Vincentia Naa Ayele Hammond credits her personal interest in good nutrition with influencing her career path. Today, as a senior research assistant, she is particularly concerned about the nutritional content of cassava, which is consumed in Ghana as gari, a popular but protein-poor roasted meal. “The majority of the rural population in eastern Ghana is malnourished, as a recent survey revealed,”she notes. “People consume very little animal protein, so they need enriched gari.” She is helping to develop a variation of gari that is made from cassava fermented with cowpea, which results in a more nutritionally balanced product.