ABSTRACT
A major part of modern West African dietary is furnished by crop plants which are not indigenous to the area, but which have been introduced to West Africa mostly in historic times. It is only necessary to consider the list of crop plants known to have been imported - bananas, citrus fruits, pineapples, maize, several varieties of rice, coconuts, groundnuts, several legumes, some of the cocoyams (taros) and, most important, the ubiquitous cassava (manioc) - to realise that African diets in the period before European contact must have been very different, and more restricted, than they are today. Most of the above-mentioned plants were introduced by European traders in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although bananas and cocoyams, which are of Asiatic origin, probably entered the area with Arabic or Sudanese migrations, and there is evidence that maize (which is American in origin) entered West Africa not only directly, but also via the Mediterranean. In recent years, diets have been further diversified by the substantial and increasing imports of temperate wne foods as such - notably milk, wheaten flour, dried Atlantic cod and preserved meat and fish.
