…used to be a feminist issue. Now the BBC has found another reason for it – slavery.
Wouldn’t ya know it – when those darned Yanks are not bombing innocent kite flying Ba’athist secret police, their slaving past is apparently making people fat:
“Back in the 1850s more than 100 slaves worked the cotton fields on the 1,250-acre Rosswood farm, one of many such plantations along the Mississippi Delta.
Then the working day was long and arduous, the food basic but filling – gumbos, or stews thickened with okra, cornbread, beans and fish from the Mississippi.
Dr McCune’s grandfather was born into slavery. His father saw mechanisation make redundant the harsh old jobs in the cotton fields.
But the doctor says the dietary legacy of those times persists.
We want our schools and our communities to buy into the idea that we must change our environment, but that will not happen overnight.
“The taste of the individuals in this area comes from their experiences during slavery, the food that is eaten is of poor quality and rich in calories.
“The food that is eaten is highly satisfying, highly filling but the food… that they eat in general is not balanced.”
Something is slightly odd in this article – if the diet was “gumbos, or stews thickened with okra, cornbread, beans and fish” (sounds like healthy unprocessed food) 150 years ago, and the diet now is Burger King (implied by photo) and “mud pie, … cajun fried pecans, sweet potato crunch, … fried shrimp and catfish” (which does not sound like oppressed slave food – with the exception of the catfish), what gives?
Is this just another case of a Beeboid finding an expert who will tell him what he wants to hear? Denying the agency of black people and painting them as mere objects of historical processes (which this article comes close to) can be racist too.
A commenter pointed out this Spiked article by Ben-Ami – a more helpful discussion of the issue.
The BBC meme du jour appears to be fat America (I note the trans-Atlantic lardarses appear not to have made it as far as Mississippi).
Update I clicked “Publish” too soon – our travelling friends are now US teenagers!
The difference between the US and the UK is that fat people get treated in the US without judgement while back in UK socialist Utopia if you eat yourself fat, (natures way of protecting you from illness and famine) you WILL be judged and may well be told despite having been made to compulsorily contribute to the NHS for years that you have disqualified yourself from treatment.
Eat, drink, smoke, drive, its called freedom, only nanny does not approve.
& of course the C19 white working class in the US, UK & everywhere, never touched bread, lard or potato.
I wonder if someone checked the BBC to see if they used the slightly negative “FAT” in association with “America”, more than the alternative “obese” is used with BBC loved countries.
It might reveal the BBCs (not very well) hidden preferences.
P.S. At least the BBC don’t YET run headlines like “North Korea eliminates obesity!”. “Rwanda eliminates death from old-age” etc. It can only be a matter of time though.
Speaking from my own experience Americans are fat and getting fatter. This is definitely a problem and it needs to be solved. Having said that, the BBC’s coverage of overweight Americans bothers me. It usually includes a helping of pointing and laughing that they would not dream of dishing out to any other group of people facing a major problem. How can I not see this as anti-American?
Food has never been cheaper and more plentiful. Work has never been easier. The human body is built for famine, not (endless) feast. As much as we all complain about the amount of work we do it is nothing compared to the hard physical labor we would have performed just one, or two, generations ago. Exercise is no longer naturally part of our work day. We are victims of our own successes. This may be an American problem now but everyone in the West will face it soon enough. We really need to work towards solving it.
The BBC contribution comes down to finger pointing and sneering (when they are not oversimplifying and blaming “American” fast food). Why? I just don’t get it. I am fat. And, apparently, I am also hated from one end of the globe to the other, so it is OK to laugh at my misfortune. I understand that Americans have so much that it is impossible to classify us as unfortunates under any circumstances, even after natural disasters like Katrina, even if we are all obese. There’s such an embarrassment of riches here there could never be enough misfortune to balance it all out. Oh… I think I just answered my own question.
The beeb should yank the beam out of its own eye before pointing fngers at overweight yanks.
As far as I know, obesity levels in Europe are skyrocketing. My country (Malta) is among the chubbiest nations on earth – last figures show that we are actually beefier than the yanks. Similar results can be found for most european countries.
The interesting thing is that when I was teaching english to foreigners (euros), they would all comment on “fat americans”. None of them were aware of the obesity levels of their own countries – thanks to media organisations like the beeb. I had a great time hitting them over the head with a cluebat:-)
That diet sounds delicious and nourishing. It is still eaten today in Louisiana.
This article is laughable. Okra, fish, gumbo and beans are NOT fattening. If black (and white) Americans stuck to that diet they’d be svelte and fit.
What’s fattening is bacon-fried collard greens, pork rib barbecue, fried corn fritters (dripping in maple syrup), creamed corn, fried and breaded chicken, shrimp and fish; cornbread and gravy, pecan pie with lard-made pastry, mud pie, iced-tea with seven teaspoonfulls of sugar to the glass, etc.
These are the kinds of things Southerners both black and white eat TODAY. It has nothing to do with a slavery diet.
This article is just a bunch of lefty clap-trap. Once again, the Beeb displays its extreme, patronizing ignorance of US culture and history. For f*cks sake learn something about us before shooting your mouth off!
“bacon-fried collard greens, pork rib barbecue, fried corn fritters (dripping in maple syrup), creamed corn, fried and breaded chicken, shrimp and fish; cornbread and gravy, pecan pie with lard-made pastry, mud pie, iced-tea with seven teaspoonfulls of sugar to the glass”
Crumbs am I feeling hungry! London needs a proper Cajun restaurant.
Roy,
Bread, lard, potato, I don’t know if I was C19 but that was all I had to eat from 1940 – 1953. I was still eating bacon rind and bread crusts from habit until I was in my thirties. Turkey for Xmas, forget it, one chicken once a year, kept in the back garden. One orange in the Xmas stocking. One Mars bar every fortnight, cut into 1/4 slices and passed round on a plate Sunday evening. Friday bath night in four inches of water.
Always kept farthings as a loaf of bread was threepence three farthings.
My first banana at age 14, (special ration, one banana for all children over 14), I didn’t know how to eat it and didn’t like it luckily for my parents who demolished it. All this in Coulsdon Surrey England.
I don’t think I was C19, as I went to grammar school.
There arent any fat non-white people in the UK. How do I know this?
Because every BBC report on obesity only shows white people, so it must be true.
Rob Read,
What I described is not Cajun food, that’s just traditional Southern food (a lot of it probably adapted from the diets of the Scottish and Scots-Irish settlers who predominated in the South.)
Cajun food is different. It doesn’t depend on pork lard as a major food group, for example. Although Cajun popcorn (deep-fried, breaded and spiced small shrimp)and Andouille sausages are hardly diet food.
I just finished a research project that used many first-person former slave narratives. Quite a few of the slaves mentioned NOT having enough to eat as a regular condition. One former slave recounted that each slave family was given some bacon and cornmeal on Saturday night, meant to last the family through the week. Rations were sometimes increased during planting and harvesting, but hunger was par for the course. Slave owners didn’t care if their slaves lacked the energy to do their work, just like they didn’t care if slaves were injured by beatings.
Great pots of stew, fresh fish, and the like may have been part of the Creole culture. Or it may have been what black sharecroppers ate post-Civil-War. Farmers in general ate a lot of food, most of it high in calories. But field slaves were hardly stuffing their faces. And at any rate, it has nothing to do with being obese because you eat at Burger King 5X a week and don’t exercise.
Sloppy work with dimwitted conclusions. Welcome to the BBC’s idea of America.
Thanks Susan – I was suspicious about the article purely from the pov of commonsense and internal consistency, but you have confirmed my suspicions.
I still don’t like how the article presents black behaviour as some sort of mechanistic reaction to historical forces – imagine the BBC explaining the actions of all Americans only in terms of Andrew Jackson’s wars against Mexico, or English behaviour in terms of Viking wars.
They wouldn’t, because it is patronising and denies agency. The problem with the BBC is their extreme antinomianism – their quasi-racism in the service of “truth” is somehow acceptable, whereas if you are a law-abiding citizen, but think black people are inferior, you are evil. I would rather a Christian who treats me evenly even while believing I will burn in hell for being gay than a leftist (like Ken Livingstone) who would march in solidarity with Islamists who, if I am lucky, would merely beat me up.
I think that actions speak louder than words, the BBC worldview appears to be the opposite.
PS Meaning the Ken Livingstone who will mouth fashionable pieties about homophobia while allying himself with fag-burning Islamists.
Susan,
Don’t forget the sweets! Lots of people crave sweets. Cakes, cookies, and Little Debbie snacks. I’m guilty of this myself sometimes.
Rob Read – What you listed is not Cajun food. But what the slaves were allegedly fed was Cajun food and is still eaten today. And damn’ fine it is too.
Susan, mah sweet magnolia blossom, I do believe, in yo’ list of suth’en cookin’ today, you did fail to mention chicken frahed steak.
And yes, once again the Beeb flashes its patronising, embarrassing ignorance of the United States.
Well the onlything we get in the UK is “southern fried chicken” a poor clone of KFC even!
Sounds like a gap in the market.
Rob Read – Cajun food is delicious and contains things that are good for you. A good tasty, thick, spicy gumbo or a jambalaya will warm the cockles of your heart on a cold day.
Coincidentally I turned on the Food network today at lunch and I found a show devoted to Southern cooking, hosted by a plump (but not obese — the Beeb might call her “portly”) woman named Paula. They showed repeated scenes of Paula dumping oversized sticks of butter and huge chunks of Crisco (vegetable lard) into various pots and pans. “Ah-h-h time to add the butter,” she chirped — more times than I can recall. I just laughed.
Verity — Chicken fried steak, oh yes. And Moon pies. And Krispy Kreme donuts (although you can get those in the rest of the US now too.)
Rob Read — if you don’t have a Cajun restaurant in London you are sadly missing out on something very special. You’re right — sounds like a missed opportunity.
Anybody’d think from this article that slavery ended in 1965 not 1865. The fact is nobody alive today has been affected in any way by slavery. Segregation maybe, but not slavery.
Slavery as we know went a long time ago, but in Britain it is coming back.
It is difficult for lower working class working man, black or white, to consider their lott much superior to that of a modern slave. He must consider that he has vertualy no options, other than bad ones, that he can take. His money after paying his basic keep is as good as non-exsistance. He is working but has little prospect of keeping a family. running a car legaly, or even paying for a hobby. In short no freedom and no prospect of obtaining any. His condition varies from incarceration in prison with 3 meals a day and video games to working hopelessness. But our current slaves of the state have one usefull purpose. That is keeping all the judges policemen lawyers probation officers and politicians with very well payed things to do.
One day New Labour will consider that the “causes of crime” Are not more goverment hand outs. But are mainly young MEN not having any hope or stake in sociaty. Hopefully before the cities burn. This of cause will only be fully reported by the BBC when The Torys are in power.
When the NHS starts promoting free sex changes for boy children. It will be already to late. I joke not.
G Powell,
The NHS already performs sex-change operations on new-born children.
Read.
http://www.congenitaladrenalhyperplasia.org/faq03.html