Preserving culture through food: Restored Root’s annual food literacy jubilee

Middle Georgians got a taste of what food literacy is all about last Sunday at Restored Ancestral Root’s annual Jubilee, a celebration of food.
Restored Roots, a local nonprofit whose mission is to preserve culture through food, hosted the event open to all community members at Fall Line Station downtown.

“The mission is, well, it’s not just food, right?” said Restored Roots founder and creative director Rodney Mason. “It’s cultural preservation, it’s language awareness and it is food literacy.”

Food choices, ancestral food roots, its impact on the surrounding community and affordable and equitable access to food are all elements of food literacy, according to Mason, who defined it as “how food impacts your day to day life.”

“Food literacy touches on everything – from food’s impact on the need for reparations, culturally appropriate food, locally grown food, the environment – it’s the full spectrum,” he said.

The aroma of “lechon” (pulled pork) along with beef and chicken empanadas, plantains and beans brought folks who loaded their plates with a smattering of hot foods back to the roots of traditional Afro-Cuban meals.

Along the walls of the venue, colorful poster boards from The Tubman Museum and the Museum Of Food And Drink (MOFAD) offered insight into the cultural origins of commonly-known ingredients and recipes.

From reading the posters, attendees could learn that enslaved Africans brought the kola nut, an ingredient found in Coca Cola, to the U.S. through the transatlantic slave trade. They might also find out that a quarter of 19th-century cowboys were African American and many were chuckwagon cooks who prepared baked bean dishes or that an African American man patented the ice cream scoop design.

“We have to shine a light on what we do know about [food] and bring people that know more than we know to the table so that we can learn more,” Mason said.

Some of that learning began at the Jubilee with a few guest speakers who talked about the culture and history of food.

Assistant Professor of History and Assistant Director of the Center for Social and Racial Equity Brandi Simpson Miller provided a glimpse into 19th century regional foodways in the African diaspora. She encouraged listeners to think about how regional cuisine forms, like the differences in BBQ across the country.

Fifth-generation farmer Clay Oliver of Oliver Farm Artisan Oils shared his knowledge of making plant-based oils, such as sesame and okra.

Sarah Anderson – heritage diet curriculum coordinator of Oldways, a nonprofit that encourages heritage-based diets – discussed the traditional foods regional to the Caribbean, South America, the U.S. South and parts of Africa. For example, plantains, cassava and yuca are common in the Caribbean and okra, yams, black-eyed peas and millet can be found in West and Central Africa.

Today, the diets of Black Americans and those of African ancestry are far removed from their ancestral food roots, Mason told The
Melody.

“Slow food,” which is fresh and regionally or locally grown, is not supported within the “monoculture” of the industrial food industry, which lacks biodiversity.

“We all have a unique ancestor that we need to tap into to understand food’s meaning in our lives,” Mason said, noting that protecting resources such as air, wind and water are all ways of supporting slow food.