Cultural Eating Habits

This article is about a Puerto Rican woman who found out that she was at risk for some health issues like heart disease.  She notes that it is not part of her culture to eat certain types of healthy foods.  This is an issue that hits close to home for me, and many other I know.

As an African-American, and a member of a 5-person working class family, I grew up eating what I will call "not the best" foods.  We ate a lot of pre-packaged foods, a lot of pork, a lot of cheaper cuts of meat, canned vegetables, and indulged in our favorites like mac and cheese what I would say is too often.  Not to say that I grew up on Pop Tarts alone; my mother was a stickler for presenting a square meal to us at dinner-- protein, starch and vegetables every night.  But those things weren't always fresh or homemade, only to the extent that time and income allowed.

I venture to say that this is not unlike many Americans.  Culturally, minorities tend to lean towards these types of foods for a bevy of reasons including access, income, tastes and time.  And also because these types of foods that are bad for you tend to also be very good, in their own kind of artificially flavored, high fructose corn syrupy, sodium packed sort of way. 

Today, many of us know much more about how to choose healthier foods but there is still that pull towards what our parents and families have done for years that is hard to let go of.  I can't lie....I gets DOWN at Thanksgiving! Mac and cheese, turkey with gravy, stuffing, the works.  But the rest of the time I try to limit my beef consumption, skip meat at least once a week, eat only lean meats, and eat plenty of fresh fruits and veggies with a huge side of water.  In my opinion, choosing a healthy life doesn't mean letting go of some of the cultural food traditions that are not so good.  It just means limiting those indulgences; plus, when you have them they taste soooo much better!

Powerful Cheese??

Cheese...powerful? And we're not talking smell here.  Cheese is not one of those foods you think of as having any special "powers" besides making your fat and clogging your arteries, right? Well, it seems that cheese has some hidden benefits that give you all the more reason to enjoy some on....well, anything really. Cheese is that good.

365 days later...A Piece of Cake

October 11, 2010

October 11, 2010 was the celebration of my sister-in-law's wedding or walimah anniversary.  (Congratulations to Hannah and Jamaal!) For me, that means it has been 365 days since I made my very first wedding cake!

I was nervous, sweating, cursing and everything in between in preparation for this cake.  I was pregnant with Faj and had swollen feet, among other things. A few times I had decided that I would just give up, why in the world would I sign up for this?! Was I crazy? Insane, or just self-loathing all together? Sure, I liked to make cakes but for fun, for friends and family.  Up to this point I had only made old-fashioned layer cakes, cookies, etc.  But I decided to take up the challenge.  Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I'm not one to back down from anything, especially not 10 pounds of flour.  When I changed my mind to think of the entire cake as three smaller cakes, which I made all the time, I could take a deep breath and dissect this monster one tier at a time. 

So, you got me, this post is not really about cake (although I did my damn thing on the cake! ;) ) It's about changing the way we look at challenges.  Regardless of what the challenge is, no matter how daunting and towering it seems, even the most difficult of goals can be attained.  The other day I was watching E60 with Rhymes with Rasheed, and we saw the story of a young man who was beaten up by another so badly that he had regressed in speech, movement, and function to almost nothing.  He couldn't move his limbs, walk or talk at one point; but he overcame that barrier and right before the show aired he had passed the CPA exam.  I am living this situation with my own mother, who is the survivor of three strokes and has recently gained movement in the affected side of her body. This really made me think that what I'm facing is nothing! Many people face challenges that are different or may seem more difficult that mine and yours.  But my challenges are my own, and if he can take THAT challenge on head first then I can face what I need to face, and so can you.

Do you need to change your diet? Do you need to exercise? Do you need to beat depression, or an eating disorder? Are anger issues hurting your relationships with family and friends? Do you want to learn to cook, or speak a language?  Are you trying to finish school, or adjusting to your children or being a stay at home mom?  Is it an addiction, or abuse or stress from school or work that are holding you down? Did you lose a boyfriend, spouse, loved one or child? All of these things are difficult, but we have to face them.  I have learned that when bad times and difficult choices come our way, we either deal with them in one capacity or another, or we die.  That's it! You handle it or drop dead; as long as you're breathing, life goes on! What matters is how you handle it, because that will affect the rest of the life that comes after, so let's make it good, eh?!

Like that wedding cake, it may seem like your vision is clouded with flour dust, and the path is made slippery by the goo of cracked eggs as you make mistakes along the way.  But if you see your goal like that same wedding cake, layer by layer, then you can make it to what you want.  I got over my fear of taking my skills to the next level, and have made many wedding cakes since then.  When Hannah told me she was cutting the cake, and sent me this pic I felt so proud and happy that I was able to do something wonderful for her and Jamaal on that day, and again on Monday (the cake was still tasty!) And 365 days later, I can honestly say that I am in a better place than I was then in terms of my confidence in myself and my abilities.  I have a ways to go, but looking back it seems like facing my challenge was a piece of cake!

365 days later!

On Former Favorite Things: Pork on my Fork

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As a Southerner, I was raised on the pig.  Bacon, pork chops, cracklings, BBQ, and my Nana's Thanksgiving Ham (it's all capitalized because Pauline Hilton's ham IS a proper noun, believe me!) are just a few of my former favorite things.  Yet, as an adult I do not eat pork or pork by-products. At all.  Ever.

Since I live in North Carolina, I know that may be hard to believe.  But I am a Muslim, so it's part of my way of life but it's also a personal choice.  I became Muslim in 2006,but I had stopped eating pork when I first began studying Islam in 2005. Except that one time I ate pepperoni pizza during Ramadan at my cousin's birthday party but that's another post for another day.  Generally speaking, I haven't eaten pork in nearly 6 years.  I say all of this to say, if any of you out there are finding it difficult to adjust to new ways of eating or new foods, I FEEL YOU!  To completely eliminate something you have eaten all your life (and love) is not easy.  But if you make up your mind, and don't make failure an option you can do it just like I did.  I pledged my heart and my life to Islam, so failure at this whole "no pork on my fork" think was not an option.  Thankfully, I have been fairly successful at adopting the same discipline I adopted with not eating pork to a more healthy diet in general. 


This doesn't just apply to pork.  Maybe it's sweets that you need to limit, or to stop drinking soda.  Or maybe you need to adopt a low sodium diet, or eat more vegetables.  Whatever it is you're trying to do believe me, I'm doing it too.  At 24, I'm doing all I can to save myself from the health problems I see in some of the people I love dearly so I am trying my best to eat all things in moderation.  Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose but at the end of every week I can usually say I ate a lot more good stuff than bad stuff.  Hippocrates said " Let food be your medicine"; Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said that we should eat 1/3 food, 1/3 drink, and save 1/3 for air, but most of us are "digging our graves with our teeth" instead.  Especially African-Americans, who are overrepresented among those with diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart failure, and cancer.  

We don't have to kill ourselves with food!

Recently, I was in the grocery store and a lady looked in my cart and asked me if it was difficult to eat healthy.  First of all, I was extremely pleased with myself that someone could look in my cart and only see health foods like whole grain organic cereal, lean proteins like beef and turkey, fresh and frozen vegetables and nuts and fruits for snacks. Secondly, I told her what I will tell you all now: Exercising discipline over yourself to break a habit is rarely easy, but usually worth it.  In the case of food and diet it involves changing your mind, and letting your brain do the decision making and not your eyes (if we really listen to our stomachs, they don't usually lie!).

So yea, you will see me post things that I bake.  I am human and like I said, I want to adopt a healthy lifestyle which includes enjoying certain foods in moderation.  But will I strive to eat vegetables at every meal, and then some? Yes.  Will I only stock my cabinets with foods that I can feel good about eating and feeding my children? Yes! And will I give up, even when I've had a cookie (or two)? Absolutely not, and you shouldn't either!

Weigh-Ins, Scales, and the Like

I recently purchased an audio book version of Woman, Food and God by Geneen Roth.  I recognized this book from hearing about it during Oprah's book club, and thought that I would give it a listen to see exactly where she was going with this whole thing.  Considering that I totally love cooking and food, sometimes I hate it just as much, I thought it might be worthwhile.  So, I plugged in and listened to about half of the book before I got off track with it.  But I did learn some things from the first half.

1. I am (and you are too!) much more than a number on a scale. 
Since I decided to get really serious about losing weight in 2008, I have been obsessed with my weight.  There have been plenty of days when I weighed myself three or four times a day, sometimes more, and used that as a determinate on what I ate and how I felt.  If the number was high, I didn't eat much to make it lower and I felt bad.  If the number was low, I monitored my eating and if it went up later then I felt bad.  Then if i ate something anyway I just felt bad.   (Notice a pattern here?)  I would wake up in the morning, look at the number on the scale and decide if I deserved to eat that day.  Sounds crazy, right? Well, it is crazy.  I was directly equating numbers with other information like whether or not I am a good person, as though if I wasn't completely focused on losing the weight then I wasn't worth my weight in beans.  I was so scared of gaining the weight back that I couldn't see what was happening.  The reality of the situation is that how much I weigh (or don't weigh) doesn't make me any nicer, or more giving, or a better wife, mother, sister or friend.  So I took a step off the scale, and promised myself not to weigh myself more than a few days a week.  So far it's working :) Some days I even forget about the scale, as I trip over it on my way to the bathroom.  And that feels good.....like, crazy good, to not wake up fearing *cue the horror music* THE NUMBERS!.  Everyone deserves to eat. That includes you and I, as well as other humans, plants and animals on every square inch of God's green Earth. So for myself and for you all out there, I say WE ARE MUCH MORE THAN NUMBERS ON A SCALE.   I only very recently discovered that pounds are not a measure of what I mean to myself or the rest of the world, so I'm going with that right now.  Will you come too?


Check back for #2. Food is not THE issue, but it's totally AN issue.