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| Photograph by Jen SFO-BCN |
Across the African diaspora, you can see the foods adopted and adapted by former slaves and black transplants to foreign nations that have become apart of our modern lives. They are foods that reflect the cultures of the homeland (like watermelons, which were brought to the Americas from southern Africa) or that of our mixed heritages (the paratha in Trinidad and Tobago, resulting from some Trini’s Indian heritage).
Not all of these foods, though, have wound up so healthy for us in the long run. According to The Office of Minority Health, “ African American women have the highest rates of being overweight or obese compared to other groups in the U.S“, “about four out of five African American women are overweight or obese” and “in 2009, African Americans were 1.5 times as likely to be obese as Non- Hispanic Whites”. Call it “thick” if you want, but being overweight and obese isn’t a good look, and it comes with a long string of health complications, including diabetes and heart disease.
Sure, a call into being more physically active is great – I believe in it myself for a number of reasons aside from weight loss - but time and time again, researchers have stated that diet is much more important when it comes to weight loss; exercise is more critical in keeping the weight off and building muscle tone. I think that by examining our food culture – the past and why it happened, and examining its effects today – we can take a step forward into changing this trend. This is a three part series, so feel take a look at the first part – the history of soul food after the jump.
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| Photo by James Emery |
In North America, our variety of culturally black food is mainly what is known as “soul food”; I know that the majority of my readers know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. Collard greens. Cornbread. Macaroni and cheese. And of course, fried chicken. These foods from the black American past were usually the result of the fact that the finer cuts of meat were not available to the field hands; we got the leftovers. Southern plantation owners fed their slaves as cheaply as possible. Ironically, it turned out that some of these foods were better for us – the brown sweet potatoes that slaves typically ate that turned into our candied yams are actually more beneficial, health wise, than starchy white potatoes, for example. Greens were obviously a boon, rich in their vitamin and anti-oxidant value.
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| Photograph by Gveret Tered |
One of the biggest adaptations to this condition was the use of various parts of the pig that slave owners didn’t want in African-American slave culinary practices. Pig ears, feet, intestines, and lard were re-purposed into things like chitterlings. Back fat, neck bones, and bacon were added to greens; pigs feet were boiled and eaten as an accompaniment to the greens. In order to survive, the slaves adapted; when you are a slave and prone to someone else’s whims, you don’t really have much of a choice in what you can eat. Sometimes slaves were afforded plots of land on which they could grow their own little field gardens, but this wasn’t always the case. What master said was good enough for you to eat, you ate, and you made do with what there was.
The biggest thing to understand is that the majority of these foods were high in both fat and calories. If you have ever done hard labor outside, then you know how much energy it requires and takes out of you. A slave was lucky to get in a meal in the morning and one at night, but between those two required periods of rest, it was work, work, working in the hot southern sun from sun up to sun down. This need for a high caloric intake wasn’t just with African and black Americans in slavery, but followed after the emancipation to the times of sharecropping. We were still doing the hard work from dusk until dawn… just under more of “our” terms. Eventually, too, blacks moved North, transitioning into the into the industrial workforce and labor zones. These jobs were also very intensive in nature as far as the energy need was concerned.
But what about in today’s world? Be honest – we live in a much more sedentary, sitting-on-our-behinds world than our ancestors did. The slaves, sharecroppers, and industrial workers of the Black American past didn’t work in an office from 9 to 5. (I’m not even going to mention the sector of us that just plain don’t work at all — and that goes for people of all ethnicities.) In the next part of this post, we’ll look at how our old school soul food diet is hurting Black Americans today.
Right now, though, let me know: what’s your favorite soul food? How often do you eat any of it – only on Sundays, or a bit here and there throughout your week? How has it impacted your weight loss goals, and has your love of it made it hard for you to “start a new diet”?