Indigenous Food and Tourism for Community Well-Being: A Possible Contributing Way Forward

Abstract

Indigenous food has been recognized as a strategy to enhance community well-being; however its usage is decreasing due to a number of factors. At the same time indigenous food has been linked to issues such as biodiversity, and tourism. Indigenous food link to culinary arts is seen as possible way to revive the usage of indigenous food to enhance community well-being and tourism development. Using these issues as a background this paper aims to propose a possible strategy to contribute to community well-being by using indigenous food as a leverage and pivotal force. This is done by proposing a Teaching and Learning centre for indigenous food and cultural tourism to be developed within a tertiary education institution. Hospitality and tourism students are seen as future personnel that can contribute to the revival of indigenous food. The paper is based on the analysis of available literature that covers and connects the various matters discussed in the analysis such as indigenous food, culinary art and tourism.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s2p24