"Take care of your families, take care of one another": Indigenist families and foodways

Objective

The purpose of this research was to examine how families and foodways have evolved over time and how they may present promising promotive factors for resilience, health, and wellness.

Background

Because food is central to family, social relationships, and healthy living, Indigenist foodways may promote family resilience and offset inequities.

Method

Pragmatic horizon analysis of data drawn from 31 critical ethnographic interviews on food and family in the Southeast and Northwest, including both urban and rural reservation tribal contexts, resulted in emergent themes related to food and families.

Results

Themes included (a) foodways fostering family connectedness: "The fresh vegetable is how I remember my grandpa"; (b) tight-knit extended families and communities: "The community where I grew up … everybody knew each other, so everybody … pitched in"; (c) family and community celebrations nurturing cohesion: "The family I have, I can always count on. I can trust each one of them"; and (d) families fostering healing: "Sit down and talk to somebody … that you can trust."

Conclusion

Participants explained how foodways promoted family resilience by bringing families and communities together. Indigenist foodways fostered continuity and healing through food preparation and processing and through feasts and gatherings.

Implications

Foodways were described as fundamental to family resilience and community connectedness. Subsistence fostered exercise, eating locally sourced foods, and family resilience. Interventions are needed to promote Indigenist foodway sovereignty while first understanding how culture, history, and food inform wellness and community well-being.

Unprecedented yet gradual nature of first millennium CE intercontinental crop plant dispersal revealed in ancient Negev desert refuse

Global agro-biodiversity has resulted from processes of plant migration and agricultural adoption. Although critically affecting current diversity, crop diffusion from Classical antiquity to the Middle Ages is poorly researched, overshadowed by studies on that of prehistoric periods. A new archaeobotanical dataset from three Negev Highland desert sites demonstrates the first millennium CE's significance for long-term agricultural change in Southwest Asia. This enables evaluation of the 'Islamic Green Revolution (IGR)' thesis compared to 'Roman Agricultural Diffusion (RAD)', and both versus crop diffusion during and since the Neolithic. Among the findings, some of the earliest aubergine (Solanum melongena) seeds in the Levant represent the proposed IGR. Several other identified economic plants, including two unprecedented in Levantine archaeobotany-jujube (Ziziphus jujuba/mauritiana) and white lupine (Lupinus albus)-implicate RAD as the greater force for crop migrations. Altogether the evidence supports a gradualist model for Holocene-wide crop diffusion, within which the first millennium CE contributed more to global agricultural diversity than any earlier period.

Food Security and Food Sovereignty: The Difference Between Surviving and Thriving

Previous research in American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities has documented high prevalence of food insecurity. Yet many AI/AN scholars and communities have expressed concerns that the dominant societal conceptions of food security are not reflective of the teachings, priorities, and values of AI/AN communities. Food security initiatives often focus on access to food and, at times, nutrition but little consideration is given to cultural foods, the spirituality carried through foods, and whether the food was stewarded in a way that promotes well-being not just for humans but also for plants, animals, land, and water. Despite the concerns of AI/AN communities that their needs are not centered in dominant societal food conceptualizations and food security programming, the food sovereignty efforts of AI/AN communities have captured national attention as a solution to modern food system inequities. Indigenous Food Sovereignty (IFS) is a holistic approach to food that incorporates values of relationality, reciprocity, and relationships. Fundamental differences exist between food security and food sovereignty, yet dominant society often reduces IFS as a solution to food security, rather than an entirely different food system that is predicated on values that contrast with that of dominant society. Despite calls to decolonize the definition and measurement of food security, we explore whether fixing the concept of food security is a worthy endeavor or whether efforts would be better spent supporting the resurgence and revitalization of AI/AN food values, food knowledge, and community food sovereignty initiatives.

"I don't remember any of us … having diabetes or cancer": How historical oppression undermines indigenous foodways, health, and wellness

Past and present structures of settler colonial historical oppression aimed to erase and replace Indigenous peoples have profoundly disrupted U.S. Indigenous foodways. The purpose of this article is to use the Indigenous Framework of Historical Oppression, Resilience, and Transcendence (FHORT) to understand U.S. Indigenous peoples' experiences and perceptions of how (a) foodways have changed within the context of settler colonial historical oppression and (b) these changes have affected wellness and cultures of Indigenous peoples. Critical ethnographic analysis focused on data from 31 interviews with participants from a rural Southeast reservation and a Northwest urban context. Results revealed participants' descriptions of changing foodways situated in a system of historical oppression, with themes including (a) historical oppression and changing values and foodway practices; (b) settler colonial governmental programs interrupting foodways through commodities and rations; and (c) changing foodway practices: from homegrown and homemade to fast food and premade. Participants described the aftermath of settler colonial governmental policies and programs undermined foodways, connectedness, cultural knowledge, family and interpersonal relationships, ceremonies, and outdoor activities-all of which promote health and wellness. To redress historical oppression, including settler colonial governmental policies, decolonized decision-making, foodways, and Indigenous food sovereignty are recommended as approaches to inform policy and programming that affirms Indigenous values and worldviews.

'I know what I should be feeding my child': foodways of primary caregivers of Child Support Grant recipients in South Africa

BACKGROUND

Despite South Africa being an upper middle-income country producing enough food to sustain its population, and having an advanced social welfare system, it has high levels of food insecurity at the household-level. Food insecurity is linked to malnutrition and undernutrition in children. This manuscript addresses gaps in knowledge about food choices and practices of primary caregivers of children in receipt of South Africa's largest cash transfer programme, the Child Support Grant (CSG).

OBJECTIVE

The main objective of the study was to explore CSG caregivers' foodways and the choices they made about what food to buy, where to buy it and for what reasons, in Langa in the Western Cape and Mt Frere in the Eastern Cape.

METHODS

We conducted a total of 40 in-depth interviews and 5 focus group discussions with primary caregivers of Child Support Grant recipients younger than 5 years in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces.

RESULTS

Caregivers' food choices were less influenced by cultural practices and personal preferences, than by financial and physical constraints in terms of what and where to access food. Constraints in food choices were chiefly a consequence of the small amount of the grant, as well as a food environment that only availed foods of a certain quality and type in these low-income communities.

CONCLUSIONS

The foodways of recipients of social assistance can only be better aligned with nutrition messaging and policy if there are changes in the monetary value of cash transfers, and the food environments of low-income households which determine access to, availability and affordability of nutritious food. Local informal food enterprises play an important role in the food system of CSG recipients and need to be considered in any strategies that seek to reform the food system of low-income communities in South Africa and similar settings.

Adolescent Levers for a Diet and Physical Activity Intervention Across Socioecological Levels in Kenya, South Africa, Cameroon, and Jamaica: Mixed Methods Study Protocol

Background

The increasing burden of noncommunicable diseases that are prevalent in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is largely attributed to modifiable behavioral risk factors such as unhealthy diets and insufficient physical activity (PA). The adolescent stage, defined as 10 to 24 years of age, is an important formative phase of life and offers an opportunity to reduce the risk of noncommunicable diseases across the life course and for future generations.

Objective

The aim of this paper is to describe a protocol for a study using a convergent mixed methods design to explore exposures in the household, neighborhood, school, and the journey from home to school that may influence diet and PA behaviors in adolescents from LMICs.

Methods

Male and female adolescents (n≥150) aged between 13 and 24 years will be recruited from selected high schools or households in project site countries to ensure the socioeconomic diversity of perspectives and experiences at the individual, home, and neighborhood levels. The project will be conducted at 5 sites in 4 countries: Kenya, Cameroon, Jamaica, and South Africa (Cape Town and Johannesburg). Data on anthropometric measures, food intake, and PA knowledge and behavior will be collected using self-report questionnaires. In addition, a small number of learners (n=30-45) from each site will be selected as citizen scientists to capture data (photographs, audio notes, text, and geolocations) on their lived experiences in relation to food and PA in their homes, the journey to and from school, and the school and neighborhood environments using a mobile app, and for objective PA measurements. In-depth interviews will be conducted with the citizen scientists and their caregivers to explore household experiences and determinants of food intake and foodways, as well as the PA of household members.

Results

The study described in this protocol paper was primarily funded through a UK National Institute for Health Research grant in 2017 and approved by the relevant institutional ethics review boards in the country sites (South Africa, Cameroun, and Jamaica in 2019, and Kenya in 2020). As of December 23, 2020, we had completed data collection from adolescents (n≥150) in all the country sites, except Kenya, and data collection for the subgroup (n=30-45) is ongoing. Data analysis is ongoing and the output of findings from the study described in this protocol is expected to be published by 2022.

Conclusions

This project protocol contributes to research that focuses on adolescents and the socioecological determinants of food intake and PA in LMIC settings. It includes innovative methodologies to interrogate and map the contexts of these determinants and will generate much-needed data to understand the multilevel system of factors that can be leveraged through upstream and downstream strategies and interventions to improve health outcomes.

International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)

DERR1-10.2196/26739

Maintaining Traditions: Food and Identity among Early Immigrants to Upper Canada

A critical examination of the relationships between food and identity is explored among early British and American Loyalist settlers in Upper Canada (southern Ontario) from the late 18th to the late 19th centuries. This research synthesizes zooarchaeological data from the region and interprets these alongside historical texts to address how meat was incorporated into early immigrant diets. Previous scholarship generally agreed that pork played a dominant role in Upper Canadian cuisine and that residents first settling in the area were particularly reliant on wild meat resources. Archaeological evidence suggests this was not the case. Results and discussions highlight the influence of British working-class traditions on Upper Canadian identities and the development of regional cuisines in southern Ontario. Parallels are drawn to anthropological and sociological studies of migrant foodways, encouraging archaeologists to consider the importance of maintaining food traditions when examining early immigrant assemblages.

Comiendo Bien: The Production of Latinidad through the Performance of Healthy Eating among Latino Immigrant Families in San Francisco

Utilizing a bricolage of interactionist cultural studies, ethnic foodways, and situational analysis this paper examines how Latino immigrants, representing six countries and multiple preimmigration class positions, come to perform Latinidad through the lay health practice of comiendo bien (eating well). Comiendo bien was examined through participant observation of 15 families living in San Francisco and 27 key informant interviews. Comiendo bien is a performance that exists through the convergence of multiple identity positions. Latina/o immigrants not only enact the Latinidad in the United States through artistic expression or political strategizing, but also by sharing an idealized practice of healthy eating.

Patates, pain, et lard salé valaient-ils mieux que céréales, bacon et bœuf haché? La diète quotidienne et la santé au Québec, 1861-1941

Cet article expose certains facteurs qui permettent l’amélioration de la diète et identifie des conditions qui nuisent à l’obtention d’une alimentation abondante et variée pour les ouvriers urbains et les paysans du Québec entre 1861 et 1941. Il décrit d’abord quelques défis méthodologiques qui rendent difficile la description de grandes tendances dans l’évolution de la diète et de la santé. Ensuite, il compare les aliments consommés dans trois ménages, selon les données fournies par deux enquêtes sociographiques menées dans Charlevoix en 1861 et à Québec en 1903, et par un article décrivant le travail d’une nutritionniste auprès d’une famille pauvre de Montréal, en 1941. Cette comparaison révèle que les conditions matérielles d’existence et les revenus déterminent grandement la diète quotidienne durant cette période marquée par l’industrialisation et l’urbanisation.

The contribution of urban foodways to health disparities

How do urban food environments produce health disparities? The literature currently emphasizes the etiologic relevance of urban food deserts and their nutritional shortcomings. This paper instead examines the health relevance of foodways--the social dynamics surrounding the production, purchase, and consumption of food. We report on data from 32 photo-elicitation interviews conducted with adult residents of Philadelphia, examining distinct foodways and health concerns that play out in the most commonly discussed retail establishments: corner stores, "Stop and Go's" (delis that also sell beer), and Chinese takeout restaurants. Corner store visits, described as a routinized element of children's school day, were implicated in early life patterning of unsound nutritional choices. Stop and Go's were described as a health threat because of their alcohol sales and tacit promotion of public drunkenness, coupled with accessibility to youth. Stop and Go's and Chinese takeouts both were perceived as generators of violence in part because of on-site sales of alcohol, drug paraphernalia, and illicit drugs. Chinese takeouts also were described as symbolic reminders of African Americans' economic exclusion and as places infused with race/ethnic tension and hostile merchant-customer interactions. Instead of viewing the food environment simply as a source of calories and nutrients, participants discussed the complex social dynamics that play out therein, raising a range of important considerations for (especially disadvantaged) urban residents' safety, physical well-being, and mental health.