Food & Life: What to Eat, What to Cut

I’d been thinking a lot about various things, and how a common theme with just about every culture, in every country, life revolves around food. Whether it’s celebrating a wedding, birthday, graduation, birth, holiday, or how about ‘just because’, and even mourning a loss, we use food to bring people together. And, lets face it... We all have our favorite “go to” food, that we look for at any gathering, and it differs depending on the cultural foods we’ve all grown up on. It’s fun to go to these, because we all have our special foods, and we like to try other people’s. Even if we bring what we love, we also like to have other cultural foods.

 

 

With rising obesity and Type 2 diabetes on the rise, so many of us are trying to be better about eating healthier, and, sometimes, we fall short, and could use the help of a Registered Dietician or a Nutritionist. I remember so many times, that, these people are so happy to give out good tips of what is better than others, but, my problem? It revolves too much around your standard Middle America type foods. Even when you go to these offices, it seems as if 99% of the people are Caucasian, middle class, and very plain in what they offer... From my own experiences, even the ones that are Hispanic or African American, they are usually the receptionist, not the nutritionist. Not much help.

So, this prompted me to write to these places, and I’ll be sending these letters off when the weather is good enough to make that trip, or, when I’m going out on errands, anyway. Here are the places I’m writing to:

 

This is an agency where dieticians and nutritionists go to become members of their profession, or might be registered through this place. So, sending here is targeting the very people who are taught how to educate us, as the general public about health and nutrition:

National Agricultural Library; Food and Nutrition Information Center; 10301 Baltimore Avenue; Beltsville, MD 20705-2351.

 

 

The other agency I wrote to is the USDA, with their FNS office, since these are the people in charge of the farming practices and whatnot, in hopes that they will help coordinate the types of foods that are pushed for healthy eating.

United States Department of Agriculture; Food and Nutrition National Office; 3101 Park Center Drive; Alexandra, VA 22302

 

 

Here is my letter, and if you want to send one, just correct the spacing issues to make sure that it flows better. I really think that these agencies need to remember that we come from so many different cultures, that they need to incorporate ethnic foods. Those of you who know me know that I’m just as passionate about serving tasty food that is also good for your health, as I am about child advocacy. I hope that this helps, because aside from making my cause successful, I’d love to work with these people. In the mean time, please write them and let them know that you want them to incorporate healthier and authentic versions of ethnic foods, so we can enjoy our tacos, sesame chicken, and more, not just poached fish & chicken with mild flavorings. You may want to add soul food and Cajun food to your list of must haves, too, since those are popular foods, too, along with southern recipes.

 

January 9, 2017

My Full Name

My Full Address

My City, State Zip

My Phone Number

Agency Name

Specific Office

Full Sending Address

City, State Zip

Dear Food Information Manager;

I am writing in regard to my experiences and concerns with the various people I have seen over the course of years, regarding the advice and teaching that I have received from various Registered Dieticians and Nutritionists.  I’ve had several, not only for myself but for my son as well as accompanying others to their appointments as well.

With the growing concern with childhood obesity, the consumptions of highly processed “easy” food, and the lack of physical activity, it is good to push programs that help people find ways to eat healthier, to consume foods that are nutritious and delicious.  Nutrition rich food that tastes good starts with fresh ingredients.  I think we can all agree on that.  My son and I both have a chromosome animally called 16p11.2 micro deletion, which increases our appetites higher than the normal person, while slowing down our metabolism lower than the average “couch potato”.  This makes it very difficult to keep up with the average expectations of those who are actively losing weight under the supervision of our doctors, in conjunction with staff who guide us in our weight loss journey by helping to teach people how to make better decisions with their food choices, for better health in the long run.

While I find these to be helpful, here is my problem.  Every single nutritionist and dietician that I’ve been to, has been the typical Caucasian person, most likely from a middle America background, whose expertise is in the usual, run of the mill white picket house meals.  While this may be good for those who eat this way, it does not help those of us who come from a multicultural background.  The part that is a bit disturbing to me is that statistics show that the African American and Latino communities seem to have the most severe cases of obesity and the related consequences of their weight such as various cardio-vascular and respiratory issues.  Add in the Asian population from S.E. Asia, and all three cultural groups are at high risk of type 2 diabetes, many who come here as 1^st generation immigrants, may be unfamiliar to American foods, and because they are poor, may not be able to afford certain types of food.  This also affects the following generations, if they are also unable to learn “American cooking”.  So, in a nutshell, we are asking them to give up all of their home foods, which are also comfort foods, which rarely produce positive results.

We can see in various statistics, that, minorities, especially those who are the poorest and meekest, are usually the ones with the highest failure rates of being able to eat a healthier diet.  When we look at what the restaurants serve, it is true, that the meals can be carb/sugar heavy.  This is typically not the way these foods are home cooked.  I found this especially true with not only my own heritage of Japanese cooking, where what we see in Japanese restaurants is rarely what is consumed daily in people’s own homes, but, Chinese foods as well, as I’ve experienced at a friend’s, whose family came here to the U.S. back in 1983.  What you see at “traditional restaurants” in these Asian style meals is not the traditional meal at home, yet, this is what I hear dieticians and nutritionists caution against, with eating many different types of ethnic foods.  Comparing any ethnic meal, whether it’s Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, or other, is like saying that Perkin’s or Denny’s is the same as what is eaten in every middle class, Caucasian homes.  We know this is not true, when we consider foods such as homemade chicken noodle soup vs. what you get at these restaurants, and the fact that Denny’s adds bacon to about 60% of their foods.  It’s this same logic that applies to ethnic foods, as well.

Here is another frustration in dealing with dieticians and nutritionists; while they are happy to let you know how to cook healthier, they are absolutely clueless as to how to adapt authentic ethnic foods to make them a better healthy choice.  One told me to “just add a tablespoon of salsa”, when I asked how I could make Spanish rice be healthier.  When I inquired as to when to add it, she looked confused, and just suggested that I add it to plain steamed rice on the table, after the meal was dished out.  I tried explaining that this defeats the purpose of having hot, steaming rice, because if the salsa came from an open jar, it would have come out of the refrigerator, and this would make the rice on the plates, cold.  She then got quite snippy, and said, “Then just add it to the pot”.  So, I asked about how to adjust the recipe, since the amount of water to rice has an impact on the texture, and one tablespoon isn’t enough to make a pot of rice for everyone, and she got quite a bit more annoyed, in a demanding question, “How am I supposed to know”?  Well, I would expect that when dealing with a multicultural society, and you’re trained and registered to give advice about healthy eating, that answers like this are important to answer, rather than telling people to not to eat their own food, and to eat Middle American poached chicken for white families who have lived here for the last 10 generations or more.

This makes it look as if the medical authority is discriminatory against ethnic people, because often, other family members are not willing to stop eating their cultural foods, and expect that working mothers have time to make 2 separate meals while also taking care of a whole family, often while also caring for elderly relatives as well.  This, on top of the fact that discrimination is all over, from quality healthcare in general that is accessible, quality education, and how our black and Hispanic populations are arrested at higher rates and longer incarceration rates than our white population for similar/equivalent crimes, just comes across as if other people aren’t as important than the average white American.  We must remember that we all came from immigrants, and each of our ancestors brought over a part of their heritage, which includes the types of foods that are eaten.  As people, each culture shares that common theme of meals to celebrate family, mourn at funerals, time with friends, and more.

It is my hope to be able to work with different agencies to take authentic recipes and make them healthier, without compromising the integrity of the flavors.  It’s issues like these that I chose International Relations as a major, even though I did get into healthcare for a while.  My passion is food, and my dream is to feed the planet. 

Thank you for your time in reading this, and I hope to hear from someone soon, in hopes that we can make an impact on celebrating the cultural diversity in our fine country by making healthy eating for everyone, to which I’m sure that many people would enjoy, since so many of us love Italian, Mexican, Asian, and a wide diversity of foods.  So, let us embrace that, rather than generically water down ethnic foods to Betty Crocker or Hamburger Helper standards.

Sincerely,

Lika Saliscente-Phipps

Founder of Youth Voice Initiative