"Decolonize Your Diet: Plant-Based Mexican-American Recipes for Health and Healing," authored by Luz Calvo and Catriona Rueda Esquibel, is more than just a cookbook; it's a manifesto, a cultural reclamation, and a guide to connecting with ancestral foodways for better health. The book encourages readers to critically examine the impact of colonization on their diets and to reclaim indigenous cooking traditions. It has garnered attention for its unique approach to Mexican-American cuisine, blending plant-based recipes with historical context and a focus on food justice.
The Premise: Reclaiming Ancestral Foodways
The book's premise revolves around the idea that the diets of indigenous peoples of the Americas were negatively impacted by European colonization. The authors use historical sources to illustrate how indigenous communities were discouraged from consuming their traditional, healthy diets rich in fresh vegetables, fruits, beans, and minimal meat. Instead, they were encouraged to adopt diets high in meat, cheese, wheat, and cooking oils, leading to health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
The authors, Luz Calvo and Catriona Rueda Esquibel, are life partners. When Luz was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, they both radically changed their diets and began seeking out recipes featuring healthy, vegetarian Mexican foods.
According to Calvo and Rueda Esquibel, “real food,” as in fresh, organic, unprocessed ingredients, has healing properties, and their diet is all about maximizing them. The cookbook asserts that the best way to take control of your body and your life is by decolonizing your diet. The introduction lays out their philosophy thoroughly: that the personal - what we put into our mouths - is political and related to what goes on in the economic food system. The cookbook feels like the fruit of third-wave and Chicana feminism, with quotes from Anzaldua’s Borderlands philosophy. The cookbook asserts that the best way to take control of your body and your life is by decolonizing your diet.
The authors advocate for a return to pre-colonial foods, especially those that combat post-colonial illnesses like diabetes. They emphasize fresh, healthful, local ingredients, and reclaiming heritage crops as a source of protection from modern diseases of development.
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Recipes and Ingredients: A Return to Roots
The cookbook features over 100 recipes based on Mesoamerican cuisine and includes contributions from indigenous cultures throughout the Americas. The recipes are primarily vegan or vegetarian, with an emphasis on plant-based ingredients indigenous to the Americas, such as corn, beans, squash, greens, herbs, and seeds. Many of the recipes are vegan or can easily be substituted to become vegan recipes.
Some recipes call for hard-to-find ingredients such as lambs quarters or purslane, and they assume an aptitude for foraging and gardening. The authors suggest perusing Mexican grocery stores for most of the ingredients. For those unfamiliar with ingredients like nopales and hibiscus flowers, the book provides detailed explanations and cooking techniques.
Examples include:
- Kabocha Squash in Green Pipian: Features a sauce made with roasted pumpkin seeds, roasted tomato, and dried pasilla, arbol, and ancho chiles, served over potatoes, green beans, and chayote.
- Aguachile de Quinoa: A refreshing dish using quinoa instead of seafood.
- Mesquite Corn Tortillas: Tortillas made with mesquite flour for a unique flavor.
- Tepary Bean Salad: A salad featuring tepary beans, an ancient bean variety.
- Amaranth Chocolate Cake: A dessert made with amaranth, a nutritious grain.
Some reviewers have praised the simplicity of the recipes, while others have noted that some dishes can be labor-intensive, such as those requiring a pestle and mortar when a food processor could be used.
The Social Justice Framework
Beyond the recipes, "Decolonize Your Diet" is deeply rooted in social justice. The authors place the recipes in the context of the continent's colonial history, cultural reclamation, and intersectionality. They explore how food systems are intertwined with issues of land ownership, cultural preservation, and health equity.
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The authors note: “We are writing a cookbook, but not just for individual cooks…The project of decolonizing our diets cannot be accomplished through individual acts of food preparation…Politically, as Chicanas/os, we believe it is important to stand in solidarity with our native brothers, sisters, and trans siblings across our continent…It is within these broader contexts that we issue the call to ‘decolonize your diet’ with full knowledge that what we need is a dismantling of our entire food-for-profit system.”
They also note that “As queer Chicanas/os, we recognize that the kitchen has been a space to which many women have been confined, yet also one in which many (men, women, and two-spirit) have laid their own claim. Activist meetings should include feeding each other healthy food. If one person prepares a pan of enchiladas, another a pot of beans, another a nopales salad, and another a pitcher of hibiscus tea, then the whole group is strengthened, nourished, and sustained”
The book is a great primer on food justice. The authors are thoughtful, the writing is good and perhaps most important the recipes are simple and delicious. The recipes promote a diet that is rich in plants indigenous to the Americas (corn, beans, squash, greens, herbs, and seeds).
Personal Journeys and Healing
The book is also a personal story of healing. Luz Calvo's journey with breast cancer led her to research the health disparities among Latinas and the impact of the Standard American Diet (SAD) on their well-being. They mention the “Latina/o Immigrant Paradox”, which refers to epidemiologists' observations that recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America tend to have better health outcomes in terms of things like breast cancer, infant/maternal mortality, etc. than one would expect from their socio-economic status, but that subsequent generations (who are more likely to have adopted the Standard American Diet - appropriately acronymed “SAD”) show poor health outcomes similar to other minority groups in the US.
The authors share their experiences with gardening, foraging, and connecting with ancestral foods as a way to heal both physically and spiritually. For Luz, food is a sense of connection, both to mother earth and to her ancestors. The very act of clearing land, touching the soil with bare hands, and planting seeds worked to re-ground her spirit.
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Criticisms and Considerations
While "Decolonize Your Diet" has received widespread praise, some reviewers have raised concerns. One quibble is that there’s no evidence the diet benefits ‘our people’ more than others. Also, calling all Hispanics ‘indigenous’ erases difference & disadvantage. Some critics have pointed out that the recipes may not be entirely authentic to pre-colonial diets, as they sometimes include ingredients or techniques that were introduced after colonization. Others have found some of the recipes to be fussy or requiring hard-to-find ingredients.
It's important to note that the authors do not advocate for a rigid adherence to a specific historical diet. Instead, they encourage readers to use the book as a starting point for exploring their own cultural foodways and making conscious choices about what they eat. They are not calling for the rejection of any food not native to the Americas, nor do they desire to re-create any one diet from a previous era.
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