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It’s not a local thing, not a Caribbean thing even. It’s more of a contemporary thing; this craving for brown food.
Everyone succumbs to the smell and crunch of crispy, fried platters of unhealthy greasiness. Every shade is available—golden, tan, pale—however you like it, you can order it, and devour it in a jiffy.
Proteins, battered till they are unrecognisable inside their thick, chunky coats. Tanned french fries glistening from their bath in salt and oil.
Offered a choice between a plateful of colour and one that oozes only brown hues, guess which one will be more often selected? Colour will come from condiments: ketchup, mustard, pepper sauce, mayonnaise, soy sauce, whatever your fancy.
It’s not a local thing, this penchant for meals saturated in oil, but it features heavily in an astonishingly large proportion of our diet. So much so that our figures for high cholesterol, cardiovascular ailments, hypertension and diabetes—the family of non-communicable diseases—are the highest in the hemisphere.
It is a global problem, creating a huge strain on the health sector, and damaging lives in the slow, insidious way that these ailments creep around.
Fast foods, sugary drinks and other highly processed foods were introduced primarily by North Americans, whose imperialistic habits have had them stretching their grubby hands into every one of their colonies of modern times.
The last time I wrote about the prevalence of American fast food chains in this country, I mentioned the drain on foreign exchange and the alarmingly high figures of our food import bill.
Many people responded to the column with remarks that essentially said they love the fast fare, the convenience made it an easy choice for the lives of hustle, and they didn’t feel obliged to support our local eateries, or markets, or farmers, or even caterers.
One man even wondered at how much foreign exchange I spend on my hair and make-up. (I’ve been cutting my own hair for years; in fact, I am now bald.) But the comments just show how indifferent people are to their health, and how unwilling they are to see the seriousness of this pattern of consumption.
Look, I grew up here. I come from a family of Indian gardeners. We ate their produce, chokas of every imaginable sort, accompanied by dhal and rice, or roti, paratha and sada, fried bakes.
Dhal puri was homemade on special occasions when meat was served. Someone (an annoying creature) used to joke that my mother’s Sunday lunch was always macaroni pie, red beans and stewed chicken. Everything was cooked at home, from scratch.
We were four siblings, and buying meals regularly was not something affordable. On the rare occasion when my father would bring home two snack boxes of Famous Recipe chicken, that would be a treat.
And that’s a significant difference in the way people eat now. Meals that were occasional have somehow become staples. We want it all the time.
I was a picky eater, but that has changed substantially. My roots taught me to appreciate the bounty of the land, and my commitment to supporting our local produce and creations is stubborn.
I confess that I am unhealthy in an unpleasant way, but I am not plagued by the types of illnesses that come from poor eating choices. I really believe that the way I cook and eat keeps me going. That’s one of the reasons I constantly harp on the importance of avoiding sugars and processed foods and so on.
Growing up in a Muslim environment, the range of processed meats, the deli-style sausages, salami, hotdogs, and the whole chain was alien to us. I never developed a taste for them.
(Even hamburgers were considered taboo because we thought the name meant pork was involved!) It’s not that I don’t partake, but it couldn’t be described as a constant part of my diet—maybe a couple of times a year, honestly.
My own fondness for cooking has influenced the way I eat. I love to experiment with our local produce and herbs, especially.
A few weeks ago, I bought a good-sized metal sifter cheaply, and I have been using it as a steaming basket. It is a joy for all its simplicity. Its presence gave me a little encouragement to head back into the kitchen, as I had been flagging for a while. It’s the little things, you know; an attitude, I suppose.
I often hear chefs talking about respecting their ingredients, respecting the people who eat their food, respecting the heritage and origin. It may seem simple, or exaggerated, but there is a core that defines how you treat everything—not just food.
The “lowliest” can be elevated by the nature of your attention. A few years ago, a loudmouth was braying about how NCDs in the Caribbean were so prevalent because enslaved people were forced to eat scraps from massa’s tables.
Anyone who knows anything about the culture of food will tell you that the most divine cuisines arose from the peasantry, from those who took discards and combined them with the bounty of the earth to concoct dishes that were nutritious and delicious.
Study our history and discover the sustainable methods that led to our exquisite array of sumptuousness. We ate well, not extravagantly, and necessity led to invention.
Fast food could never be a substitute for what has been our long, lovely tradition.
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
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