Ethnic Food
By Peter Fraser
Many of you will have read Michael Pollan's thought-provoking books, 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' and 'In Defense of Food', with their expose of production and manufacturing of so-called foods of the modern western diet. Many of the facts about what we eat are shocking and disgusting, but we also ignore much of traditional culture in the way we prepare and eat our meals. Liebig originally proposed that fats, carbohydrates, and proteins were the only essential parts of the food we eat, but more modem scientific studies showed that macro-minerals, then trace elements, vitamins, essential omega fats, fibre, and antioxidants were also necessary for good health. An often-overlooked component of healthy eating is the value of cultural ethnic foods. Food is more than simply the physically essential nutrients, it has a strong psychological influence on our mental health.
Many years ago I knew a young lad in Tokanui Mental Hospital. He was a very disturbed boy from a home dominated by a brutal, drunken father. All the men in the hospital soon learned never to turn their backs on Barry; he was moody, sullen and liable to sudden bouts of violent abuse, and could be quite dangerous.
On Friday mornings one of the staff would collect Barry straight after breakfast, and take him up to the kitchens where together they would prepare, mix, and bake their lunch of rewena bread. His mother had let Barry help her when he was a tiny toddler and it was the one thing he knew as pleasant in life. On Friday afternoon he would return to the ward a happy, smiling, singing little boy, a pleasure to be with.
Many of the horror stories of colonial history involved not just the physical brutality, but also the psychological brutality, to conquered peoples by banning their ethnic foods, eg the destruction and forbidding of amaranth and quinoa by Spanish conquistadors in Central and South America. More subtly but just as dramatically, the loss of traditional foods in less-violent regimes has been just as distressing - loss of habitat through draining of wetlands, interference of migration routes of caribou herds, etc have forced native peoples into new patterns of living and eating. Much of the drunken misery and depression of minorities and suppressed groups is blamed on poverty and unequal opportunity, but in many cases the change of eating and living habits is just as important. We accept unquestioningly that in a modern society, living mainly in large cities, we cannot possibly all dig our own gardens or hunt our own game, but there comes a time for all of us when we have to individually question the way we live.
Fast foods, in tins, precooked, frozen, or refined, etc seem an essential part of our modern life. It is a start to buy heritage foods, especially fruit and veges, but to really get the greatest benefit we need to prepare and cook our meals ourselves. Just like Barry did. And of course if we can grow it, all the better.
-from Waikato & Thames-Coromandel Branches newsletter, October 2008, Page 11
