food diversity and culture in Africa versus America:

The podcast discusses the differences in food diversity and culture between Africa and America. African cuisine is diverse and includes whole grains, starch tubers, beans, vegetables, and fruits. In contrast, American diet is dominated by processed foods and a limited range of ingredients. Minorities face challenges in bringing their cultural foods into mainstream American life, as unfamiliar aromas and flavors are often ridiculed. The host suggests introducing cultural foods into school systems to promote inclusivity and appreciation of diversity. While there is still pressure to assimilate, there is hope that the next generation will be more comfortable embracing their heritage. Welcome to the Nutrition Podcast. I'm your host, Abby, and in today's episode, we'll be exploring how food diversity and culture differs between Africa and America, and some challenges that minorities face bringing their cultural foods into mainstream American life. To get started, let me tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Abby, as I said earlier. I am a senior, double majoring in Biological Sciences and Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems. I know, it's a long major. It takes my breath away every time I have to say the full thing. But I am part of the Agriculture Fellowship, and my postman was over at the SMAPIT office at the URI campus over in Providence. Now that I've done my little introduction, let's get back to my Nutrition Podcast. So, Africa is a home to over 1 billion people across 54 countries, and each country has their unique cultures, traditions, and cousins, as we may know. Now, African dishes make one of the best foods I've ever had in my life, if I say so as an African. Now, most of the foods that we make involve the use of many nutrients, like whole grains, whole grains like millet, tuff. We also use starch tubers like yams and cassava. Now, my mom loves cassava. She's, like, obsessed. Oh, there's also beans. Can't forget the beans and the vegetables and the fruits. So, we most likely tend to have our own little gardener in our backyard, so it's very rare that we go out to find vegetables. And even if we do, it's typically, like, a small amount because we just, like, seed them in a bag, and I find that to be, like, the most helpful thing I've ever seen. Now, let's compare this to American life. A nation full of, what, more than 300 million people. The use of those foods is sometimes called the melting pot because it consists of people of different nations, countries, cultures, and just people of different origins in general. But you wouldn't just know that by looking at a typical American diet, which is heavily featured with processed foods and narrow range of ingredients like corn, wheat, and beef, just the regular things. Now, through burritos, pizza, and occasional Chinese takeout, the U.S. have worked their way into the mainstream of many cultural foods remain in the fringe, such as African food. And I often ask myself, like, why is that? Why are we being treated differently? And it hurts because I remember in high school, I would bring my own African food because I was not really fond of the American food yet, and people would just look at me weird and just make comments like, ugh, what is she eating? That food is so disgusting. And that is so rude. Like, if I were to go and tell my parents that, like, I don't know, they would have lost their mind because my parents are very protective. But it's like, for those that don't have those kind of parents, it's like, what are they going to do? This is how bullying starts and how people get mental disorders because they get bullied, they don't feel comfortable enough to express themselves. So we need to bring alert to those. We need to start introducing cultural foods into our school systems. Like, we can have it once a week. I'm not asking for it to be like an everyday thing, but I think it'll be very beneficial to have it as a once a week, like, dedicated to one country. For example, like, Wednesdays are, I don't know, Jell-O Wednesdays. They're dedicated to people that love Jell-O Fries, that recognize Jell-O Fries as one of their staple foods. But back to my question to why this may be. So I think, in my head at least, I think that for immigrants and minorities, bringing traditional dishes into the cafeteria and workplace is literally not easy, as I said earlier, and that's my story. And I find that unfamiliar aromas and flavors are often regarded as skepticism and ridiculed by kids. And, I don't know, like, the sense of feeling pressure to assimilate to mainstream norms, avoid standing out, it's so much pressure because, like, we should not have to shun other people's food because of our heritage. This is what we grew up knowing. And as adults, we may feel like we must tone down our family recipes, again, acceptance from our colleagues, and just disregard of our heritage. And I feel like we should not have to do that. It's a tough balance and an act between preserving food traditions and fitting into the American culture. Now, these things are always cautioned as an adult. You need to know, like, when to stop. But for a young child, it's like, well, I can't really, they can't really do that as a child because they're trying to fit in so bad and want to be accepted. So the sooner we implement these cultural food into our school systems, the better it'll be. But it's not all bad. The winds are starting to change as America becomes more and more open to new cuisines and respect diversity. And I feel like by learning to appreciate and celebrate all cultures' food for their flavors, ingredients, and nutrition, we can work towards achieving a more inclusive food culture. And I feel like this is important when it comes to nutrition because I feel like more often, at least based on my observations both in high school and college, Americans typically tend to keep to themselves. They don't really like to open up to, like, try new things, at least most Americans. And it's so much pressure that us minorities feel that we have to please everyone else in order to be accepted by society. But it should not have to be that way. And I know it's easier said than done, but collectively, we need to all work together. And I feel like I'm going to reiterate my point again that we need to start implementing weekly cultural traditional foods into our school systems. And I feel like it'll be a great start. And then we can, like, eventually gradually move on to, like, having it more than once a week. College, for example, can be a great place to start this because it's literally the melting pot of America because it's people from different states, from different countries, from different cultures and religions coming together to achieve one goal of education. So I feel like as adults, I know bullying happens, but I feel like we can achieve a greater goal with the college cafeterias because there's so many people that you can't really be rude because someone is bound to speak up. But I have hope that the next generation will be, hopefully, I hope, be more comfortable with who they are and be more comfortable sharing their family recipes and their heritage because it's very important. It's part of who we are. It's part of what makes us unique. Anyways, thanks for listening to my podcast today. And I hope you guys have a great day or night, whatever time zone you guys are in.