Mourning the extraction of traditional foods
These notes are a response to the beautiful text Eating clay is not an eating disorder, by Zayaan Khan.
We are all connected. I can feel your heart through the rice paper of a White Rabbit candy and the silkiness of a savoury porridge. These foods shape childhoods across cultures, nourishing us in times of turbulence, settling the stomach, and fortifying broken hearts.
Fig. 1 and 2: The owner of White Rabbit Candy, Bright Food Group owns a 77 percent stake in Tnuva, the largest food manufacturer in Israel. @asiansforpalestinenyc on Instagram (left) and the Times of Israel (right).
The more you think about the mechanisms of extraction, the more you see it everywhere. We are living in the mother of all manmade ecosystems. The ecosystem of ecosystems of bad ideas.
Recently, I learned the company behind White Rabbit candy holds majority shares in Israel’s largest food manufacturer. It is a closed loop of extraction. Foreign companies, including Chinese ones, facilitate Israel’s looting of Palestinian resources. China may not drop bombs, but its capitalist expansionism is clear.
I have eaten clay, but not in porridge—though the porridge of my childhood is best cooked in a clay pot. My mother once took me to a Chinese doctor in London, who prescribed medicinal clays imported from Kaolin, mixed with herbs to heal my skin. Ingredients were carefully weighed on brass scales, folded into paper portions. “Boil in a clay pot. Let it cool to room- temperature and drink a cup of it daily,” the herbalist said. “No more, no less.”
As we lose community, we lose connection to elders and the stewards of knowledge that teach us proportion and respect for the earth’s innate power. Natural medicines are not inert placebos. Dosage matters; how much is cooling, how much depletes minerals and bacteria.
In Cape Town, a pregnant woman nibbles clay, intuitively feeding her body the minerals it craves. In England, when my mother was pregnant with my sister, she craved the bitterness that has been bred out of Western vegetables. Cut off from bitter gourd or mustard greens, she bought a crate of black Irish stout. Bitter foods aid bile production I learned. “Your body must be craving iron,” her GP told her. “A small bottle a day won’t harm you.”
Fig. 3 and 4: NBC news and Business Insider report on the Oregon-based white woman, Karen Taylor, accused by Asian Americans of culturally appropriating congee. Meanwhile, a wellness entrepreneur is accused of culturally appropriating congee, selling grains of rice and barley in small sachets at massively inflated prices.
As a species, we extract where we can. Capitalism is amplified by algorithms, and extraction has become a cottage industry. The internet is a hyper-efficient mining tool, repackaging and monetising knowledge meant to be shared freely. Indigenous teachings are distorted into wellness trends.
Essential oils consume thousands of flowers when a few in a tea would suffice. Almond
cultivation for dairy-free milk has killed over 50 billion bees in a single year in California.
Honey should be precious, medicinal, not a commercial sweetener. The list goes on. Nestlé is expert at tapping into the longing for medicinal foods. Every child in every “developing nation” knows the sweet taste of Milo. Few in the West do.
Online, dichotomous clay, bentonite, montmorillonite, Fuller’s earth are all marketed as
parasite cleanses, beauty treatments, prebiotics, IBS cures. A wellness product that is
extractive, culturally illiterate, and rife with othering is not a sustainable product. The list of
appropriated medicinal foods is a poem of mourning spanning continents. Jujube, Goji,
Turmeric, Ashwanga—now “functional medicine” or “superfoods” easily available online for
the right price, while my mother’s care packages are confiscated at customs. That’s what this rant is really about- the global majority is being designed out of this world, and often in the guise of wellness or sustainability.
More humourously- the featured image is a recent trend from China where netizens post their take on “white people food” 🙂