The first East African Food Festival had been run rather informally, and its dishes had been quite ordinary, with almost no innovation. But the East African government's purpose had been more to use the festival to promote awareness of food safety.
This could be seen from the ingredients provided by the East African government, most of which had been very common ingredients in East Africa.
There had also been so-called "nutrition" experts popularizing knowledge among the East African public. Just as Western capitalists "hyped up" desserts, in the mouths of East African "experts," it became: sugar intake had to be moderate, and excessive sugar consumption might lead to... a long string of diseases.
This ran contrary to the blind pursuit of sugar by media outlets and interest groups around the world in the nineteenth century. In fact, East Africa's sugar crop industry was not particularly excessive in production compared with countries at the same latitude, though it was foreseeable that East African sugar production would reach a rather astonishing level in the future.
Ernst simply did not want East Africa to become a country like the United States, where people had excessive sugar in their bodies, so he was setting the tone for them in advance.
In any case, expanded cultivation would continue, because global demand for sugar was now robust, large-scale planting was profitable, and industrial production would consume a substantial portion as well—for example, the military industry.
If he had not been unable to make anything else up, Ernst would have liked to draft a dietary guide for East African citizens to guide their eating habits.
Still, this was the first East African Food Festival. Its content and procedures had been rudimentary, yet it had drawn widespread attention.
The East African people had no choice but to pay