HOW WE EAT: ‘No dietary requirements (but I do hate pap)’
Whatever happened to Banting? How prevalent is vegetarianism, really? Is gluten-free as commonplace as we might think? Two decades of feeding the Kalahari’s visitors, and what their forms told us.
A dietary requirement field on booking forms at the !Xaus Lodge in the Kalahari Desert has provided unique insights into the eating habits of visitors over the past two decades. Approximately one in four guests who provide information about food preferences requires a specific diet, translating to roughly one in eight people per night, as each booking usually consists of a couple or a family. Vegetarianism remains a steady requirement, with 7% to 9% of guests requesting it throughout the years.
Veganism, however, is rare, accounting for less than 1% of dietary requirements. In contrast, low-carb diets, popularized by the 2014 book "The Real Meal Revolution," started appearing in the lodge's records in 2014 but have since declined. Gluten-free requirements have increased from 2% to about 4% of requirement-stating bookings. The most consistent requirement is for a meat-free diet, with 3% to 5% of guests avoiding pork, lamb, and game meat.
A notable spike in dietary requirement requests occurred between 2020 and 2022, during the COVID-19 pandemic, as international travel decreased, and South Africans booked trips to the Kalahari for the first time, bringing their travel habits and dietary preferences with them. This surge in dietary requests has since returned to its long-term pattern. The most South African dietary requirement ever written was included in the lodge's records: "I have no dietary requirements (but I do hate pap)."
Written by urgent.news from Daily Maverick's reporting — not their text. Machine-written; read the original for the full account.
