singer: ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ ♪ [upbeat funk music] Byron: This is my pops, Jackie Hurt.
My pops loved to eat, and he loved eating soul food.
Barbecue ribs, gr its and eggs, collard greens, ham hocks, corn bread, mac and cheese, bl ack-eyed peas, sweet potato pie: you name it, he loved it.
My mother, Frances Hurt, married my pops at 17 and cooked most of his meals.
Like most boys, I wanted to be just like my pops.
At the dinner table, I ate whatever he ate.
So I would stack up my plate with the grits and the eggs and the salt pork, and we would slice up our pork in nice little pieces and mix the grits and the eggs together and put all of the pork that we had cut up on top of the grits and the eggs and then put it on top of our toast.
That was, like, a typical Sunday breakfast.
Breakfast on Sunday morning was when my pops and I really connected, because we were sharing food wi th each other and establishing a family tradition.
I never questioned what we were eating or how much.
Back then, I just enjoyed my mother's delicious food.
♪ ♪ My father went from being young and fit to growing nearly twice his size.
♪ ♪ I worried all the time about my pops' health.
My biggest fear was that he would get sick and die at an early age.
Even though he talked about making changes, he continued to eat soul food meals that were high in fat and calories.
Seven years ago, my pops got sick, and even still, he refused to give up eating traditional soul food, and I just couldn't un derstand why.
My father's difficulty giving up soul food and other unhealthy foods made me curious about Black people and our relationship to food.
I wanted to know more about soul food's history, where it came from, and why it is so important to Black cultural identity.
How did Southern food become soul food?
♪ ♪ Is soul food good or bad fo r you?
Is soul food causing illness and early death in my community?
These questions set me out on a national journey to find out if we are a culture of soul food junkies.
♪ ♪ [upbeat music] What is about soul food that you love?
I mean, what's so appealing?
- The spice, the season.
- Came for the fried chicken.
- Now, you haven't had nothing till you had my black-eyed peas.
attendee: So ul food tastes good-- better than most white man food, that's for sure.
- Soul food is a great part of our culture because it's a time of coming together.
It's a time of cooking together, talking together, sitting down an d consuming together.
diner: That's why when we pray: "Good Lord, good meat.
Come on, let's eat.
Hallelujah."
[laughter] Michaela: Soul food is a repository for our history and for our dreams, and it's this memory of comfort.
And soul food represents Black.
all: Soul food!
- You ain't get your fingers greasy, man, you ain't eating no soul food, you know?
- So not only was soul food soul food, but soul food is the soul food conversation, the conversation of people who cook soul food, who didn't have a lot of money, so therefore they fried the chicken and made the grits and made the greens and made the string beans and mac and cheese.
- Soul food, for me, is love.
It is the main ingredient.
- At home, we didn't call it soul food.
We just called it dinner.
- I plan for extras.
Byron: My family is from a small Southern town called Milledgeville, Georgia.
Food is a huge part of the culture in Georgia, especially what is now affectionately called soul food.
Ma, what is that you're doing?
Frances: I'm putting the foil around the edges of the pie crust so that when I put it in the oven, the edges won't burn.
Byron: So I have all of these beautiful memories of my mother, sister, and me preparing and cooking soul food for our trips from New York to Georgia.
We would wrap the food in foil and put it in brown paper bags.
Looking back, those were some of the best times for us as a family.
Soul food was a big part of our journey.
We bonded as we drove south, eating my mother's fried chicken.
My parents told us stories about what it was like growing up in the Jim Crow South.
As we crossed the Mason-Dixon line and made our way into the deep South, my father would have my sister and me close our eyes and imagine what life was like du ring slavery.
Driving past cotton fields on both sides of the highway, I would close eyes tightly and visualize myself picking cotton from sunup to sundown.
[uneasy music] ♪ ♪ The stories my pops told my sister and me were powerful and made me wonder about the day-to-day lives of my enslaved ancestors.
I've always heard ho rrible stories about slave traders feeding enslaved Africans the poorest-quality foods.
But if this were true, th en how did they manage to survive the rigors of slavery?
- Slavery may have been racially based, but it was an economic proposition.
And it wasn't economic to put all those people in a ship and have them die.
So you had to feed them enough of what they would eat so that they would survive the voyage.
And the voyage was beyond horrific.
Frederick: So what the savvy slave trader did was to study his cargo and their culture.
What do these people normally eat?
And best he could is reproduce that in the cheapest form possible.
Jessica: Ba sically, the enslaved might be fed corn, rice, or yams, depending on their point of origin.
Byron: I often hear Bl ack people say that slaves ate from the bottom of the barrel.
When I was young, my grandfather told me stories about his grandfather eating food out of hog troughs.
Were stories like this fa ct or fiction?
- It's important to complicate the notions of soul food in the same way that it's important to complicate our notions of slavery, our notions of American history.
There are so many mythologies that have accreted onto the idea of what Black people were eating during the time of slavery.
If one's grandfather said that his grandfather ate out of a trough in the slave pen, there may very well be a kernel of truth to that.
But we're also hearing this story now from a grandfather who heard it from a grandfather.
People who were being given a peck of cornmeal and 1/2 pound of salt pork or three dried fish and a little bit of salt every week-- how do you raise a community of women who are pregnant, who are lactating, and knee babies an d adolescents and men and women, too, who are burning 3,000 calories a day?
They can't live on what I just named.
They can't, so we know they didn't.
So what did they eat?
- Slavery wasn't a monolithic institution.
It looked different in different parts of the Americas and the Caribbean.
In certain parts of the Caribbean, enslaved Africans were able to grow their own food and had Sundays off.
You know, it wasn't this paternalistic system like it was in the Black Belt in the deep South.
Jessica: Under some systems, they had provision grounds.
And in the provision grounds, they were expected to grow their food.
Remember, sl aves were responsible not only for growing their food, but, in many cases, for growing the food for the entire plantation.
Bryant: They're giving slaves th e bare minimum in order for them to exist and to work.
Now, slaves are fighting against that.
They're resisting by trying to provide food fo r themselves.
So they're using a lot of the same hunting and fishing techniques th at they did in Africa.
The Tidewater region, slaves there are supplementing their diet with fishing, with crabs, crab cakes, and all those kind of things.
Jessica: The enslaved in the low country had rice in their diet.
They had broken rice.
The rice that wasn't able to be sold became a part of the diet.
- New Orleans is a very African city with, I would say, a thin French veil.
The first wave of African people were coming from the Senegambia region of West Africa to New Orleans.
Something else that these people brought was okra, which--"gumbo" is actually the West African word for okra.
And so the women, when they were disembarking off of the slave ships, people were finding seeds in their hair, and they were actually okra seeds.
- New Orleans is interesting because although we're in the South technically, in terms of culture, we face more even south of us, to the Caribbean.
So we find we got a lot in common with those cultures.
We got seafood, obviously, with all the islands.
Also the kind of beans that are the heart of our food, very much common in this area south of us, not as common in Mississippi and Virginia and other places north of us.
Bryant: It's my argument th at the slave quarters is influencing the big house mo re than the big house is influencing the slave quarters.
It was Black women who raised these white kids in these wealthy families, and they're feeding these kids their food.
So they might make for the table some kind of special dish for this planter, but in the kitchen is where th at little white boy is and little white girl is, and she's eating and he's eating that food and developing that palate.
So as he gets older, he said, "This is the kind of food I want my family to have."
- I can tell you right now, we learned all of our cooking skills from African Americans.
Just have to face that fact.
Soul food didn't come here from the Caucasian parts of our world.
They came from Africa.
Whatever household you came from in Mississippi and probably in the South, if you had soul food, you had some connection with African Americans in your family so that you learned ho w to cook those meals so that they taste really good.
Jessica: And so what happened, clearly, in the South and arguably in other parts of the United States and even more arguably throughout the hemisphere was that the hand of the African in the pot transformed the taste of the pot.
[jaunty music] Byron: Black people in the South during and after slavery took their food and seasoned it, battered it, fried it, baked it, smoked it, and canned it.
With a pinch of this and a pinch of that, we turned survival food in to a delicacy that people from all walks of life enjoy eating.
But to further understand my pops' deep love for soul food, I decided to go back to the deep South, Jackson, Mississippi.
I wanted to get a better sense of just how entrenched the soul food tradition is to Southerners.
While there, I went to an historically Black college football game at Jackson State University.
Here there were thousands of Black people having a great time.
And where there are thousands of Black people at a social event, there's got to be so me soul food.
singer: ♪ Everybody ♪ Byron: As a Northerner returning to my Southern roots, these tailgaters reminded me that there's nothing quite like Southern hospitality.
The atmosphere felt like a family reunion.
How long y'all been out here tailgating?
- Oh, man, we got out here yesterday, what time?
- 3:00.
- About 3:00.
- Wait.
Y'all been out here since yesterday?
- Yeah.
Byron: Everywhere I turned, people offered me something to eat.
Now, I don't know about you, bu t growing up, my father warned my sister and me to always accept a plate of food when we came down South, even if we weren't hungry.
He said folks in the South would be offended if you didn't accept their food.
I ran into these brothers, who introduced me to their tailgate special.
♪ ♪ So tell me what you got inside a junk pot.
- Corn, neck bone, turkey neck.
- And what else?
Potatoes.
- Uh, pig ears.
- Pig ears.
- Potato, pig ears.
- Pig ears.
- And pig feet.
Byron: And pig feet?
- Right.
Byron: All right.
- And onions and green peppers.
- Everything ain't good for you in here.
Byron: All right, so wait, wait.
You said everything in here ain't good for you?
- No!
- But it good to you, though.
- It good to you.
Byron: And then th ey offered me something to eat.
Byron: It was like my father wa s right there with me standing on my shoulder.
I really didn't want to reject their Southern hospitality, but I stopped eating pork an d red meat years ago.
And when I looked into that junk pot and saw that food swimming in all of those pig ears and pig feet, I was like, "Y o, y'all are bugging."
But the social pressure got the best of me.
- We gon' get you a plate.
- Eat that, baby.
Eat that.
Byron: I grabbed a piece of corn, hoping they'd be satisfied, but my man right here wasn't having it.
Byron: I'm good.
I'm good.
- Get you a turkey leg, man.
- I'm good.
- Hold up, man.
Hold up.
Hold up.
Hold up.
Hold up.
You got to have it right here.
Here, you got to have it.
- I'm good.
I'm good.
- Taste it.
Taste it.
Taste it.
- All right, I'll taste it.
- Hey, uh-uh.
You gotta taste it in front of us.
- I'ma taste it right now.
- Here you go, dog.
- It ain't right telling people it ain't right.
Byron: Yo, I cannot front.
That turkey neck drenched in pork juice was delicious.
- I think it truly steams from Southern hospitality and back in the day in the South, where everyone used to feed each other.
If big mama had th is much food, everybody on the block was eating.
- I mean, they don't think about high blood pressure or anything that's gonna happen down the line.
They think about, "Okay, right now.
"We're eating now.
We're at the table.
"So, you know, everybody come in.
Let's eat.
Le t's enjoy right now."
Byron: In our culture, especially Black culture, we have a problem with eating all the wrong foods, a lot of fried foods, a lot of grease.
Leslie: Mississippi is--not only are we the fattest state; we the poorest state.
We don't exercise and don't have the dietary choices that a lot of people have.
So all of that is a part of why we are called the fattest state in the Union.
- There you go.
- Whoo!
- See, our platform, it is really to change the dynamic for living for Black people and for all people who live in our ward in the city and in the state.
So we have to grapple with the issues of food and health.
You cannot really create a culture of advancement if you don't have people who are plugged into the ways that we can promote life.
♪ ♪ [blues music] Byron: My next stop wa s Peaches' Restaurant on historic Farish Street.
I heard about the delicious breakfast at Peaches' and the unique role Miss Peaches played in feeding civil rights protesters in Jackson.
I couldn't wait to meet this local legend in person.
Peaches: I established Peaches' Restaurant in 1961 in May, May the 1st.
Byron: How old were you when you established Peaches?
- [laughs] I'm 86 now.
So it would have to be-- do a little figuring-- must have been--I was in-- it was in my 40s.
Roderick: See, Medgar Evers ate here.
The freedom riders ate here.
So it was a very important movement for Peaches' restaurant and civil rights, I think.
It made Black people feel like they were special.
They can come here, get a home-cooked meal.
Wasn't no Black.
Wasn't no white.
It was just soul food.
[distant yelling] I know they was having some type of protest downtown, and what they would do when they arrest you, they take you down to the fairgrounds, and they'll put you where they keep the horses and cows at.
The people didn't have nothing to eat all day, of course.
I think they let them stay for four or five hours and stuff like that.
Well, what Mom does-- Miss Peaches did, I think she made, like, 100-some sandwiches.
Uh, she had just opened up, I think, seven or eight years, it was in the '60s.
So she really didn't have a lot of food herself.
So she made all this sandwiches, stuff, and got in her little car and took the food down there to the fairgrounds for the civil rights marchers had something to eat.
Peaches: You out there and being misused, mistreated, people dogging you around, and you ain't got nowhere to go.
I think it was my duty to open the door and let you in.
Roderick: You looking at a little Black lady.
You know, she could have been afraid, 'cause she has th e white police officer with German shepherds.
And she could have got in trouble for opening her door and le tting all these people run in here.
If I was growing up in her era, I don't think I would have did ha lf the stuff she did.
'cause I used to see her come home and count pennies.
Couldn't even pay the bills, but she still would feed folks.
[pensive music] Peaches: And having the ability to cook gave me power.
♪ ♪ It made me stronger, made me want to do more of it, because the people de pended on me to do it.
And when you expect me to do something, I want to do my best, and I will do my best.
♪ ♪ Byron: My pops would have loved Ms. Peaches, because she represents countless Black women in the South, whose food nourished folks like my dad for generations.
♪ ♪ Taundra, remember when we used to go down south, and we would pack the food for the trip?
Taundra: I mean, I remember, the night before, always-- well, at that time, we used to eat white bread-- getting the bread out and helping Mommy make the sandwiches.
Mommy would be in the kitchen, frying up chicken.
You would always save the bigger pieces for Daddy.
That was always a must.
- Ma, why did we pack the bags instead of just going to a restaurant?
- One of the reasons is because Black people were not allowed to stop at a hotel or eat in certain places.
That's where it actually originated, but it was before your time.
It just became a tradition, I guess.
[rock guitar version of "The Star Spangled-Banner"] Byron: My pops often reflected on how some Black traditions were born from necessity.
- Under the system of Jim Crow and segregation, probably many people before me had to learn some coping skills.
Uh... and doing this, they did not necessarily have to surrender their dignity, but they had to find ways-- viable ways, tenable ways-- of getting their needs met without sacrificing our dignity.
[hip-hop music] singer: ♪ Where there's he alth neglect ♪ ♪ There's no self-respect ♪ ♪ But what else do you expect ♪ ♪ Look how they dealt the deck ♪ ♪ We inherited stress ♪ ♪ Had to bury our best ♪ ♪ Martin, Malcolm X, bullet holes in they chest ♪ ♪ We adapt to the struggle ♪ ♪ Only way we survive ♪ ♪ Eating scraps fr om the table ♪ ♪ But it kept us alive ♪ ♪ Making something from nothing ♪ ♪ Still we hope for the best ♪ ♪ Making miracles happen ♪ ♪ Daily coping with less ♪ Frederick: During end of Jim Crow and before the 1970s, 1980s, when Black folks co uld freely go in any establishment they want, they had to be just as strategic about where they ate.
One of the things that you see Black folks do, particularity when they're traveling on the train in the South, or the bus, is shoe box lunches, literally taking an empty shoe box, lining it with a paper towel or some wax paper.
Typically what's gonna be in that box: a hard-boiled egg, a napkin with some salt and pepper on there, some fried chicken.
♪ ♪ Jessica: There was a series of Black guidebooks known as the "Green Book" that came out, I think, in the '40s or '50s that were designed specifically for Blacks who traveled.
And it listed where you could stop and where you could eat.
There was always the network, if you will.
- This stuff cost so much, they don't even put the price beside it.
- No, pop, we're flying first-class, man.
We get our choice of any of this stuff for free.
See, you don't get that in second-class.
- We can eat any of this stuff here free?
- Our choice.
- Then I won't be needing these.
I won't be needing these chicken wings.
- What is that?
[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ Bryant: In the late 1960s, you had yo ung African Americans who were kind of naming and reclaiming different parts of our culture.
Soul food was another thing that was being reembraced.
And in some ways, it was this kind of romanticization of the way that people were eating in the rural South.
Frederick: The term "soul food" evolved out of the Black Power moment.
You have the emergence as the Afro as a symbol of Black authenticity.
You have soul music, Motown.
All these things evolve around that same time period.
- At the best moments of the Black freedom struggle, we recognized that we didn't just need to change laws.
We also needed to change our living patterns.
- Come on in, little brothers.
Come on in, little sisters.
Y'all can sit down and get something to eat.
Marc: When you have organizations like the Black Panthers, they not only told us to change our diets.
They also imposed breakfast programs and other sort of community-oriented food programs so that people would have he althy living options.
And they understood th e relationship between healthy living an d a community.
They understood the relationship between developing a Black nation and having healthy diets.
Byron: The first people I ever heard rejecting soul food was comedian and activist Dick Gregory and Nation of Islam leader El ijah Muhammad.
Frederick: Dick Gregory has a following because of his stature as a comedian.
Then he has this radical change in his life.
And it happens because, as a form of protest, he decides that he's gonna go on this fast.
So when he does this, it draws all this attention.
His role as a comic takes backseat to his role as an activist.
And within the context of an activist, he has food activism in there.
- Soul-- should call it death food, because it will kill you.
You know, it will kill you.
When you get somebody my age, wh at soul food was then is not what soul food is now.
The difference when I grew up and now is, people had houses, wasn't apartments, and had gardens an d fresh stuff and no chemicals in it.
The biggest shock to me is what Elijah Muhammad was able to do to nonbelievers.
My mother, man, my mother she ain't gonna be nothing but a Christian all her life and would go to war if you told her-- but she stopped eating pork.
Hmm?
interviewer: Why was that?
- Elijah Muhammad.
Marc: When the Honorable El ijah Muhammad emerges, he put out the book "How To Eat To Live."
All of these things created a new model for Black living and Black wellness that many people carried on so that even if you weren't buying their political line, even if you didn't want to join the Nation, even if you were a Christian, you still said, "Well, maybe I don't need pork today."
You still said, "Maybe I don't need to eat bottom-feeders."
You changed your entire diet based on these things.
Abdul: In the Nation of Islam and in "How to Eat to Live," we have referred to a soul food diet as a slave diet because it is the lower realm of food that our former slave masters gave to us when we were displaced Africans under their slavery.
But when you know better, you do better.
Byron: The Nation of Islam's image of strength and discipline appealed to me as a young Black man.
Although I never joined the Nation, I did change my eating habits based on their emphasis on healthy living.
My father, on the other hand, a Christian, thought I was nuts.
He said our family had eaten th is way for generations and lived well into their 80s and 90s.
He saw no need to stop eating the food he enjoyed.
It's Sunday morning, and we had our traditional Su nday morning breakfast with the grits and the eggs and the bacon and the salt pork.
All I was eating was, like, the grits and the eggs and maybe some toast.
Realizing that I had rejected the pork, my father was like, "What are they teaching you up there in Boston?"
He was kind of ridiculing th e fact that I wasn't eating any pork anymore.
Maybe he thought, like, that was me rejecting him, me rejecting Black culture, me rejecting the food that he loved.
You know, I don't know.
But I know that it made him feel a little bit uncomfortable.
Dick: I can understand your father: "You can't tell me nothing, "especially if you got some education "and I ain't got none.
"Huh?
Who you think you are?
I raised you, boy.
It was good enough for you."
Byron: But traditional soul food wasn't good enough fo r us anymore, so we changed.
My sister moved toward a vegetable-based diet and became the most he alth-conscious person in our family.
And as my mother learned ho w to prepare soul food in a healthier way, she also began to change.
But my father resisted an d clung to tradition.
- In every family, when one begins to make that shift, the family becomes threatened and frightened of change.
Change is one of the hardest things to make.
So it's emotional, it 's how we were raised, it is how long your father or any of us have been eating a particular way, and so now it's ingrained, and it's a habit.
Frances: Lord, we thank you for how you've blessed us to come together today.
We thank you for the food that was prepared.
We thank you for blessing us to use it for the nourishment of our bodies.
Christ's sake, amen.
Byron: Amen.
Taundra: Amen.
- I remember when you and Daddy came up to see one of my football games.
At that point, Da ddy was really heavy.
Do you remember that?
Frances: Yes.
Byron: And it was almost like it was no big deal to him, you know?
But when I saw him, I was, like, really shocked at how heavy he was.
But I was always scared to say something to Daddy about his eating habits or his weight because of how he reacted.
One weekend, when I came home from Boston, I said to myself, "I'm gonna say something to him, "because if I don't say anything to him "and he has a heart attack or a stroke, then I'll never be able to, like, live with myself."
Right before I left to go to school, I just said to him, "Daddy, you know, "I just wanted to say that I'm really concerned about your weight."
He listened to me in that moment.
But he kind of tossed it back onto me, you know, and he started talking about how much food I ate, you know, during the weekend while I was home.
You know what I mean?
So he kind of put it back onto me.
Do you think that Daddy was addicted to soul food?
- I think he was addicted to food in general, food that made him feel good.
- Right, right.
- No, it didn't have to be just soul food.
- That's true.
Taundra: It was a comfort food.
It was something that kept him going, you know, something that he enjoyed and, you know, didn't want to give up.
I don't think it was just-- - Soul food.
- That he--I don't think he was just addicted to soul food.
- Right.
- Addictions-- all addictions is about pleasure.
All addictions is about pleasure, something so awful in your life that you need pleasure.
[melancholy music] Byron: My pops' life wasn't an easy one.
His mother died young when he was only ten years old.
His father was a man who was neglectful, abusive, and drank too much.
My dad lived through the racism of the Jim Crow South and had to navigate a society that was hostile toward Black men.
♪ ♪ But perhaps the biggest tragedy in my pops' life was the sudden loss of my older brother, Howard.
Howard was just four years old and my parents' first child.
As the story goes, he took a gun which he thought was a toy, pointed it at his head, and pulled the trigger.
It was a horrible, horrible accident.
This happened during the holidays on one of those trips from New York to Georgia.
When I think about that, I can only imagine how that impacted my father-- the pain of losing his first son.
singer: [echoing] ♪ Soul ♪ Byron: Asking people to change their eating habits is almost like asking someone about their sex life or how much money they have in the bank.
Food is deeply personal.
So when I asked if soul food is healthy, I got some pretty interesting reactions.
tailgater: This right here, it was all right yesterday.
But when they told us it wasn't good for us, we stopped eating.
But it wasn't killing us then.
Byron: Now, who's them?
Wh o's they?
- You know who they is.
[laughter] This is how we survive.
This is what they gave us.
We had to eat this.
We had to eat the pig feet.
We had to eat the pig tail.
We had to eat the neck bones.
They wouldn't eat it.
We fixed it.
We seasoned it.
It good.
Now they like it too.
diner: God made Adam, and Eve came from his rib.
So a woman is good.
So the woman came from the rib, so the ribs ought to be good too, you know?
That's the way I see it.
- It's comfort food, you know?
You eat it, and it makes you feel better.
It must release endorphins or something that just make you feel all right.
- Everything in moderation.
I can eat this, this, this, this but in moderation.
- I don't eat anything that fart, doo-doo, pee, or screw.
Now, there's no conversation behind that.
- I have this concept called plate police which I can't stand.
I can't stand somebody who look at your plate and tell you what you should do.
We're all trying to reach our joy, our peace, our heaven, whatever.
You eat what you please.
You got your own route.
I'll take mine.
Byron: One thing I remember from growing up: it could be an old milk container or an old can, and there would be a whole bunch of grease poured all the way to the top.
Rani: And what did you do with that grease?
- We used that grease... Sherry: You used it again.
Rani: Again and again and again.
But that was just what we did.
- Remember the bacon?
- The bacon.
- We fried the bacon in the morning, and then we drained the grease and put it in a can.
And we didn't put it in the refrigerator.
- It sat on the-- - It sat on the stove or under the cabinet, and we kept that grease until it was time to do something else with it, like put it in the greens, you know, 'cause it had flavor, and it'd never spoil.
Isn't that amazing?
Byron: It is.
- Yeah.
Byron: I mean, it's absolutely amazing.
Now, is that healthy?
I mean, like, you know-- - Dude, I would think that that's not healthy.
Uh, I haven't done that in years.
Now you get in medicine, you hear about the heart disease and the strokes and heart attacks, like, "Wow, I can't believe I was doing that."
But at the time, that was-- that was what Mama taught us to do, and that's--you know, the tradition was passed down.
- That's the way I was taught.
You know, it goes from one generation to the next, so you follow suit.
- My whole family has suffered from bad eating.
They've all suffered from eating pigs' feet and chitlins and frying everything and putting hot sauce on everything and putting the extra bag of sugar in the Kool-Aid.
I mean, everything that you could imagine, I'm part of.
I come from that tradition.
I still roll like that sometimes.
I know better, and it's still hard for me to not-- I keep hot sauce in my bag, literally.
I'm not even exaggerating.
I keep a-- Byron: You got some hot sauce in your bag?
- I keep hot sauce in my bag, man, just in case, just in case some fried chicken pops off.
I love it, you know what I mean?
That's how I live.
But I have to make a choice and say, "Okay, today I have to make a different choice, because yesterday I made a bad choice."
And I try to regulate myself, but it's a work in progress.
It's like somebody who's trying to get off of, like, crack or heroin or something.
I'm trying wean myself off fried chicken, man.
- Soul food restaurants don't turn me on.
What turns me on today is a nice salad, you know, with different kinds of lettuce and roughage that will clean out your colon, uh, the different kinds of the onions and the beets and the carrots and things of that nature that make things healthy.
I like healthy living today.
Byron: No fried chicken?
- Well... By ron: No fried chicken.
- Hard giving up that fried chicken.
Byron: I feel you.
It was hard for me to cut back on fried chicken, too, until I learned about the health risks associated with some of my favorite comfort foods.
- When you fry foods, you can sometimes increase the levels of carcinogens, the things that can cause cancer.
A lot of times, the way the food is given to you-- it's, like, large amounts, especially of the starches.
So if you got a lot of sweet potatoes and yams or sweets, al l those carbohydrates in too high amounts can be a problem for you.
- I don't remember things being so heavily full of oil and sugar like they've become now.
So I think that's where the soul food story gets a little sad.
We had meals together that were fresh and, um, that weren't packaged most of the time.
So I think one of the things that has happened is that we have started going outsides of ourselves and outside of the community to get quick, fast, cheap food.
- The most important thing is that people complicate their understanding of what soul food is, because it's easy to say that it's the bane of African American health.
The bigger cause of the decline of African American health is the industrialization of our food system four or five decades ago.
The goal of these corporations th at are producing food is to make it cheap, to make it fast, to make it convenient.
singers: ♪ Kentucky Fried Chicken ♪ ♪ If you're on the run ♪ ♪ When you can buy chicken like this ♪ ♪ Why cook?
♪ - A lot of things happened between the 1960s and today to create the situation that we're in now where people spend less time cooking and more time eating already prepared food and food that's fatty an d salty and processed.
And some of those of changes we all know about: more sedentary lifestyles with television and computers, more women en tering the workforce, which is a necessity-- maybe always happened in the Black community but became more widespread.
singers: ♪ Jump ♪ ♪ Chicken, chicken, chicken ♪ ♪ Hot nuggets, chicken, chicken, chicken ♪ Bryant: I probably would have wanted to have canned food items and fast food because it just seemed like the evolution of being a modern American.
When I think about the fact that four or five decades ago, this was being presented to the American public, it seemed modern; it made sense.
Kolu: But what happened is, if you eat it day after day and for dinner, you know, you may not be having something so healthy, then it really becomes a problem, and that's the point that we're at now.
- The problem with talking about a connection between food and nutrition is that it's a long-term thing.
So it's not the food you ate this morning or last week or even this year.
It's the food you have been eating every day of your life for the past 10, 12, 20 years.
[jaunty music] ♪ ♪ Byron: Along my journey, it was shocking to hear just how many people had a family member or loved one who was suffering from a preventable disease.
- My mother had diabetes, so we sort of had a-- a kinship in that.
- I have high blood pressure.
- Had two sisters who died of diabetes.
- I had prostate cancer.
- And then going into my aunts, we've got breast cancer all throughout there, have had colon cancer as well.
- Diabetes and, um, high blood pressure and everything runs in my family.
That was a wake-up call for me, because my dad died at the age of 41.
- It's almost like you eat, you get big, you go to college, get your education, you get your diabetes, you get your high blood pressure, and you die.
Byron: Hearing all of these stories was sobering.
I realized that as Black people, we share common health issues that demand ou r immediate attention before it's too late.
- You may know by now that I'm Jackie Hurt and proud, uh, father of the groom and a very happy, joyful, joyous father-in-law of our beautiful bride.
When Byron was a little kid, I had him out there with me cutting the lawn.
And he could barely walk, couldn't even step off the curb.
His legs were not long enough.
I turn around and looked-- and I don't know if he remembers this.
He was backing off the curb to get down on the pavement.
And I watched him, and he started running down the street.
And I watched him.
He ran halfway down the block.
And I said to myself, "That boy's going places."
[laughter] Byron: I learned th at my father was sick when my mother gave me a call to let me know that he was being taken to the hospital.
The doctor noticed spots on his pancreas.
And, um, it sounded like it was serious.
And so I asked her if she wanted me to come home and go to the hospital.
And when she told me yes, that's when I knew that it was serious.
- We knew that there was something wrong with him.
We knew that he was going to the hospital for tests.
We did not expect to hear that he had pancreatic cancer and that the--the prognosis wa s three to six months.
It was devastating.
Byron: When the doctor said that, I almost fainted.
I had known someone who lost their mother within a matter of months with pancreatic cancer, and so, I mean, I was... in fear from the moment the doctor gave us the diagnosis.
Taundra: We didn't realize the impact of what we were in store for.
To see him go from strong to weak to barely functioning-- words can't describe how that makes, you know, a person feel that's about to experience losing a family member.
[melancholy music] ♪ ♪ Jackie: Just standing here on this, um, boardwalk before you hit the beach again makes me feel like I've reconnected with something very special when I come back here, every single time.
And I always have to come up here and say hello to the beach when we get here and good-bye to the beach when it's time to go.
♪ ♪ - Initially, when Daddy got sick, I thought that his illness was related to soul food, you know, and his inability to want to give up eating certain kinds of foods.
I remember I came home, and I did a search of pancreatic cancer.
I started to read about what were some possible factors in developing pancreatic cancer.
narrator: Healthy cells grow in a controlled way.
narrator: Cancer divides and can spread to other parts of the body.
narrator: People who drink on average about five sodas a week.
narrator: Consuming high amounts of animal saturated fats.
narrator: Cigarette smoke.
narrator: The muscle proteins in beef, pork, even chicken can generate a cancer-causing reaction when they meet a hot grill.
narrator: Pr ocessed meats contain preservatives such as nitrates.
narrator: Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. Byron: I realized th at unhealthy soul food was just one reason, not the reason, wh y my father got sick.
I think I needed something to blame, and all the rhetoric I had heard about soul food be ing unhealthy made it an easy target.
But my sister was right.
It was far too simple to blame soul food for our father's death.
My pops also ate lots of fast food that could be found everywhere in the Black community.
And when you have a diet that consists of unhealthy soul food and highly processed foods, the combination co uld be deadly.
My journey led me to an even larger problem.
[downbeat music] ♪ ♪ Marc: One of the things th at causes Black people to have the relationship to soul food and some of the unhealthy eating habits that we have is what we call a food desert.
Byron: When I walk around the city of Newark, where I work, it's very challenging to find healthy food.
A lot of cities around the country-- like Brooklyn, Harlem, Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, california-- they just don't have a whole lot of quality supermarkets.
Most people go to bodegas or corner stores, or in some places, they even go to liquor stores to get their vegetables.
People just don't have access to healthy, quality, fresh produce and quality food.
And it's something that has become normal to us.
- There are 23.5 million Americans, including 6.5 million children, who live in food deserts.
Bryant: The reality is that in America, there is a class-based apartheid in the food system.
If you live in the middle class or an affluent neighborhood, then you have an overabundance of good food, you know, farmers' markets, health food stores, conventional supermarkets.
But if you live in low-income communities, there's often very little healthy food.
- In New York City, for every 10,000 people in Bed-Stuy, there's only one supermarket, as compared to the Upper East Side, where there's higher income, pe ople make more money, there are three supermarkets fo r every 10,000 people.
So there's somewhat of a disparity there.
Sonia: I go in this supermarket in my neighborhood.
I see vegetables that look like they're having a nervous breakdown.
They're so shriveled.
And they're asking people the regular price for it.
So I go and put the fruit and the vegetables in a cart, push the bell, and tell them, "How dare you do this?
How dare you put this out in this community, you know?"
And they say, "Lady, I'm gonna call the police."
I said, "Good, I'm gonna call reporters."
And they improved on the food too.
- There's no better example of racism in the 21st century than the relationship of Black people and access to healthy foods.
You know, people think about racism as an individual act of prejudice or discrimination from one person to another.
That's not what it's about.
It's about systems.
It's about structures.
It's about institutions.
And the fact that Black people live in neighborhoods where they can't get access to healthy food choices and white people can get healthy food choices, that is classic, te xtbook racism.
When you want to wipe out an entire generation of people, when you want to engage in a kind of 21st-century genocide, all you have to do is continue to do what we're doing, which is deprive people of access to healthy food.
♪ ♪ Bryant: African Americans ha ve been green.
We've been eating close to the land.
We've been thinking about ways that we can be ec o-sustainable.
We just didn't call it that.
You know, it was just the way that people had to live out of necessity.
If anything, we need to be talking to the elders-- the aunties and the grandmothers and the great-grandmothers-- and finding out, what were they doing?
How were they practicing sustainability with very few resources, a lot of people?
Byron: I went to go see my Uncle Tony, my pops' youngest brother.
- Hey, Byron.
Byron: Hey, how you doing?
- Oh, good, good, good, good, good.
Byron: Happy Thanksgiving to you.
Uncle Tony, what's happening?
- Good to see you.
Good to see you.
Byron: He grows his own garden in Milledgeville, so I decided to go check it out.
- Yeah, this is my little garden, my little getaway here.
It's something I do, uh, every year during the spring of the year.
Yeah, right here, we have cayenne peppers.
And only could find one plant of those.
And right here, I have some, um, banana peppers.
Byron: Why do you think it's important to be able to live of f the land like this?
- It's good because you know what went in the production and the growth of your plants.
You know there's not a lot of chemicals in it.
You know, we think, this day and time, that's what's causing so many diseases and ailments in our body.
So I know, when I do my garden, it's chemical-free.
And it's--like I said, it's pretty much organic.
And I get a great joy out of that, eating good, healthy food.
Byron: My uncle looked great.
And as I left him, I thought, "What if we all had access to healthy, organic food?"
[funk music] ♪ ♪ Will: What we do in here is, we grow sprouts.
We grow about 2,000 trays a week.
They go to the Milwaukee public schools...
I come from a legacy of growing food for people.
That's how this whole thing st arted, by me purchasing this facility to grow food and sell it to the folks in this community.
But also, it has to be co mbined with education, 'cause once people get into that mold of eating bad food, their first taste of really good food tastes strange to them.
- Run my own farmers' market now, that 61st street market.
You come there, get y'all fresh produce if y'all in Chicago.
Will: I see more African American people getting involved.
The kids are passing on the word to their parents and other adults in the community.
To me, this is a multicultural, multigenerational revolution.
You see the examples of community gardens in those communities popping up.
Jenga: The Lower Ninth Ward isn't all about devastation and, "Oh, it's so horrible, what happened after Katrina."
But, you know, we're actually taking the initiative and taking responsibility fo r making sure that we have a brighter future, you know, making sure that we have food security here.
Baye: The Lincoln Park Community Farm started as a project to provide fresh vegetables to people in the neighborhood.
That's the goal, to really get more people in Lincoln Park, in the city of Newark, eating fresh vegetables on a daily basis.
Byron: In New Orleans, Louisiana, Jenga Mwendo is introducing her daughter, Azana, to a vegetarian an d raw food lifestyle.
Jenga: You like it, pumpkin?
Azana: Mm-hmm.
Jenga: Good.
- Mmm.
- Growing up vegetarian in New Orleans was, uh-- it was difficult.
I think a lot of adults were probably concerned about us, because there was that real strong belief that unless you eat meat, you're not getting, you know, the things that you need, which is ludicrous.
I don't feel like anybody looks down on me now for eating that way, because I think that they see the health benefits from it.
I have a lot of energy.
I'm not overweight.
I look very young for my age.
My daughter is obviously very healthy.
- When I was working with young people and we would try to introduce to them vegetarian and vegan cuisine-- and, you know, they'd be like, "This is white people's food."
I do want to help people have a more positive outlook about vegans and vegetarians and understand that you can be a brother of color who's born in Memphis, lived in New Orleans and Brooklyn and now lives in Oakland and cool, whatever, and you can still do it.
You don't have to be some, you know, crunchy granola person with Birkenstocks to be a vegan.
[jaunty music] - Putting a little broccoli in here, baby.
Byron: Ask Donnie Northern from Baton Rouge, he'll tell you, straight, no chaser, vegetables changed his life.
What did you have for breakfast this morning?
- I had spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, tomatoes, and, uh, alfalfa sprouts.
It's light food, and if you eating light food, you feel light.
If you eating heavy foods, you feel heavy.
And I feel like this.
See, I'm perky.
I'm ready.
We was taught all the wrong things.
We was taught that men don't cry.
Men don't complain.
Men just be a man.
Suck it up, shake it off, and keep going.
And--and that's not the way it works.
You know, I got a problem, and I needed help.
What's going on this morning, man?
All right, we good.
The number-one illness was the hypertension.
That's th e high blood pressure.
And so when the blood pressure go up, it mess with your sexual organs, mentally.
I was impotent, and it was like hell.
That was about eight months with no relationship with my wife.
But as I started back working out, getting back in shape, and then it started gradually-- you know, you start getting a little tingly down there, not a whole lot, but just, you know, "Okay, well, I'm working with something here."
And then, as the months passed, then it started getting better and better.
And now I'm back.
[laughter] - Oh, boy, you a bad boy.
- You just found that out?
Man, my wife say I'm like the Energizer bunny, man.
And I keep going on and on and on and on.
I feel good about me.
And I'm handling mine.
So we just got to change the way we eat things, 'cause we always been taught soul food is this.
Soul food is that.
That is not soul-- soul food come from the heart and from the soul.
And you eat what make you feel good.
And this make me really feel good.
Byron: My final stop wa s St. Philip's Academy in Newark, New Jersey, where kids of color are learning how eat healthy.
Can somebody in the class tell me what your favorite vegetables are?
- My favorite vegetable is lettuce.
- My favorite vegetable is spinach with ketchup on it.
Byron: With--with ketchup on it?
Miguel: When I take a look at what St. Philip's looks like and feels like, the first thing I say is, it's nothing like most people's idea of a school.
One of the things that makes St. Philip's Academy a unique school is our Eco SPACES program.
Eco SPACES is a multidimensional program which has two focuses.
One is sustainability and conservation, and the other is nutrition.
- Here, the kids are definitely much more knowledgeable, and they concentrate more, they focus more, and they have a better diet.
Overall, their appearance an d who they are and how they project themselves is a lot better.
Byron: So if you had a choice between eating at Popeyes or Church's Fried Chicken or McDonald's or any other fast-food restaurant, would you choose that, or would choose what you eat here?
- Really?
Wow, that's saying a lot.
Why?
Frank: The kids are re ally learning, in their classroom setting as well as the learning environments-- the kitchen, the dining room-- to actually learn about what the effects of the choices that they make, and they are responsible for their choices.
When they leave the four walls of St. Philip's, they will be kind of armed, if you will, with the knowledge and the ability to make good choices for themselves and then bring it out into the community as a way to preach about good health and wellness.
- When you ask the question of how do we get average people to respond to this crisis, this food crisis, it's a big challenge.
But what we have to do is make it part of the popular culture.
Fighting against op pressive wars became part of our popular culture.
Fighting against police brutality and racism became part of our popular culture.
So we have to go that distance.
person: The power is with us an d the people.
You know, we have the power to change our communities.
One, we need to educate up on what is going on in the food environment, and two, give people the sense that they have the capacity to actually do something to change it.
Byron: Change: it sounds easy, but changing a cultural tr adition like soul food and modifying your diet is difficult.
I started out my journey grappling with my father's death and asking if we are a nation of soul food junkies.
Well, I think the answer is yes, we are.
We love soul food, and we ain't giving it up for no one.
But we don't have to quit our beloved cuisine cold turkey.
We can maintain our culinary tradition by taking steps to make it healthier now and eat it in moderation, because, contrary to popular belief, soul food can be good to us an d good for us.
[pensive music] Perhaps my pops' story is your story or the story of someone you love.
Perhaps you've wanted to change but have been putting it off.
♪ ♪ But I hope by sharing my family's personal loss that my dear father, Jackie Hurt, inspires millions of people to take action and move toward a life of health and wellness.
My pops often talked ab out living long enough to meet his grandchildren.
Sadly, he did not have a chance to meet my daughter, Maasai.
After watching my dad die too soon, I'm trying to live a healthier lifestyle so that one day, I may live long enough to meet mine.
♪ ♪ Rani: The dish for tonight is gonna be skinless, boneless, oven-fried chicken; roasted sweet potato mash; uh, mustard greens without the salt meat.
I prefer not to use the skin, uh, which has a lot of those saturated fats and trans fats in them, and so the bread crumbs kind of substitutes for that.
Now, for years, African Americans have been picked on and teased about watermelon, but watermelon actually has a natural amino acid in it called arginine-- can enhance a man's erection.
So for all the teasing we've been given for years about eating watermelon, I'ma continue to eat my watermelon.
All right, I think we should eat.
singers: ♪ Are we soul food junkies ♪ ♪ chasing the high ♪ [upbeat music] ♪ ♪ [moody music] [high clear music]
