Page Eleven
Jonathan Weisgall
January 23, 1982
are based upon the 236-gram per coconut figure given in Bowes
and C.P. Church's Food Values of Portions Commonly
Used (Lippincott,
New York and Philadelphia: 12th edition, 1975, page 107), which
is an authoritative nutritional text.
Estimated Marshallese Daily Diet
Item
>
Estimated No. Grams
green drinking coconut
this is Pollock's
236 g.
figure--my estimate would
be 2 drinking coconuts
per person per day)
1.8
grated coconuts used in
rice and rice porridge
(using Pollock's estimate
of between 3-15 nuts per
425 g.
(1.8 x 236 g.)
household per meal.
I
calculate the mean of
9 nuts per 10 persons to
be 0.9 nuts x 2 meals, or
1.8 coconuts per person
per day)
0.5
10
"iu" from coconut
118 g.
ounces of “jokaro" (this is
280 g.
embryo
(0.5 x 236 g.)
my approximation)
2ounces of “jokamai" (my
(10 x 2B g.)
56 g.
approximation)
(2 x 28 g.)
Total average daily grams
of consumed coconut
1,175 g.
As may be readily seen from my analysis of the estimated
Marshallese daily diet, the figure of 1,115 grams of coconut per
person is more than three times the estimate provided by Micronesian
Legal Services. I am rather curious how they arrived at their 300gram per capita rate. After having lived with Marshallese on Utirik
for two years and subsisting on a Marshallese diet, this dietary
estimate is as close as I can come to an approximation of the daily
(cont‘d.)
FoI i