Nutritional Marronage: Reclaiming Local Agroecological Diets as a Structural Defence against the Diabetogenic Nutrition Transition in Rural Jamaica

Abstract

The Caribbean region is facing a severe epidemic of metabolic non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including type 2 diabetes mellitus, obesity, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. Jamaica exemplifies this public health challenge as traditional dietary systems have increasingly been replaced by imported ultra-processed foods through a process commonly referred to as the nutrition transition. Existing public health approaches frequently emphasise individual behavioural modification while neglecting the historical, political, and economic structures that shape dietary patterns. This paper introduces the concept of Nutritional Marronage, a decolonial and agroecological framework that conceptualises the deliberate return to traditional Afro-Jamaican food systems as both a public health intervention and an act of cultural resistance. Drawing upon political economy, food sovereignty theory, community cultural wealth theory, and decolonial scholarship, the study examines the historical foundations of provision grounds, backyard food forests, ethnobotanical traditions, and intergenerational food-sharing networks. The paper argues that traditional Jamaican diets, characterised by low-glycaemic root crops, wild-foraged greens, medicinal plants, and agroecological farming systems, provide a structural defence against the diabetogenic effects of globalisation. The study identifies a significant gap in the literature concerning culturally grounded public health frameworks that integrate ancestral food knowledge, food sovereignty, and metabolic health. Policy recommendations emphasise agroecological agriculture, nutrition education, the protection of indigenous knowledge systems, and the strengthening of local food economies. Nutritional Marronage emerges as a viable strategy for improving health outcomes, enhancing food security, promoting climate resilience, and advancing community self-determination in Jamaica and other Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS).