WEBVTT - Bye Bye Diets with Chef Fresh Roberson 0:00:00.920 --> 0:00:03.519 I want to tell you about the day ten years 0:00:03.520 --> 0:00:09.520 ago when I learned how to truly walk again. It 0:00:09.560 --> 0:00:12.039 was a sunny morning, which is a pretty special thing 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:15.880 in San Francisco, only a couple months before I had 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:18.639 made the big decision that I was never going to 0:00:18.720 --> 0:00:23.000 diet again. There I was standing at my front gate, 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:26.840 like I did every morning, having the same thought I'd 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:32.440 had every day since that decision. I thought, I'm going 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:37.240 to try to go for a walk. Not a walk 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:41.599 for exercise, not a walk to burn some calories, not 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:44.640 a walk to punish myself for something I felt guilty 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:50.280 about eating, just a walk before I broke up with 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:54.320 diet culture. I walked quickly because that helped burn calories. 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:57.880 Trees were just my scenery that helped my daily jog 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:02.400 feel less terrible. Basically, the beauty of the world was 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:08.480 just a backdrop for punishment. But that morning, when I 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:12.600 walked out my front gate, I saw the emerald of 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:17.480 the trees. I saw the sparkle of the sun. I 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:22.000 heard the cars, the birds, the far off laughter of 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:28.200 kids playing in Golden Gate Park. That morning, the omnipresent 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:31.520 little voice up in my head, the same one that 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:36.160 had told me for twenty long years that everything every 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:39.680 step I took had to be about finally becoming thin. 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:48.280 It shut up, It just stopped. I can't tell you 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:51.200 how many times I had wished it away in those 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:54.600 early days of my recovery and it had not listened. 0:01:55.600 --> 0:02:00.720 But that day I got my wish. I could see 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:05.400 the world again in all of its technicolor glory, like 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:09.160 when Dorothy gets the Land of Oz. And maybe this 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:12.360 sounds a little hard to believe, but it felt like 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:15.560 I hadn't seen any of that since I was a kid, 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:21.040 since before I learned to hate my body. This moment 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:27.160 was my homecoming. I stepped out onto the sidewalk into 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:30.680 a world I had remade for me, for my enjoyment, 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:34.160 for my delight, for my pleasure, and let me tell you, 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:41.160 it was fucking awesome. Today, I want to introduce you 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:44.520 to someone who works really hard to reclaim the world 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:49.560 for themselves and their community, Chef Fresh Roberson. They are 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:54.200 an activist, a chef, a healer, and a farmer. For 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:56.800 Chef Fresh, the land and the food they grow on 0:02:56.880 --> 0:03:02.480 it is their inheritance. It's part of their homecoming. When 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.280 I asked what treat they wanted to share. While we talked, 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:10.800 they said that they're not really into sweets, but except 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:14.360 I love pecan pie, and that is there is something 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:18.400 really funny about that because like most pecam pie is 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:21.360 mostly sweet. I don't really know how to make sense 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:24.040 to that, but I don't think I have to. Okay, 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:28.120 all right, are you? Are you enjoying already? Yeah? I 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:32.360 just took a bite. Oh my god. Oh and this one, 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:35.080 this one, mind is like a little different. I feel 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:37.240 like I taste this in chocolate or something in mine. 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:40.200 Oh what is what it like? The filling? You know, 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:44.120 it's so shiny and it gets stuck on your fingers 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:47.560 and it's such a you know what I mean. M 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:51.280 I love it. I love that. I mean I remember 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:53.200 I went to this like I was in New Orleans 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:56.160 and they were giving a tutorial on how to say 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:00.680 the camp. They were like, a peacan and is what 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:04.440 happens during is what you need during Mardi Gras? And 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:10.800 then a pecan is a nut. Um. I don't know anyway, 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:15.880 I'm just so happy. Oh I love that because I 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:23.600 definitely say Peacan, but sometimes, but I love that description 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:26.000 of it. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So you don't you 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:28.039 don't know why you just have this like I don't know, 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:30.200 this like connection to peacan pie that you can't you 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:35.159 can't explain that transcends words and reason. Okay, so I 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:38.840 have a connection to pecan pie. I get part of it. 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:43.200 So there's like, growing up, there were certain things that 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:48.360 I do not remember paying for, and pecans were one 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.320 of those things. Growing up, Like my aunt would live 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:55.160 next to feel that had a peacantry and you go, 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:58.680 you pick them all up, you know, and you know, 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:00.880 I would ride with my grand that out and I 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:02.359 don't I don't know. I guess it was like some 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:04.640 man that he worked for he had like a whole 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:07.320 grove of pecan trees, and so I could go and 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:09.160 I could pick as many as I want to fill 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:14.560 a bag. And then I came to college in Chicago 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:19.440 and Evanston, and I wanted to make pecan pie. And 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:22.880 so I went to the grocery store and it was 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:26.240 a bag of peacans, a very small bag of peacans 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:29.520 for nine dollars and ninety nine cents. And I was like, 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:32.320 I'm I'm guess I'm not making pie twenty bucks like 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:36.080 and that just felt so inaccessible to me, and I 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:39.039 was and I think I hadn't thought about that before. 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:42.000 I hadn't thought about, like, you know, that this thing 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:45.640 that was always abundant for me, we had peacans, that 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:48.280 would be this thing that like I would be struggling 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:50.919 to get at that point. And so I don't know, 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:55.160 I just think like that was a big like shift 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:59.160 and understanding for me. And so yeah, but I just 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:09.159 love pecamp huh. Chef Fresh is a food activist in Chicago. 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:15.200 Their life's work is to make good food accessible to everyone. Recently, 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:19.159 they founded a collaborative food project called Fresher Together, and 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:22.560 they provide meals for programs that increase food access for 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:27.200 unhoused people, street youth, and seniors. They're also a highly 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:31.280 trained chef. I've just always known that I didn't want 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:33.680 to work in the kitchen of a restaurant I couldn't 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:36.159 afford to eat in the dining room of And so 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:38.320 a lot of the work I do is just like 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:44.159 rooted in like food and connecting people and access and 0:06:44.400 --> 0:06:49.120 feeding people and taking care of folks. Yes, I kind 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:51.440 of want to dive back in a little bit into 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:55.240 your into your childhood, into your path. So what was 0:06:55.600 --> 0:07:01.680 your relationship to food? Like as a kid. Oh it was. 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:06.279 It was interesting. I think I am the youngest um child, 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:09.640 so I'm the baby. And definitely I grew up in 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:13.240 a household where when I was still very young and 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:16.880 before my um sister moved out, it was like my 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:19.520 sister and my mom, and my experience around them is 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:22.040 that there was always a diet that happened, you know, 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:25.280 and there was always this need to like shift your 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:29.760 by our bodies. And I remember my sister like wrapping 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:33.080 herself in plastic wrap and like I just didn't understand it, 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:36.560 but it was just like very like normative and okay. 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:40.240 And I also learned that like movement and exercise was 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:45.720 also specific to like weight loss, you know. So um, 0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:47.680 you know, my mom would like, oh, oh I need 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:49.760 to lose some pounds, like I'm gonna go walking around 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:52.640 the lake. It was just like very much this piece 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:57.800 that I saw, it's like this bonding mechanism around like, um, 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:00.760 you know, my mom and the and the people she 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:02.720 talked about at work. It was just like they were 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:05.160 like going to the lake to walk around together because 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:07.520 they were in some kind of competition. And so like 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:09.760 then when I look back now, I have a hard 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:13.920 time remembering whether like I was put on diets, like 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:17.200 I was just like expected to be a part of 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:19.680 this diet, or whether that was like a mean of 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:24.760 me feeling connected to my mom. You know, I'm fascinated 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:28.320 by this because what I've found is that generally speaking, 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:33.440 as horrible and life sucking as weight restriction and food 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:38.679 restriction dieting are, we have been socialized to use it 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:44.199 as a way to create intimacy, especially if you're socialized feminine. 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:52.240 There's just something so deep about that. I first met 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.760 Chef Fresh at No Lose, a really rad conference for 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:59.760 fat queer people and allies. At the time. No Loose 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:03.680 for a national organization of lesbians of size, and I 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:06.600 was like, what, there's a group of like fat dikes 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:10.880 that get together, like have a conference. What is that about. 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:13.960 No Lose was the first time I saw a big 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.959 group of fat babes just living their best lives without 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:21.800 any sense of shame. It was like, I could imagine 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:26.439 how amazing a world without fat phobia could be, complete 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:30.840 with pool parties, fashion shows, and a killer snack table. 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:36.720 There would be these like lounges where they would turn 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:41.280 like a hotel room into like just a place where 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:44.600 you could like chill and there was like every snack 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:47.840 you could think of, you know, and so there would 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:52.240 be like bowls of beautiful eminems and cookies and chips 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:55.719 and and like carrots and hummus and like just a 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:59.600 variety of things. You know, that image you get where 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:02.880 you're just laying out and you being fit. Grapes there 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:05.720 were always tripes too, you know. Yes, No, And I 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:10.480 think it's that it's that idea of being welcomed into luxury. 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:12.760 I don't know, it's just it's interesting, right, because food, 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:18.800 for me has long been a big part of asserting 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:23.280 that I am this human who deserves to have these 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:29.160 really pleasurable experiences. And do you remember, like I'm just 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:31.400 thinking about like how I felt like as a fat person, 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:33.800 I was only allowed to eat like steam, vegetables and 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:37.720 chicken breast. Yeah. I think that was just making me 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:43.559 think about like having space to kind of freely eat 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:46.800 however it is that you want to eat. Yeah, And 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:51.360 I think sometimes like I remember like this thing around 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:53.680 being a good fatty and when you're out in public, 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:57.240 you know, like you eat a salad, or you eat this, 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:00.840 or you eat that, and then I remember like having 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:05.200 this shift and also like then being like, well, out 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:08.600 in public, I'm gonna eat a big sloppy burger because 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:12.560 fuck you diet culture, you know, yes, but also it's 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:16.440 exhausting because sometimes I do want to sell it, you know. Yeah, 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:19.840 just always appreciate it that like you can have whatever 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:22.320 you want. If you want some carrots and hummage, you 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:24.680 can have carrots and hummage. And if you want some 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:27.320 donuts and oreos, you can have those two. And like 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:30.080 there's no shame and not one is not right and 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:32.160 wrong and one is not better, and like you know, 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:35.240 you have what you need and what your body wants. Yeah, absolutely, 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:36.679 I mean I think that, Like, I love that you 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:39.000 brought that up because I've been thinking so much about 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:41.360 that kind of this. I don't know what you call it. 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:43.679 And maybe it's like a double bind or something. It's 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:46.400 sort of like, you know, on the one hand, we 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:50.720 are living in these marginalized bodies and navigating the world 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:54.040 and navigating food and navigating how people are treating us 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:57.720 or imagining how they're experiencing us. And then you know, 0:11:57.920 --> 0:12:02.640 sometimes in the empowerment space, it does become about rebelling actively, 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:05.280 which is another form of labor, which is another form 0:12:05.360 --> 0:12:08.880 of of you know, performing the work of being marginalized. 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:10.719 Like I have to like, not only do I have 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:13.600 to navigate all this stuff, I have to control how 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:17.480 you're experiencing me um and whether you're doing it like 0:12:17.559 --> 0:12:19.760 by you know, being quote unquote a good fatty and 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:23.199 like you know, uh like eating salads and doing all 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.679 the things in publicum or you're like, you know, I'm 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:29.720 going to eat the sloppy burger. Um. They're they're sort 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:31.679 of like opposite sides of the same coin. And I 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:33.640 feel it is really interesting. It is something that I've 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:36.160 been thinking so much about, you know, because a lot 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:38.800 of people ask me, I mean, on my Instagram, I 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:42.559 do not like posting pictures of me eating the carrots 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:44.400 and the hummus and the salad, even though that's a 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:47.720 part of a part of my life. Right everyone needs 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.080 food from the ground, right, Um, it's like medicine. But 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:54.720 I do feel this kind of obligation. If I'm going 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:59.600 to be photographing myself and curating an image, it's going 0:12:59.679 --> 0:13:05.520 to about rebellion. It's going to be about destigmatizing the 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:08.040 foods that I as a fat person, I was quote 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.600 unquote not allowed to have. And I do think about 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:16.480 how sometimes this creates a box for me that I 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:20.200 don't feel like I can navigate with full humanity, Like like, 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:22.000 I don't know, I feel like the longer I've been 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:24.320 in fat activism, the more I'm like, Okay, how do 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:29.480 I create texture around what feels good, what I like? 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:36.560 The totality of how I exist without acquiescing to anybody's 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:39.680 expectations except what I need and what I want, which 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:41.920 I think is really I don't know, it's really challenging. 0:13:42.480 --> 0:13:44.720 And I think this is like the trap of the 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:55.280 marginalized person. You know, Yeah, it's totally a trap. The 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:58.679 next thing I'm going to tell you feels really vulnerable. 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:04.440 I've never spoken about this publicly before. For a long time, 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:08.960 that trap, the trap of the marginalized person that Fresh 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:12.719 and I are talking about, was enough for me. It 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:18.760 worked for me. I was mad as hell at diet 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:22.640 culture and fat phobia, so I was content dedicating my 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:26.920 life to showing what a farce it all was by 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:32.320 any means necessary. You tell me not to show off 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:35.480 my body, Well, now all I'm gonna do is where 0:14:35.480 --> 0:14:39.440 the tightest clothes I can find? You say fact girls 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:43.960 are sad, Well, I'm gonna wear the biggest grin all 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:48.760 the time. You tell me I'm not desirable, I'm going 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:53.000 to find the most socially desirable people I can and 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:57.360 sleep with all of them. You tell me I'm only 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:01.440 supposed to eat salad, I'm going to eat all the 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:09.400 chili cheese fries in public loudly. Take that fat phobia. 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:13.920 I can't say it wasn't fun. It was. It was 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:18.480 definitely a necessary part of my particular path to healing. 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:23.880 I have no judgments or regrets. The truth was though 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:31.480 sometimes it was also painful and lonely. Sometimes I just 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:34.600 wanted to wear sweatpants. Sometimes I didn't want to smile. 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:38.360 Sometimes I didn't like those people I slept with. Sometimes 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:43.560 I actually did want the salad. Do not get me wrong, 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:47.480 I still like tight clothes and sacks and eating chili 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:50.120 cheese fries in public. But what I'm saying is this, 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:54.280 one of the biggest things that fat phobia and diet 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:58.479 culture take from us. Isn't just the right to access 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:02.440 a few things. It takes from us the sense that 0:16:02.480 --> 0:16:08.280 there is so much more. There's a whole wide world 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:13.080 that we deserve access to. So the central question of 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:17.160 my recovery has shifted from how do I say fuck 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:21.840 you the loudest diet culture? To what do I want 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:31.440 for me? More on that after the break, we're back. 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:35.720 When we free ourselves from diet culture, we get to 0:16:35.840 --> 0:16:39.520 honor who we are and what we want, and we 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:43.320 can finally start poking holes in the oppressive systems that 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:48.080 keep us feeling trapped, the systems that built diet culture 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:52.720 in the first place. Chef Fresh thinks about this stuff too. 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:57.840 I ask them how they understand the connection. I think 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:03.800 about how all food and our relationship to food has 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:08.640 just been so complicated and has shifted so much, especially 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:12.440 from looking back, and I think about, like, what did 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:16.680 my ancestors eat, what did people eat? And what was 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:21.920 it like before you know that that long ride over here, 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:25.320 and what was what was this land like? And what 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:28.320 does this land grow? And what and what was all 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.960 of that light before? Um, you know, white folks came 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:40.040 and definitely destroyed and shifted um um things quite a bit. Yeah, 0:17:40.200 --> 0:17:45.680 how do you see the connection between our cultural relationship 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:51.080 to food and these very old entities like colonialism, racism, 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:56.720 the history of this culture. Wow? I think, um, I 0:17:56.840 --> 0:18:04.359 think around like colonization and white folks coming and destroying 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:09.640 crops and bringing in the things they were experienced with growing, 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:15.800 and how that shifted these culturally relevant foods that were 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:19.800 important to us. And then like even now thinking about 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:23.440 like how that impacts what foods are like good foods 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:27.320 to eat now or bad foods to eat and often 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:31.639 in the bad category falls these culturally significant foods for me. 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:36.199 That like, I like that my parents and grandparents and 0:18:36.240 --> 0:18:40.760 ancestors have grown up eating and brought over and how 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:44.000 colonization and all of that has like ripped that apart, 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:48.760 so like ripping that food away, but then also like 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:52.720 giving you this like image and body to aspire to 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:56.320 and like don't eat these foods that are culturally significant 0:18:56.320 --> 0:18:59.240 for you. Yes, I mean I want to get into 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:03.480 that that good food bad food binary right like you 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:06.520 were already talking about the good fatty bad fatty. I 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:09.240 feel like it's so connected, right, um, But like this 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:13.240 idea that all the things that are associated with your 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:16.120 family and your lineage, that these things are things that 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:19.080 when you're a person of color you need to push away. 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:22.560 And it's part of this, It's part of a big 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:26.080 system of assimilation. And I think a lot of it 0:19:26.119 --> 0:19:30.240 has to do with like literally disconnecting and unmooring a 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:33.960 person from who they are and where they come from. 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:37.920 You know, growing up, I was raised in an immigrant 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:41.560 household by my grandparents who are from Mexico, and my 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:45.640 grandparents really encouraged me to become, you know, an American, 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:50.320 and they didn't teach me Spanish, and there was a 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:54.280 lot of incentive for me to you know, become educated, 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:58.359 which I think was this sort of code for assimilating 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:01.320 as well as I could into the expectations of the 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:03.840 culture that we were now a part of. And I 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:07.160 remember the tension would show up in all these weird moments, 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:10.560 Like so the story that I was thinking of was, 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:13.359 you know, remembering these moments where I would go to 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:16.480 the grocery store with my grandmother and I would feel 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:19.399 really frustrated with her, and I would just you know, 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:22.000 I would be like, how do you not know that 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:23.480 some of this food is bad and some of the 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:25.360 food is good? How do you not know that you're 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:27.760 not supposed to like we're not supposed to eat hot dogs? Right, 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:31.360 Like everybody knows these things are bad. And then as 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:35.400 an adult, going back and thinking about that moment and 0:20:35.480 --> 0:20:41.120 realizing that in my grandmother's mind, she could not fathom 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:44.640 a world in which somebody would intentionally put food with 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.879 no nutrition into a store where you're supposed to be 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:51.840 able to feed your family. And so she axiomatically was like, 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:55.520 that doesn't make any sense, girl. And I'm coming from 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:59.240 the place of like, I've already accepted this particular system 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:03.119 of food and being in hierarchy as fact, and I 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:06.280 am now treating her as someone who is intellectually inferior 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:08.920 because I've accepted that, you know what It's like, It's 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:10.800 just this kind of really I feel like that that 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:16.200 story speaks to that tension so much. That story reminded 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:19.479 me a lot of like I grew up, you know, 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:23.840 in the South and eastern North Carolina, and I remember 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:27.080 like all of the animal gets used up. You know. 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:31.959 My my grandfather farmed, and so my mom was like 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:34.240 a part of like a certain type of culture and 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:37.040 a certain type of way, and it was just like 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:39.919 you use everything, and so you know, she used to 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:42.959 have these phrases like everything's chicken, but the bill and 0:21:42.960 --> 0:21:45.720 that's chicken still, which makes you eat all the chicken, 0:21:46.119 --> 0:21:48.600 you know, you eat the you eat everything pretty much 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:50.639 except the beak. And I'm sure we can find a 0:21:50.720 --> 0:21:54.200 purpose for the beach too, you know. And the same 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:56.720 it's definitely true of hogs, like we would use the 0:21:56.840 --> 0:21:59.320 whole pig, like I don't even know if there's a 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:02.159 part of the pig that does not get used. You 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:04.440 use all of it, like you use the skin and 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:06.679 the fact you make larm. My mom would crisp up 0:22:06.680 --> 0:22:08.720 the skin. There would be like a whole pig on 0:22:08.760 --> 0:22:11.480 the you know, on the grill, like all of these things. 0:22:11.640 --> 0:22:15.239 And I remember very clearly, like growing up, you know, 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:18.440 when I was in my like advanced courses with all 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:20.800 of these white people, there were certain things that like 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:23.960 they did not eat. You know. It's like, oh, you know, 0:22:24.000 --> 0:22:26.720 a lack of education, you don't eat that part having 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:31.240 this like snotty, disrespectful energy, or like probably my mom 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:33.880 or my family around like oh well they just don't 0:22:33.920 --> 0:22:36.920 know or wherever, you know. And I think it's like 0:22:38.760 --> 0:22:42.840 very much like rooted in like diet culture and like 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:45.720 what we frame it is like nutrition in this way 0:22:45.760 --> 0:22:49.640 of like yeah, well eat the chicken breast, but don't 0:22:49.640 --> 0:22:52.440 eat the chicken thigh, you know, like you can eat 0:22:52.440 --> 0:22:54.800 the chicken breast, but you have to take the skin off, 0:22:54.920 --> 0:22:57.399 or like you know, in these ways that it's just 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:01.200 not very conducive to what it was, or like indigenous 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:04.439 people for like you know, Black folks for like you know, 0:23:04.520 --> 0:23:07.880 Mexican folks to like really utilize and not have any waste. 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:10.960 And so it's so interesting, like how all these things 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:16.400 are so interconnected. When Jeff Fresh was a kid, they 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:19.400 saw how white people look down on the way their 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:24.000 family used whole chickens or whole pigs. But then in 0:23:24.080 --> 0:23:29.159 recent years, using the whole animal has become trendy, and 0:23:29.280 --> 0:23:32.160 just as quickly it could go out of vogue. Again. 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:36.919 It's so arbitrary, and if you think about it, food 0:23:36.960 --> 0:23:41.320 trends tend to exploit the traditions of marginalized people. What 0:23:41.400 --> 0:23:44.840 I'm talking about here is racism, of course, but I 0:23:44.920 --> 0:23:47.520 want to get deeper into something I like to call 0:23:48.200 --> 0:23:57.560 racisms creepy Grandpa colonialism. First, a history lesson colonialism goes 0:23:57.600 --> 0:24:01.600 back a long way. When we're talking about the context 0:24:01.920 --> 0:24:04.800 here in the US, we're talking about a period that 0:24:04.880 --> 0:24:08.119 started in the late fourteen hundreds when imperial powers like 0:24:08.240 --> 0:24:13.520 Spain and Britain violently claimed entire regions without regard for 0:24:13.560 --> 0:24:20.080 the indigenous populations, autonomy, or humanity. Colonizers saw non European 0:24:20.160 --> 0:24:26.320 beliefs as inferior. Speaking broadly, indigenous people, like many cultures 0:24:26.359 --> 0:24:30.480 all over the world, tended to believe the mind, body, spirit, 0:24:30.600 --> 0:24:36.200 and land were all interconnected, dependent on each other. Europeans 0:24:36.320 --> 0:24:41.480 largely believed in mind over matter and human domination over 0:24:41.520 --> 0:24:47.360 the natural world. I see this same worldview living on 0:24:47.600 --> 0:24:52.960 in diet culture. Let me explain, under diet culture, people 0:24:53.000 --> 0:24:56.720 of all sizes and abilities aren't unique beings who are 0:24:56.760 --> 0:25:02.000 inherently valuable. They are unit that we can quantify through 0:25:02.040 --> 0:25:06.280 metrics such as weight and body mass index, for instance. 0:25:06.520 --> 0:25:08.680 It blew my mind when I learned that there are 0:25:08.720 --> 0:25:12.240 people right now in cultures outside the West who have 0:25:12.480 --> 0:25:17.440 never even seen a scale. Under diet culture, food isn't 0:25:17.520 --> 0:25:20.359 something that connects us to the land and to each other. 0:25:20.760 --> 0:25:24.479 It is something we categorize as good or bad and 0:25:24.640 --> 0:25:28.560 quantify through concept like the number of calories, grahams of 0:25:28.640 --> 0:25:34.159 fat and carbs. Diet culture is itself a series of 0:25:34.240 --> 0:25:39.600 traumatic events occurring over and over, each time shaving away 0:25:39.640 --> 0:25:45.400 the humanity of its practitioner a little more so, how 0:25:45.400 --> 0:25:49.679 do we begin to recover? For Chef Fresh, part of 0:25:49.720 --> 0:25:55.000 the healing came from farming, reclaiming a relationship to the land. 0:25:56.080 --> 0:25:58.880 I asked them, what is it like for Chef when 0:25:58.920 --> 0:26:02.400 they're farming? What does it do for them? What does 0:26:02.440 --> 0:26:09.000 that healing look like? For me? It feels like, Um, 0:26:10.480 --> 0:26:14.280