土著食品是传统北美本土饮食文化和生活哲学的载体。它们的特点是新鲜和加工形式的品种繁多,丰富的营养,风味,健康益处和起源的多样性,但在现代食品系统中通常被误解或代表性不足。传统的加工和烹饪方法有时是劳动密集型的,效率较低,缺乏科学的指导方针来防止看不见的安全风险和食物损失。全球和区域气候变化给传统烹饪/加工带来了额外的挑战,和增加土著社区对外部生产的食物的依赖,导致营养失衡和与饮食相关的健康问题日益普遍。当前和新兴技术,如储存和包装,干燥,安全处理,罐装,酸洗,和发酵,在优化的条件下处理食品,以提高安全性并延长保质期,越来越多地用于当前的食品系统。因此,探索这些本土食品的技术提供了更好地保护其营养的机会,安全,和可访问性,对土著粮食系统的主权和独立至关重要,和土著饮食文化的可持续性。这项小型审查的重点是确定北美选定的传统土著食品的可采用的加工和保存技术,总结教育,扩展,和外联资源,并讨论当前挑战和未来需求,这对于扩大有关土著食品的知识和改善粮食主权至关重要,营养安全,和健康公平。
Indigenous foods are carriers of traditional native North American food culture and living philosophy. They are featured by the wide varieties in fresh and processed forms, richness in nutrition, flavor, health benefits and diversity in origins, but are usually misunderstood or underrepresented in the modern food systems. Conventional processing and cooking methods are sometimes labor-intensive, less efficient and lack science-based guidelines to prevent unseen safety risks and food loss. Global and regional climate change have caused additional challenges to conventional cooking/processing, and increased native communities\' reliance on externally produced foods, which have resulted in increasing nutritional unbalance and prevalence of diet-related health issues. Current and emerging technologies, such as storage and packaging, drying, safety processing, canning, pickling, and fermentation, which treat foods under optimized conditions to improve the safety and extend the shelf-life, are increasingly used in current food systems. Therefore, exploring these technologies for indigenous foods offers opportunities to better preserve their nutrition, safety, and accessibility, and is critical for the sovereignty and independence of indigenous food systems, and sustainability of indigenous food culture. This mini-review focuses on identifying adoptable processing and preservation technologies for selected traditional indigenous foods in North America, summarizing education, extension, and outreach resources and discussing the current challenges and future needs critical to expanding knowledge about indigenous foods and improving food sovereignty, nutrition security, and health equity.