EAT IN ALIGNMENT WITH YOUR HERITAGE.
Healing diets from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Ayurveda, Macrobiotics, African Functional Foods and the Mediterranean Diet can be therapeutically appropriate for a period of convalescence. Once you are well, though, the best way to eat is the way your great-great grandparents ate while living on their indigenous lands.
Here is a bit more information about these these therapeutic diets.
ifa / yoruba FOODS
Tomi Makanjoula’s website is an incredible resource for African functional foods and food as medicine recipes.
Esosa Edosomwan is a raw foods nutritionist who focuses on longevity and works with African superfoods for hormonal health and balanced weight.
TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE
This TCM eBook is a wonderful introduction to this ancient nutritional therapy.
This is an overview of the Five Element Theory of TCM.
Here is another perspective on the energetics of the five elements.
Learn more about the nine body constitutions of TCM here.
AYURVEDA
Here is a Dosha Quiz from the Ayurvedic tradition to help you understand your constitution. Once you know about your dominant dosha(s), you can eat in accordance with them by following these guidelines:
Here is an excellent resource about what we can learn from the chakras.
THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET
Here is the Med Diet food pyramid.
Oldways is a wonderful resource for learning more about the Mediterranean Diet.
What does it look like to take control over your food and stop letting corporations cook for you?
Food Sovereignty
What do you know about your ancestors? Please write down who your great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents were and what their ethnicity is/was. If you have time, do some research about the traditional foods consumed by those ethnic groups. These foods are programmed into your DNA to be the most nutritious and digestible choices for you.
The more we eat in accordance with our ancestors, the better we feel and the more we learn to appreciate and respect the wisdom of traditional cultures.
Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations (Food Sovereignty Alliance). In Vermont, for example, the Abenaki indigenous community has created the Seeds of Renewal project, which is a seed bank for and by native peoples.
Hunger and lack of access to enough healthy food for everyone remain tremendous problems, worldwide, in the United States as well as in other countries. The latest figures from the United Nations report 815 million people who are chronically lacking enough food for normal daily activities, a significant increase from the 2012-2014 figures attributed to the effects of conflict and climate change. In the US, over 41 million people live in households that are uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, at some time during the year, enough food to meet the needs of all of their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food. Food insecurity has been measured consistently since the mid-1990s in the US. During that time period, the prevalence of food insecurity has fluctuated between 10.5% of households (2000) to 14.6% (2008) to the current level of 12.3% of households. In other words, the United States’ approach to ending hunger has not been working, at least since the mid-1990s. It’s time for a new approach!
Where I live in Vermont, the prevalence of household food insecurity between 2014 and 2016 (the most recent data available) is 10.1%, with 4.3% of households experiencing “very low food insecurity”. The latter term means that normal eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and food intake was reduced at times during the year because they had insufficient money or other resources for food. Although Vermont’s levels of food insecurity are lower than the US average, the prevalence is still much too high for households in a wealthy country. Furthermore, the people who are food insecure are among our most vulnerable: children, elderly people, people who have been politically marginalized, and single mothers.
Food sovereignty is both a way to care for yourself and your community and an act of tolerance and respect. What does it look like for you to take control over your food?
You can learn more about the international struggle for food sovereignty via the Food Sovereignty Alliance and Why Hunger.
Can you connect with a local farmer and get your food from them? Do you want to join a community garden or expand your own garden? Can you set up a seasonal food swap with friends and neighbors?
Liberated Culture
I have the great honor of learning from the teachers and healers at the Susu Healing Collective and CommUNITY Farm. I highly recommend their trainings.
Here is their list of what liberated culture looks like.
From I can’t breathe to I CAN breathe
From I don’t see a way, to oh they see a way…I will lean into trust
From government products to growing real food
From love thy neighbor to that’s my family!
From what's the goal to settle into the uncertainty
From grind to rest
From concrete corporate boxes to dandelion forests
From this money is mine, I worked hard for it to I am stewarding this collective resource and responsibly give it freely so that me and my collective are nourished
From comfort to nourishment
From trauma to resilience
From I am to We are
From textbooks to art
From PHD to ancestral wisdom
From division to connection
From punctuation to free flow
From food for profit to feed the people
From housing for profit to free the people
From working in slavery to showing up for joy
Ancestral Eating
It feels like there is an overwhelming amount of information out there about food and health. However, it can be hard to know what food is actually helpful for which constitutions and conditions. This can be a tough question to answer without the proper understanding of what your individual body needs. That’s why personalized nutrition is so important.
There are various nutritional genetics tests available that can provide high-quality, evidence-based recommendations. Let me know if you would like to learn more about the testing options.
Regardless of whether or not you wish to conduct genetic nutritional testing, you can learn more about your heritage by talking with elders in your family and researching your family tree. Reflect on the foods that your ancestors ate four to five generations ago. What are the whole foods based dishes that your ancestors likely prepared?
If you would like to explore the cookbook I created after researching my own heritage, you can download it here.