Today, the native people of all European colonies suffer from higher risks of serious and chronic diseases than their colonisers, and it's all a result of European food colonialism.
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When the Spanish colonised the Americas, they mainly ate bread, red meat, and wine. Meanwhile, the natives had thriving agriculture, growing pumpkins, corn, avocadoes, and pumpkins. To the Europeans, this indigenous diet was inferior because vegetables were poverty food in Spain.
When Europeans started getting sick and dying Christopher Columbus claimed it was because of a lack of healthy European foods. So, the Europeans brought sheep, cows, and pigs. The animals ate the local crops, and the Europeans stole land so they could grow grapes and wheat.
The Europeans believed that without their "right foods," they would die or, even worse, they would become like indigenous people. They introduced the colonial idea of "right foods" (superior European foods) vs. "wrong foods" (inferior Indigenous foods).
As they had no more land to grow their own food, the indigenous Americans starved and became malnourished and were therefore forced to consume European food to survive. Spanish women commanded native women to cook Spanish dishes, which perpetuated colonial cuisine.
In North America, the British wanted to dominate native Americans so they could colonise and control their land. So they resolved to cut off the locals' primary source of food and clothing: the bison. The British hunted the bison, killed them, and left their carcasses to rot.
The British decimated the bison from 30 million to only a few hundred. With no food and clothing security, many indigenous Americans were herded to European-assigned reserves where they were fed heavily processed, fatty and starchy unnatural food products like fry bread (vetkoek)
Today, native Americans are 177% more likely to die from diabetes. They further suffer from obesity, which results in heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, infertility, cirrhosis, strokes, neurodegenerative diseases, and malignant neoplasms.
When the British arrived in Australia, they forced the indigenous people into reserves. The natives could no longer hunt and fish to feed themselves and their diets were replaced with artificial European foods. They were given rations of white flour, sugar, tea, and alcohol.
In Palestine, Israelis forbid the natives from moving around in the landscape and foraging zaβatar (wild thyme) which is key in their diet and cuisine. This is a control strategy deployed by Israel in the name of environmental preservation.
Psychiatry Research found that a "Western diet "high in fat, fried, and composed of processed flour and dairy products is linked to a higher risk of depression. Moving away from Western foods and towards seafood, fruits, vegetables and unprocessed grains lowers the risk.
When Britain annexed east Africa, the future Kenya, they were met with resistance, so they suppressed the opposition using the control of food by burning hut and crops and killing livestock to quell dissent. Natives were forced to go live in arid, unproductive lands.
The British colonial govt used white settlers to introduce commercial agricultural production as the primary driver of the colonial economy. The British colonial state seized land, livestock and other assets from natives and gave them to the settlers to control food sufficiency.
Cash crop farming became the primary source of income for the settlers, who exploited the cheap land and the large African forced labour. The colonialists forced Africans to work on their farms and this facilitated the introduction of European food crops.
African workers in settler farms were paid in sacks of maize because of its easy access and availability in the colony. When the Africans returned to the reserves, they introduced maize into their subsistence farming systems.
The introduction of maize into the colony quickly turned maize meal into the native's primary staple crop and replaced indigenous crops like millet, tubers, legumes, and kale, which were the staple foods in local traditional farming systems.
As the British were hogging more and more land, Kenyans favoured cash crops instead of subsistence farming. This commercialisation deprived future generations of traditional knowledge of their own food and its preparation.
Essentially, the introduction of commercialised colonial farming systems led to the loss of teachings about indigenous plants and cultural exchanges through indigenous markets. African farming systems and traditional practices were lost forever, and cultural norms were destroyed.
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