African American
Related: About this forumThe Cost Of Being A Nation Of 'Soul Food Junkies'
You are what you eat, the old saying goes. But if you change what you eat, are you fundamentally changing who you are?
That question underlies much of the new documentary Soul Food Junkies, premiering Monday night on PBS' Independent Lens series. Director Byron Hurt's highly personal, often funny film explores how traditional Southern comfort fare became entwined with African-American identity. And it asks whether this food, often loaded with salt, fat and sugar, is doing its consumers more harm than good.
The film was inspired by Hurt's father, Jackie Hurt, who lost his battle with pancreatic cancer in 2007. He was overweight and in poor health.
"When he became ill, I started to examine his relationship to food," Hurt tells NPR's Michel Martin, "and it was soul food he grew up with and loved so much."
It's a love affair with deep roots in the African-American community. As the film recounts, soul food was survival food in the black South. Dishes were inspired by a need to make do with what slaves could access: greens they grew themselves, leftover meat parts like pig ears and feet, and cheap foods like rice and yams loaded with calories to fuel a field slave's work. Some of these recipes had origins in Africa. (Gumbo, we learn, was the West African word for "okra."
And during the civil rights era, it was soul food purveyors like Ms. Peaches of Peaches Restaurant in Jackson, Miss., who fed demonstrators and helped keep the movement going at no small risk to themselves. "Black women have done so much to sustain us as a community and as a culture," Hurt says. "Ms. Peaches is one example of a woman who used her culinary skills and her courage to help feed the civil rights movement."
But even at that time, when places like Sylvia's in Harlem were bringing soul food to a wider audience, some in the African-American community were raising questions about soul food's toll on health. Nation of Islam leaders denounced soul food as "slave food," while comedian Dick Gregory, who became a vegetarian in the '60s, termed it "death food..."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/01/14/169334272/the-cost-of-being-a-nation-of-soul-food-junkies
yesphan
(1,588 posts)Very good program.
Neoma
(10,039 posts)Funny thing about okra. My husband was the first white guy they've (Brown's Chicken) seen ordering it, up by Chicagoland. "Oh yeah, my wife's from the south." *nod, nod*
MADem
(135,425 posts)I don't mind oven baked "fried" food one bit. It tastes fine to me. Pump up the greens, turn down the grease! Cut back on the sugar and the salt--in time it tastes like normal.
Number23
(24,544 posts)Do you put oil in the pan and then bake?
MADem
(135,425 posts)You can put a little oil on the baking sheet so it won't stick, but you're basically breading and baking. Real good stuff can be made with those Japanese panko bread crumbs. Crunchy - good and way better for us than the fryer!
Number23
(24,544 posts)Thanks for the tips!
SemperEadem
(8,053 posts)about as close as she'd go was black eyed peas and greens. She never cooked a pot of chitterlings in our house, but she did do a great job with fried chicken, etc... all that food that goes along with the moniker of "soul food".
I got off of that kind of food 20 years ago and I do believe that that is what has helped me to maintain reasonable blood pressure, no diabetes and my weight at a reasonable level... Now days, I'm more into eating only organic foods, nothing fried, more greens and vegetables. I keep my potassium intake up--I put dulce flakes in my salads, eat seaweed--anything that has iodine to keep my pancreas in good order. I've seriously cut back on processed sugars so my pancreas doesn't go into hyper-drive. It took me about 6 months to get to where I am now, but I'm really glad I turned that corner.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)Last edited Sun Jan 20, 2013, 01:16 AM - Edit history (1)
I posted here, changed the channel, and there it was on PBS. Excellent, excellent documentary. It was funny going from here to there
and this is what I earlier said about soul food:
A recipe for diabetes.
My father-in-law, despite going through complete renal failure, long-term hospitalization for foot wounds that would not heal due to poor circulation, spending many hours hooked up to dialysis machines every single week, refuses to change the way he eats.
and his wife supports him in this. They are both at least 100 pounds overweight.
They are smart, college-educated, well-read people. And so it is.