NOTE: This was written by a friend of mine and she has given me permission to post it here.
Food Needs No Qualifiers
Food needs no qualifiers. At least, that was my understanding while growing up in a middle class family in Nigeria. My mom ran our household alongside my dad, and she implemented some pretty peculiar rules about food; some of which have stayed with me till now.
In our household, ‘junk food’ was simply called ‘junk’. There was no reason to put ‘food’ right after it because my mom’s understanding was that food was anything derived from our environment that was ingested only to nourish. This definition rendered a term like ‘junk food’ to be an oxymoron. Qualities like taste, texture, smell, et al were simply bonuses that were sometimes helpful for ingestion and other times, not. Any detrimental effects quickly disqualified a substance from being called ‘food’.
In Nigeria, more than half of our diet is traditional; that is, local diets that rely entirely on local ingredients obtained and preserved using traditional methods. These include ingredients like iru (fermented locust beans), garri (dried & ground fermented cassava), efinrin (a variety of the basil plant — almost like a cross between basil and mint), apon (seeds of the African wild mango), millet (an ancient grain), and soko (African spinach). These ingredients are relatively cheap and locally sourced and so consist the bulk of many Nigerian families’ diets. Many of the packaged and processed ‘foods’ are imported into the country making them more expensive, hence, they’re consumed mostly by the more wealthy households. Although some processed staples trickle down to the average Nigerian’s diet, I believe it is a relatively small amount and our active (read hectic, frantic, maniacal) lifestyles tend to make up for it.
In our household, my mom limited how much ‘foods’ like baked beans, spam, canned tuna and Pringles appeared in our diet; usually because of budget constraints, but also because the unpronounceable labels, high sodium and sugar content, and the refined substances, warranted the label of ‘junk’. It was nice to poison the palette with them every now and then, but my mom’s habits conditioned us to crave things like Iyan and Egusi soup, garnished with Eja tutu, as opposed to, you know, pizza dinners. In Nigeria, the local, fresh, traditional foods were cheap, and the packaged, processed, usually imported ‘foods’ were expensive.
On coming to North America a short while ago, I realized that here, it is the reverse.
My Food Re-Education in North America
I’ve noticed locally grown, non-processed products in North America are more expensive so only wealthy families can afford them on a regular basis, while frozen dinners, packaged, and processed ‘foods’, constitute the bulk of what is available at your local grocery store. These grocery store ‘foods’ are what is available and made affordable to the average person in the West.
I also realized that food qualifiers which I had only read about when I was in Nigeria, like, ‘Healthy’, ‘Organic’, ‘Natural’, ‘Genetically Modified’ et al, and the complicated science of sorting through these labels, was the norm for many Americans. These qualifiers in particular confused me. I wondered, “wasn’t food supposed to be, by definition, healthy? If the food wasn’t healthy, why call it food?”
I wondered, “wasn’t food supposed to be, by definition, healthy? If the ‘food’ wasn’t healthy then why call it food?”
I was bewildered by how corporations and conglomerates were entrusted with the responsibility of providing food. Corporations and conglomerates that had proven and stated time and time again, that their hierarchy of priorities might not necessarily align with ours.
I wondered why on earth a substance called ‘fat-free milk’ existed and why my classmates ate only gluten-free products though none of them had Celiac disease. Why did they believe those products were ‘healthy’ and ‘natural’?
‘Food trends’ and food crazes left me perplexed: what was it about my Caucasian counterparts who would ‘discover’ some ‘magic’ or ‘super’ food ingredient and use it incessantly till the pesticide levels for that ingredient went through the roof?
Curiously enough, as I was pondering on all these things, the small amount of Nigerian food and ingredients that I had brought with me to North America finished — after five months of arriving here. Almost immediately after this, I started experiencing some health problems.
…
Before I moved to North America, I had no problem with acne. I had only ever gotten four tiny pimples in my life (they were so rare that I could count them). Shortly after the five-month period, I became plagued with chronic acne, everywhere. Painful pimples appeared all over my face, arms and back. These pimples frequently metamorphosed into painful unsightly boils.
I started experiencing belly bloat, which was a new and embarrassing discovery. I had always been rather slim and fit, yet all of a sudden, my waist filled out, my chin became more fleshy, and my periods became very irregular.
My migraines got much worse; in one episode, I had to be rushed to the hospital and the doctors thought I had a brain aneurysm. This particular fiasco caused me to be less efficient at my term work, which had the typical consequences — almost failing in school.
I’d just started university so like many other students, cheap food was preferred. Still, I wasn’t eating fast foods more than once a week; I simply didn’t have the taste for them thanks to my mom’s indoctrination and only ate them out of necessity. I was very physically active. My grocery bag was always filled with ‘natural’ food and I kept meat products to the bare minimum (not necessarily because I was ‘health conscious’, but mostly because those were the ingredients closest to what I was used to).
After about 6 months of irregular periods (and particularly bad school grades), I went to see my doctor. She put me through a number of tests and concluded that my hormones were all over the place. “Endocrine disruption” she called it. She put me on ‘the pill’ and told me to stay away from fast food. Frustrated, I told her how I fervently detested fast food and after ranting for a while, a look of realization crossed her face. She asked if I was an immigrant, where I immigrated from, and how long I had been here. (She already knew I was an immigrant but this is how she began the conversation.) I told her, and our conversation took a very different turn.
You see, she herself was an immigrant who had had a very similar experience when she moved to ‘the West’ from India about 11 years before. She explained how she was even misdiagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) because of how violently her body reacted to this change in her gastronomical environment. She simply wasn’t used to all the fillers, dyes, added sugars, pesticides, and other endocrine disruptors that are found in ‘food’ products in the West. Just like me, she found the western methods of preparing, packaging, and preserving food to be especially problematic.
As you might have guessed, she virtually saved my life that day. I followed her advice and did a personal study on what I was ingesting. To cut the long story short, I avoid the local grocery store like the plague, and shop at well-researched farmer’s markets, and African, Indian, or Caribbean stores instead. Even then, I’m particularly wary of any food that comes in a box or can. I didn’t go on the pill to regulate my periods but instead, ate food made exclusively from the ingredients I bought from those stores. After about two months, my periods started again and my migraines stopped. After a few months, my acne disappeared (I still have scars). My belly lost some fat but it’s still not as toned as it was before I came to ‘the West’. Rigorous exercise twice a week helped balance out the rest.
This is not to say there is no good food in grocery stores. It’s only the good food is all mixed up with garbage and junk masquerading as ‘food’, in an almost endless parade of labels and qualifiers — ‘natural’, ‘organic’, ‘fresh’ etc. — and it seems the entire industry, society, and even you, is in on the act.
In African stores, things are simpler for me. There are less qualifiers (natural, organic, etc), there’s less ‘food’ that comes in boxes and cans, and the food ingredients are local (African).
I try to follow current food studies now, but sincerely, the impression I get is that many ‘health experts’ don’t even know what they’re talking about. It’s not far-fetched to assume the ‘food’ many of these ‘experts’ were exposed to is what my mother would call junk. That’s why there are so many qualifiers. I think this is why there are so many food trends and there’s so much confusion.
I believe the Western generation that knew what food was — the food many native Africans, Indians, and Indigenous people still eat today — has died out, and the current generation has no reference point.
Slowly, however, sense is being made of the chaos. Europe is starting to catch on and is now conducting more studies on indigenous diets and enforcing stricter regulations. This study is an example. This does not mean adopting fads like the Paleo diet, but acknowledging the damage done by indiscriminate use of pesticides and packaging to make food ‘convenient’, and finding ways to counter that.
I believe the biggest culprit is a culture that prioritizes convenience over quality nutrition
So many people have bought into, and are in fact, comfortable, with the rhetoric that all the fillers, pesticides, sugars, coagulants, dyes, and preservatives found in the ‘food’ sold to them, are perfectly harmless, or at least, not doing as much harm as they might think. The cancer, depression, and obesity rates continue to skyrocket while ‘food’ industry lobbyists make a living. And we are all complacent as long as we continue to prioritize convenience over balanced nutrition.
I’m no expert. All I have is my experience and the experience of my Indian doctor, which was a very clear ‘before and after’ scenario where the only thing that drastically changed were the ingredients for our food.
To navigate this western food wilderness, my rules are simple:
- First, if I can help it, I buy produce anywhere but the grocery store, preferring farmer’s markets where I inquire about the pesticides used and I’m certain the ingredients are wholesome. If I’m in a place where this isn’t possible and can’t avoid grocery shopping, then I the best produce I can get for my money, little meat, and buy full-fat milk & plain yogurt. I thoroughly wash the produce before I eat. (Bolded for emphasis)
- Secondly, I hardly ever get anything that comes in a jar, box, or can (this might be hard for Westerners to imagine or even try, but anybody used to garri will find this rule easy and perfectly reasonable). I’m wary of packaged foods because the process of harvesting a fruit or animal product and packaging it in such a way that it’s aesthetically pleasing and can stand the rigors of transport, usually involves chemicals that I want nothing to do with. If I must get something packaged, then the ingredients typically should be countable on two hands and pronounceable, e.g. water, vinegar, oil, etc. This naturally disqualifies many types of pasta sauces, peanut butter, ketchup, salad dressing, frozen dinners, etc.
- Thirdly, I cook my own food. From scratch. Almost always. Regardless of the time constraints of being a full-time engineering student, with work on the side, I make the effort to cook most my meals. I set aside time on the weekend to cook some staples in bulk: jollof rice, grilled chicken, mixed vegetables, and a couple of side sauces. If for any reason I can’t pack something for lunch that day, snacking on fruits, nuts, and dark chocolate can keep me for most of the day before heading home. I understand this might be difficult to implement so some other things I’ve found helpful are:
- I’ve found it helpful to cut red meat down to bite-size cubes or chunks and use as a garnish, as is done in many Nigerian meals. This helps to control the portions of red meat in my diet.
- Also, on weekends I cook ‘one-pot’ style dishes (e.g. jollof rice) in bulk as wholesome carbs and eat them with salads, different side dishes or proteins throughout the week. This helps save time and energy. Some of my go to one-pot dishes are fried rice, jollof rice, jollof pasta (same mix as jollof rice but with pasta), shrimp & herb couscous, and potato or yam pottage
- As a bonus, most Nigerian food is spicy, or at least, savory. Never sweet! Spicy food speeds up metabolism. So more often than not, I use spices and savory elements to season my food as opposed to using sugar and salt. This further reduces my exposure to added sugars and sodium in my diet.
Understandably, the third rule might be the easiest for my Western counterparts to implement, and I think it might have similar beneficial effects as all three rules combined. Cooking your own food might not be the most convenient way to monitor and learn about what you ingest, but I definitely believe it is the best way.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this, it’s this: when it comes to food, there’s no place like home, and home is ultimately where you make it.
