Decolonization of your Greasy Tastebuds
Here is a perfect example of how a village was killed through oil and the potential it has to resurrect itself.
This is a summary of an essay I am working on. It started as an idea many years back when I learned about the Proctor and Gamble scientist who came up with the idea of hydrogenation. That complex process resulted in making liquid oils solid at room temperature by adding an extra hydrogen atom to the molecule. For a while, the white lard made from cottonseed oil was used for making soap. But in 1911, P&G introduced Crisco as a so-called vegetable oil alternative to butter and lard, common kitchen ingredients in cooking and baking. Doctors and rabbis were hired to promote the hydrogenated lard as kosher and healthier.
That story took me back to a night when my brother took me to a free monthly movie event popularly known as “Cinema Leo” which is Swahili for “Movie Today”. In my neighborhood, the young people knew the monthly treat by another name: “Watoto Kaeni Chini” which means “Children sit down” in Swahili. Those were the actual first words right before the movie would start. The movie show was held outside at a dusty soccer field where a white screen was set up and the movie emitted from a projector atop a VW kombi.
It was at that movie that I saw an advertisement of our local Crisco known as “Wakenya Kaeni Chini”. I am obviously stretching the truth. But I could also be telling the truth about the name which the local Crisco brand was hiding. The local Kenyan brand was called “Kimbo” and it was a rival to the yellowish Crisco competitor, “Cow Boy ‘cooking fat’”. Those two brands were king. They were both owned by the same company.
What I didn’t know then is that cotton, a dirty word in the lexicon of African American history, continued to colonize people in my village without a clue about what was happening.
To make the long story short, Crisco and other hydrogenated oils were later found to cause all manner of health problems including infertility and liver problems. In fact, the brand was sold by P&G, ostensibly to avoid all the baggage of liability.
For me, with a firm grasp of how problematic cotton has been in the history of exploitation of the southern Black community, as well as the role that cheap Southern cotton played in building the British Industrial Revolution, including the destruction of the Indian textile industry and the colonization of Kenya and many other countries, I couldn’t miss the connection between that exploitive history and the consumption of toxic oil, first in my Kenyan village, and again in Mississippi and Tennessee where I would later learn about the greasy truth.
Here is a story of an advertisement I remember from over 4 decades ago that convinced my young mind that these oils, loaded with toxic chemicals, were superior to our local animal lard. Many years down the road, many people are paying a hefty price for being ignorant of the political subterfuge that major food companies play on the masses just to make profit. The advert I first saw at the first movie night I attended featured a couple in the kitchen all happy around the hearth. The wife was busy preparing to cook while being entertained by the jovial husband seated comfortably across the wife. But things changed abruptly once the wife added some lard into a cooking pan that was being heated on the fire. The lard started bubbling everywhere and burning the husband who didn’t look amused at all. The next clip show the mother being advised to use Kimbo cooking oil and the happy mood in the kitchen returned. The message was clear even in my young mind.: animal lard was for loosers.
If eating the apple made Adam realize that he was naked, eating hydrogenated oils in my village and the American south made me aware that my food was colonized by a greasy lie. That was then. Now the pizza and foreign chicken joints like KFC craze is the new version of hydrogenated oil. Few with the means to patronize these foreign joints dare miss out on a visit to these restaurants during an outing or a special occasion. Like the parade of the many happy customers who wear cotton clothes, stained by the blood and sweat of Southern slavery in the old South, or those modern sartorial masters donning garb from problematic cotton grown in India through exorbitantly priced GMO seeds which have caused the suicide of hundreds of thousands of farmers facing the loss of their family land on account of debts tied to those seeds, the facade around cotton continues to this day. Many in the highfalutin West know that the word Crisco actually stands for crystallized cottonseed oil. This oil from cottonseeds that are heavily reliant on chemicals, is sold as a vegetable oil. When has anyone heard of cabbage oil or spinach oil? Yet the oil acts like a food bikini, hiding the most important things while showing what few would care to see.
But not all are being fooled. No more taking the old orders of “Children, Sit Down”, as I dutifully did in my youth at the free monthly movie. I therefore made a sumptuous alternative that satisfies my appetite in a way that commercial chemical pizza and chicken, cooked in chemical oil that had been heated beyond its smoke point many times over. I called the recipe Wakubwa, Swahili word for grownups and the opposite of “watoto” or children. I am no longer a child to believe everything I hear without examining it. Just for fun, i used the oxtail, cooked black eyed peas,, pastured eggs, fresh oregano, parsley, greens, shiitake mushrooms, cumin, cloves and black pepper. All the ingredients were carefully chosen and then cooked in shape of thick bread or pizza. It was cooked slowly on top of the stove within fifteen minutes. The recipe will be available to anyone who requests it by email. I tested it on my children and they gave me a thumbs up. I now say it loud that it is possible to decolonize your ideas about food. But it has to start with recognizing the snake and the apple that will tempt you. Then you can arm yourself with the skills to understand and attend to your taste buds.