Kalalea: Wondering “Why I Ate That”
It’s all about food, says Kalalea, a one-time restaurant owner, video-game maker and passionate advocate of the power of food to heal, to grow and to bring people together. Pittsburgh-born and raised (with a detour to Hawaii), Kalalea discovered the social and healing power of food as a college exchange student in the south of France, living with a French family.
“My French dad loved to cook: he introduced me to quality food, real food, I watched him cook, and learned about spices and herbs. That changed my life.”
After a string of jobs in digital media, Kalalea was living in New York and became a yoga teacher and nutritionist, eventually taking a whole foods culinary program. The realization that food could change her life — and the lives of others — led to a new goal in life, using food to transform not only people’s diets but their personal relationships as well.
The next step was opening a whole food cafe and winebar in the then-un-gentrified neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Three years of non-stop work was enough, and she moved her enterprise to the web. Now, with a blog and site called “Why Did I Eat That,” she’s enrolled in the entrepreneurial journalism program at City University of New York, to hone her media skills and build the brand.
I sat down with Kalalea to talk about her dreams
What do you hope to get out of your time as a Tow-Knight Fellow here at CUNY?
I want to be a storyteller — do audio and video storytelling, about my relationship with food and how I’ve used my relationship with food to change my relationships in my life. When I needed to have more discipline in my life, I forced myself to cook three nights a week to create more discipline in other parts of my life. I thought, how do people successfully have brands and make a living from it — how can I grow “Why Did I eat That?” That’s the question I ask myself and a lot of people can relate to that.
What do you hope to achieve with your media business?
I want to inspire people to have healthier relationships, starting with their relationship with food and educate their communities about the power of nutritious food, and whole food. I want people to have stronger relationship to food that grows from the earth and not processed food.
I’d like to create a multi-platform experience for people where they engage with one another: storytelling, video series, a book, a podcast, an app or two.
The current divide in American society seems almost unbridgeable. But you’ve said food can be the great unifier. How does that work?
If you had all these different types of people come together in a communal kitchen sharing a meal, or even cooking a meal together, and introducing the others to your type of food, asking what you ate as a kid and what your mom cooked, it’s a way to connect. We’d all lead healthier lives and realize that we have more in common than not. We can see things differently but we can share a meal together and become closer and more compassionate — that might not happen over a drink or in a boardroom but once we share food or even cook a meal together the possibility of our connection is huge. I invite people for dinner all the time — it’s allowed me to have a really close community, and I want other people to have that.
