hog and hominy soul food from africa to america

Several suggestions are offered regarding how community strengths and beliefs, as well as cultural meanings of food and health, might inform effective healthy eating interventions. Dietary change unavoidably entails cultural loss, thus resisting healthy eating guidelines may signify resistance to racism or cultural dominance.

While culturally traditional eating patterns are often understood as costly in terms of health, it is equally important to understand that adopting healthy eating has costs in terms of family, community, and cultural identity. Participants readily identified what they perceived to be distinctively ‘Black ways of eating.’ Beyond mainstream nutrition discourses about reduction of chronic disease risk, participants identified three ways of thinking about food, health, and well-being: physical well-being, emphasizing stamina, energy and strength family and community well-being and cultural or racial well-being, emphasizing cultural identity maintenance, but also resistance to racism. In addition, research assistants observed a ‘typical’ grocery shopping trip and one family meal. Interviews asked about eating patterns the influence of food preferences, health concerns, cost, and culture perceptions of healthy eating and good eating how food decisions were made and changes over time. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 2 or 3 members of each of 13 families who identified as African Nova Scotian. In this study we explore the meanings of food, health, and well-being embedded in the food practices of African Nova Scotians, a population with a 400-year history in Canada. ‘Failure’ to adopt nutritional guidelines for healthy eating is generally understood as lack of education or persistence of cultural barriers. Most research on food, ethnicity and health in Canada is focused on the dietary acculturation of first of second generation migrants.

Hog and hominy soul food from africa to america