VivirLatino

A lot of Latin@s deal with a lot of anxiety around their bodies and weight. On the one hand, various diseases related to what we eat (such as heart disease and diabetes) hit our communities very hard–on the other hand, what we eat is greatly influenced by various factors of violence like colonialism, poverty, racism, sexism and capitalism. And through all this, you have various institutions (such as: schools, welfare offices, and media) using shame as a way to demarcate the borders between “good deserving citizen” and “bad illegal alien.”

There is no doubt that the food chain of many, if not most, Latinas in the US has been severely traumatized: capitalism has long since replaced the nutritious corn and beans that used to keep many of us alive with canned beans mixed with hydrogenated grease and white flour tortillas.

And it is through this traumatization of our food chain that many Latinas become traumatized. We are too fat, our kids are too fat–and as a result, we are “sucking money” out of an already overburdened health care system. One that can’t afford to take care of “good deserving citizens,” much less fat diabetic “illegals.”

Latinas have lost their children because traditional diets (i.e. breast feeding) were deemed “bad” for their children by the same doctors that no doubt wonder why all the Latin@ kids are so fat 8 years down the road.

And then along with that–there are the 2nd and 3rd (etc) generation kids that have never eating a real traditional meal–and doesn’t even know simple things like “tamales were never eaten every day, much less from plastic bags.”

In short, the longer we live in the US, the more pressure there is to adopt a non-traditional diet–and yet, paradoxically–the more likely we are to become sick (and please note, I don’t regard fat as a sign of illness) and die before we are ready to.

So, for this Recognizing Women’s History Month post, I am pointing to a group of books written by journalist and scholar, Michael Pollan, about the food chain in the US. The books are:

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual

There are several books (and amazing zines, namely Noemi Martinez’s vegan zines) written by people of color that detail how to “eat right” from the point of view of people of color. And I’m going to try to highlight some of those at a later time. But I wanted to focus specifically on these books by Pollan because he had the time and resources to examine from an extremely specific and nuanced historical perspective how the food chain in the US has become what it is today.

For example, one of Pollan’s major arguments is that the ill health of most living in the US starts with the overproduction of corn by US farmers. This corn is not the healthful, life-giving, site of the beginning of the world corn that many of our abuelitas would’ve recognized as corn–but over processed over modified corn that has been blasted with chemicals that were originally intended to be used in chemical warfare.

Pollan takes the reader through the history of corn in the US–from pre-colonization all the way through the current use of corn in nearly every single form of processed food. He makes us aware of how the type of corn we’re ingesting through our processed foods (and even many of our whole foods!) affects our bodies, our eating habits, and even our animals. Most importantly, he shows how it is companies and corporations that are ultimately making the “bad food choices,” not those who are buying the food–and that those corporations are doing everything they can to hide this fact. In other words, if they can play on current anti-immigrant hysteria to “prove” that fat Latina mothers are just bad mothers feeding their kid’s shit–then nobody is going to notice that there is massive amounts of money being paid to the FDA and Congress so that those corporations have the right to say that Lucky Charms has health benefits.

I think that all this information (which can be quite a dry read, quite honestly), is SO important for Latin@s to know about. Many of us are organizing against the proliferation of fast food chains and dependency on gas stations for our grocery stores. More often than not, we lose those battles. Detroit, for example, is notorious for its lack of grocery stores.

Knowing exactly how the structure works will allow us to readjust our methods of fighting the structure. It’s more complicated than “eating right” and “get a grocery store in our hood.” The entire food chain in the US is almost completely destroyed–and maybe, for example, we should be organizing ways to fix the food chain along with or in luei of quick fix solutions like “take a class on how to eat” or “get Wal*Mart to settle close by.

But most importantly–these books show very clearly how to make wise food choices when we all exist in system that wants us to do anything but that. Notice–the point is not to “eat right.” But rather instead–to recognize that the food chain in the US is chocked full of tricks and schemes that are nearly impossible to navigate without a little help.

And how many times do we Latin@s ever get that help rather than judgment and neglect?