A Personal Mission Around Food

A Haitian Feast. Fried Plantains and breadfruit in the foreground. Next, imported sausage, potato chips, and fries from locally grown potatoes. Further back, the food includes bean soup, lettuce, and local organic goat.

I've been encouraged not to push American culture too much on people here in Haiti, and for good reasons I think. I've found myself often encouraging people to think about food the way I do, though. Haiti produces a huge amount of wonderful chemical free food, but Haitians eat a combination of Haitian food and imported food, much of which is the lowest quality, chemical laden, food produced by the USA.

I would have been inclined to discuss this very little with people in Haiti, on the grounds that anything I say wouldn't make much difference anyway. But I ended up getting pretty sick for a little while, and as best I can tell the overabundance of white rice, white flour products (spaghetti, bread, wheat) was the sole cause of the sickness, or a big part of it. I've gotten used to eating a good mix of different food groups and mostly avoiding white rice and white flour products, and a quick transition towards a very starch-heavy, low protein diet didn't do good things for my stomach.

So, despite my misgivings, I started refusing food that, by memory, taste and smell, made me expect an upset stomach. And instead I'd tell people what food I'd eat given the opportunity, and what I think about the food available here. I've suggested that people make sure their protein intake is high enough and their use of chemical-laden foods is minimized.

I'm basing what I consider to be good diet choices on the US government's food guide pyramid, the book "in defense of food" by Michael Pollan, and an article in Consumer Reports describing tests for pesticides/herbicides in USA supermarket food. Pollan claims that anything you'd describe as "the latest science about food" is suspect whenever it goes against the grain of thousands of years of human food history and culture. (Essentially, he believes that whenever evolution and culture around food can last for an extremely long time, we can consider it to be better than most alternatives that have not gone through such a rigorous test of time.) Consumer Reports says that tests show elevated levels of pesticides in a great many non-organically-grown products available on supermarket shelves in the US, of which the worst offenders tend to be meat/dairy/eggs, and products where the part people eat is exposed to air, pests, and possibly pesticides (which is not true for oranges, but is true for strawberries).

Despite the poverty in this country, it appears to me that Haitians really do have the possibility of eating a lot more Haitian-made food and thereby reducing their dependence on imports and helping their economy. Local foods include a wonderful variety of different nutrition. Beans, cashews, almonds, peanuts, meat, and fish fill out the food group that seems to need the most attention here. For starchy foods to fill the stomach, plantains, rice, breadfruit, and corn are available. Important foods that are not high in starch nor protein include avocados, coconuts, edible leaves, and various fruits.

It'd be easy to say that poverty is too great a force in this country and it's no use asking people to eat healthy. But I don't really believe that at all. I think that many Haitians may be able to increase what they accomplish based on the changes in the body that eating good food can cause. I suspect the savings in terms of disease prevention and increased productivity due to good nutrition will entirely pay for the increased cost of good food.

Anyone wanna take a trip to Haiti to learn and share knowlege about local food and healthy eating?