Tuesday, February 23, 2016

"Decolonize Your Diet" (Los Angeles event)

Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Xochitl, CC Liu, Crystal Quintero, Amber Larson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly TEST KITCHEN; DecolonizeYourDiet.org (facebook); LuckyPeach.com
Indigenous revival Los Angeles: Aztecs march through the city (latimes.com)


It's not enough to eat with compassion for ourselves and other living beings. We have to "decolonize" our minds and, therefore, our bodies. "Our bodies are our diets," we say, because we are what we eat. Add minds-and-hearts to bodies: Our whole being depends on what we immerse ourselves in.
 
When colonial European invaders brought the Old World to the New, they brought the diseases and poor health they learned there. There was health here. There was harmony with nature.


Now we have petrochemical farming (fertilizer that is motor-oil based, pesticide-poisons that are derived from toxic sludge, agricultural methods that destroy the land on an industrial scale with mechanized ways of draining nutrients and replacing them with three basics instead of the 72 minerals once present).
 
Cactus: dragon fruit or pitahaya (DYD)
The food we eat -- over-processed, plundered by Monsanto, created with capitalist ends in mind rather than health and vitality -- is the basis of life. But we are never told what we lost. Now with the loss of AJ America, which made a point of bringing Native American issues to light in the mass media, we have fewer ways of hearing about alternatives, getting back to a way of eating that was here on this land before the Conquistadors and Anglo invaders wiped it out. PHOTOS

Workshop: Food, Justice, Cooking as Resistance
Building Healthy Communities Boyle Heights's photo.
FREE Los Angeles Event: "Food History, Justice, and Cooking as Resistance" Workshop: Saturday, Feb. 27th, 2016.
 
Check it out, friends: Chef Marlene Aguilar and Claudia Serrato (as Cocina Manakurhini) will be catering an awesome gathering this Saturday.

They will be doing a cooking demo, tasting, and a platica (discussion) entitled "Food History, Justice, and Cooking as Resistance"! Hoping we see you come by and say hello. Share the news. Gracias. Remember to RSVP.
  • Nuestrxs Voces: Voces de Equidad
  • Building Healthy Communities, Boyle Heights‎
  • Wellness Center, 1200 N. State St., L.A. 90033
  • Feb. 27, 2016, 11:00 AM-5:00 PM
How to Decolonize Your Diet
Shelby Pope (luckypeach.com) edited by Wisdom Quarterly

After Dr. Luz Calvo was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, she and her partner Dr. Catrióna Esquibel searched for an explanation.
 
Drawing on their experience as ethnic studies professors -- and Chicanas -- they started examining the effects colonization has on a culture’s diet.

Their findings? The all-American combination of carbs, sugar, and processed foods is making Latino immigrants sick. And it is repeating a harmful pattern that can be traced through history.
 
Top 18 Most Addictive Foods (17 Least)
Latin American food culture has been eroded by colonizing forces: Spanish (military Conquistadors and religious) missionaries forcing Mexicans to start eating bread and cheese instead of corn and beans, to white reformers in the 1920s who told immigrant Mexican mothers that feeding their children tortillas would lead to a life of crime, to Coca-Cola’s current obsession with marketing toward Latino youth.

All of this has been to the detriment of both Latino health and culture.
 
Shelby Pope talked to Calvo and Esquibel about their new book, Decolonize Your Diet, the Latino Paradox, and what we can learn from Mesoamerica when it comes to agriculture [permaculture].
 
How did research lead to a cookbook? 
Mexican-American plant-based recipes for health and healing (decolonizeyourdiet.org)
.
Luz: I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006. I had been a vegetarian for 15 years, and I thought I was really healthy. The whole diagnosis came as a real shock. But more than that, the whole process of treatment and chemotherapy just undid me.
 
I really lost my way, and a lot of that was manifesting emotionally for me around food. Like, Where did I go wrong? What should I be eating? How can I prevent the cancer from coming back?

I came upon a study of Latinas and breast cancer where they studied San Francisco Bay Area Latinas with breast cancer. They found that immigrant, foreign-born Latinas had a 50 percent lower risk of breast cancer than U.S.-born Latinas. More

Book reading and signing
Avenue 50 Studio and the UCLA Latin American Institute present a free event
Decolonize Your Diet: Plant-Based Recipes for Health and Healing
Book reading and signing with authors Luz Calvo and Catriona R. Esquibel
One symptom of accepting colonization [occupation and interference by a foreign power] is adhering to the Standard American Diet (SAD), even while it's killing us.
— Devon Abbott Mihesuah (Choctaw Native American)

More than just a cookbook, Decolonize Your Diet redefines what is meant by "traditional" Mexican food by reaching back through hundreds of years of history to reclaim heritage crops as a source of protection from diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers.
...[They undertook] extensive research to find the healthiest way to eat. As a result of their research, Luz and Catriona promote a diet that is rich in plants indigenous to the Americas such as corn, beans, squash, chiles, herbs, and seeds. They argue against the false belief that Mexican food is unhealthy; instead, they reclaim the wisdom of the abuel@s and teach readers how to prepare life-affirming, delicious Mexican meals from scratch.  More
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