FERN’s Friday Feed: The diversity of Indigenous food
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
We need more Native American restaurants
FERN and Eater
“The middle of the country’s reputation for bland food completely ignores our Indigenous peoples,” write Sean Sherman and Mecca Bos. “Within this core of America, dismissed by some as ‘flyover states,’ lies a rich tapestry of culinary heritages. The states of Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, the Dakotas, and Iowa are home to 58 federally recognized tribes, each with unique food traditions, including the amazing agricultural heritage of the Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa; the bison-centered foodways of the Plains tribes like the Lakota and Cheyenne; and the many cuisines of tribes forced into modern-day Oklahoma after Andrew Jackson’s racist Indian Removal Act.”
The dirty truth about a workhorse fish
The Lever
“With a sizzle of grease, a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish slides across the sticky drive-through counter in Homer, Alaska. Before being battered and fried, the fish in this sandwich was likely caught along the state’s rugged western coast, in the rapidly warming Bering Sea,” writes Lois Parshley. “You’ve probably eaten Alaskan pollock, even if you didn’t know it — it’s in fish sticks in school lunches and freezer aisles, sold at Burger King, Wendy’s, Arby’s, and White Castle, mixed into fish-oil supplements, imitation crab meats, and faux salmon dips. Over 2.7 billion pounds of the mottled silver fish are caught annually in one of the world’s most valuable fisheries, representing a market of almost two billion dollars.While pollock is often held up as a prime example of sustainably-sourced seafood — industry groups claim it is ‘one of the most climate-friendly proteins in the world’ — the reality is far more murky.”
How SoCal became the epicenter of hype diets and $20 smoothies
The New Yorker
“A tour through Erewhon is a tour through the cultural pathologies of the day: seed-oil paranoia, Jordan Peterson-influenced masculinity panic, gratuitous self-medication for the remote-work set,” writes Hannah Goldfield. “In my first few weeks as a resident of L.A., where I moved recently from New York, I stalked the aisles with forensic focus. A narrative of modern ills emerged, and if these are universal—who among us does not seek higher energy, improved immunity, and better sleep, sex, skin, and hair?—the means for achieving them seemed to boil down to two strikingly polar schools of thought. One side, more predictably, extolls the plant-based diet, which eschews animal products, while the other recommends consuming as many products from as many different animals as possible.”
The toxic legacy of the French banana
The Dial
“If you find yourself eating a French banane, chances are good that it originated on a farm owned by the descendants of colonists — often known in the islands as white Creoles or békés. Although they make up less than 1 percent of the French West Indian population, they own more than half the farmland and control 90 percent of the agricultural sector,” writes TK. “Changes are also good that the laborers who work on that banana farm have been exposed to dangerous levels of chlordecone — a pesticide authorized for use in the islands in the 1970s that is also a known carcinogen and has been linked to prostate cancer, Parkinson’s disease and non-Hodgkin lymphoma … More than 90 percent of residents have detectable levels of chlordecone in their blood, and the islands have the highest rates of prostate cancer in the world by a dramatic margin.”
The poachers who could save the vaquita
Hakai Magazine
“Totoaba poaching has not only jeopardized totoaba but drawn international scrutiny for driving the vaquita—a porpoise similar in size to the totoaba—to near extinction. Most totoaba poachers use gillnets … sheets of strong polyethylene netting [that] hang vertically like walls in the water … Gaps in the mesh are sized to ensnare adult totoaba but are equally dangerous for other big animals, from turtles to sharks to porpoises,” writes Daniel Shailer. “For decades, conservationists and Mexican authorities have attempted to save the vaquita by policing totoaba poaching … Their tactics have sometimes led to violent clashes with fishers. Now, encouraged by recent evidence that there are more totoaba than previously thought, some renegade conservationists say a small and informal group of poachers like Eduardo could be part of the solution for saving vaquita and quelling the conflicts. They want authorities to tolerate, if not legalize, totoaba fishing in San Felipe, provided gillnets disappear for good.”