed on his own world with three well round­ed rolls of ponmo and a piece of lean meat. None of other the eaters customers who preferred to go for meat and smoked fish could claim to have enjoyed their meals than he did.

Babatunde is probably one among Nigeria’s millions of finicky eaters. Concern over health implication of excessive consumption of meat, particu­larly red meat has forced many to seek an alternative to meat, with many embracing ponmo as a substitute for meain it’s stead. Nutrition experts are of the opinion that some red meat are high in saturated fat, which is believed to raise blood cho­lesterol. High level of blood cholesterol, they say, increases the risk of heart disease.

Nutritionists claim ponmo delicacy lacks the nutritional benefit that could be of help to the human health. Analysis by experts on the nutritional value on a 40 gram piece of cow skin puts the calorie at 150g, total fat (4g), saturated fat ( 1g), poly saturated fat (0g), mono saturated fat (0g) trans fat (0g) cholestron (0g) sodium (0mg) potassium (0mg) and total fat (0g), dietary fibre (0g), sugar (0 %) protein (0 %) vitamin (0%) vitamin c(0%) calcium (0%) and iron(0%).Experts have however fault­ed the erroneous view of many who consider ponmo as a sub­stitute for meat. A food tech­nologist at the Federal Institute of Industrial Research Oshodi (FIIRO), Mrs. Funmi Oladun­moye told Sunday Sun that ponmo lacks the needed nutri­tion and should never be seen as a substitute for meat. “The nutritional value of ponmo is very low and it is best used as emulsifier (gummy substance) sort of in food product devel­opment,” she said.

But in spite of the claim that cow skin is lacking nutrition wise, findings by Sunday Sun show that many Nigerians crave for this delicacy even much more than fish and meat which are considered to be of more nutritional value. Mrs. Rita Okeile, a housewife told Sunday Sun at Oke-Odo Mar­ket in Lagos that her family ate more of ponmo than meat. “My husband was the first to sug­gest that we cut down on our meat consumption for health reasons. Not quite long after his suggestion, I stumbled on a write-up about the negative effect of eating meat in excess especially when one is growing older. For almost three years now, we’ve eaten less of meat but more of ponmo and fish in my house,” Mrs. Okeile said.

A similar concern has re­stricted Alhaji Idowu Yusuf to the consumption of ponmo and fish for close to five years. “I was sick in September, 2010 af­ter which I was advised to cut down on my meat consump­tion. Since then I have resort­ed to eating ponmo and fish. But I must confess, I eat more of ponmo now than fish,” the 54-year-old confessed.

Curiously, the high prefer­ence for ponmo among Nigeri­ans trying to cut down on their meat consumption on health ground as findings by Sunday Sun revealed, is in sharp con­trast to the anticipated change on the menu of an average Ni­gerian following a claim that cow skin poses more serious health risk to the consumers.

Director General, Nigerian Institute of Leather Science and Technology (NILEST) Dr. Isuwa Adamu in Abuja warned against the consumption of an­imal hides and skin. While not­ing that the delicacy lacks any nutritional benefit of any sort, Adamu said the consumption of ponmo as many erroneous­ly believe it to be a substitute for meat, is dangerous for hu­man health. “In fact, it is not advisable for you to consume ponmo in the sense that some of the animals killed and used for ponmo actually have skin diseases. Some of these skin diseases are such that boiling them ordinarily, may not kill the bacteria,’’ Adamu said.

Dr. Isuwa explained that sick animals undergoing treatment are sometimes killed without allowing the chemicals with which they are treated via in­jection to complete their cycle. And according to him the ani­mal skin retain these chemical which he said are dangerous for human consumption.

“Some of the animals, be­cause of the ailments that they have gone through, are some­times treated by way of injec­tion with chemicals. People don’t allow these chemicals to complete the cycle and be removed from the body; they sometimes go ahead to kill these animals. So, if you con­sume the ponmo, the tendency is that you are consuming the chemicals directly because the skin part of the animal retains most of the harmful substanc­es.

Indeed, consumers of ponmo have more reasons for con­cern. A recent investigation by Sunday Sun at the Lagos State Abattoir situated at Oko-Oba, Agege, Lagos revealed that ponmo consumers may be con­suming more toxic substance along with their choice delica­cy.

Sunday Sun observed two different methods of removing the hair on the animal skin. The first involves the soaking of the animal skin in hot water after which a razor is used to shave off the hair. Cow skin prepared in this method comes out in creamy white colour. On the other hand, the brown variety is prepared by subjecting the animal skin to high intensity of heat in order to burn out the hide. After this process, the skin is then washed severally and then softened through a prolong boiling.

While the two varieties of ponmo may appear innocuous on display, Sunday Sun’s dis­covery shows that the innocu­ous-looking ponmo, especially the brown variety, may indeed pose a serious health risk to the consumers.

Sunday Sun discovered that the prohibitive cost of fire­wood which is used in burn­ing off the fur from the animal skin has made many to resort to all manners of combusti­ble materials including con­demned plastic, rubber as well as other harmful but flammable by-products

Professor Ignatius Onimawo of Department of Nutritional Biochemistry, Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma said most of the combustible materials used in burning the animal skin contain hydrocarbon, which he said has been found to be car­cinogenic (that is, has the ten­dency to cause cancer). “Some people use kerosene to roast it and they use so much that it burns into the ponmo such that when one eats the ponmo, you will perceive the odour and consuming the kerosene is not good for the body.

Some people used con­demned tyres to make fire these tyres contain hydrocar­bon as fire. It has been found to be carcinogenic which is not good for the body.

A chemical scientist, Dr. Sherifat Aboaba, Department of Chemistry, University of Ibadan said consuming ponmo considered to have been de­natured by carcinogenic sub­stances is tantamount to death by instalment. “Using tyres or plastic to burn ponmo will defi­nitely denature the nutrient in it. For example, burning gener­ates carbon monoxide which is definitely poisonous to hu­man health. Then allowing this to go down to the system will definitely harm the body. Then plastic itself contains carcino­genic substances. So, by the time you use it to roast ponmo or burn it, it reacts with the ma­jor nutrient that you think you have in it. And at the end of the day, what you get from con­suming ponmo is the harmful chemical substance used in its preparation. The implication of this is that one dies by install­ment,” she said.

Dr. Aboaba noted that in most cases, the effect of such toxicity is not immediately felt. “These things we consume gen­erally will be toxic to our sys­tem going by the chemical reac­tion that would have occurred. In short time, we might not re­ally have any effect but in the long run, it will affect so many parts of our body. For example, if you consume something that has carbon (II) oxide, it tam­pers with the blood in the body and this day, we hear of so many type of cancers, this aris­es from the different things we eat knowingly and unknowing­ly. We may think what we are eating is ponmo but we don’t know the processes that af­fect the constituents or the so called nutrients that we think that we derive from it. So, the major thing is that in the long run, we are killing ourselves gradually,” she said.

A 2012 cancer index in Ni­geria according to IARC said about 71, 600 people die of cancer yearly. The report also put newly diagnosed figure of Nigerians suffering cancer at 102,100. Since it has been estimated that as much as one-third of all cancer deaths across the globe are related to diet and activity factors, ex­perts are of the opinion that making healthy food choices is one certain way of cutting down the risk of cancer. And by extension, as Dr. Aboaba not­ed, the consumption of ponmo prepared under conditions ca­pable of predisposing people to consuming harmful substance along with cow skin should be discouraged. “Pomo, if prop­erly prepared and processed; for example, if I kill a cow in my house and I take time to re­move the skin and peel it and prepare it properly, then it is fine but let us be wary of things we eat especially when we don’t know how it is prepared,” Abaoba disclosed.

Source: SUN NEWS