My childhood memories include my grandmother making garlic tinctures, boiling ginger tea, and delivering spoonfuls of elderberry syrup to me when I was sick. When I had the flu, she’d put slices of onions in my socks to “pull the cold out.” If someone had cramps, she’d brew them a soothing cup of peppermint tea.

She had no formal training, but my grandmother knew to use eucalyptus for inflammation and licorice for digestion—and they worked. It wasn’t until I started taking classes to get my certificate in medicinal plants from Cornell University last year, starting my own herbalist journey, that I began to connect what I was learning with what my grandmother had already taught me.

But these traditions didn’t begin with her.

Traditional medicine, or folk medicine, was once the dominant medical system in Africa. During chattel slavery, enslaved Africans brought their knowledge of medicinal plants to America, adapting their practices to the new environment. This legacy of plant medicine has not only survived, but also has become an integral—and rarely credited—part of Black American culture.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in herbalism, including on platforms like TikTok, where #Blackherbalist and #AfricanHolisticHealth have garnered over 64 million combined views. This movement reflects a broader celebration of the resilience and ingenuity of our ancestors.

Carmen Adams is a Black herbalist registered with the American Herbalists Guild as well as a community health nurse and the founder of Innergy Med Group, a practice that provides wellness plans that integrate holistic and herbal solutions for her clients. She began her journey by studying herbalism and naturopathic medicine to heal her acne, digestive issues, weight gain, and anxiety. Now, after years of helping clients and mentoring aspiring herbalists, Carmen shares her insights and expertise with her 220,000 followers on TikTok, hoping to empower, educate and teach people how to advocate for their health.

I spoke to Adams about herbalism’s historic connection to Black American culture, how social media is giving the practice new life, and why Black Americans haven’t always received credit for their contributions.

How would you define an herbalist?

Herbalism is a study of plants and their medicinal properties. However, when it comes to practicing herbalism, it’s an art.

An herbalist consciously works with plants, whether they’re live, dried, or otherwise. Maybe you’re someone who [forages], so you’re out in nature and you’re picking them. Maybe you’re a farmer interacting with plants, but you’re doing so to extract their medicinal properties. An herbalist may be spending time with plants, whether it’s breathing with them, using them to purify the air, or consuming them to benefit your physical “meat suit.” That’s how I would describe an herbalist, because not everyone has to be in a clinical setting. Not everyone’s mind works that way, and I respect that as well.

Can you share your personal journey into medicinal plants?

I’ve always known I’d work in health care. While on the pre-med track, I began learning things that didn’t quite feel in alignment—different things in reference to pharmaceuticals and policies. I learned that I was pregnant; that was the biggest mental change. I knew there were certain aspects I wasn’t going to incorporate into my personal journey. It pushed me to ask, “What now? What did my ancestors do?”

I remember getting sick as a kid. I had a really bad stomach virus. My mom was in the kitchen, making something her brother used to make for her. It had onions, garlic, ginger, all kinds of stuff. It smelled horrible. I remember taking it, looking at her, running to the front door, and throwing up on the welcome mat. However, from that moment forward, I felt better.

So, I sought out herbalism. Back then, there weren’t many courses. There were different herbalists acting as mentors. I was privileged enough to have a mentor by the name of Dulce King. She was a lovely Dominican woman. . . . Her depth of knowledge was invaluable. I wanted to take her mind and just shake it into mine. That was the birth of my love of herbalism and teaching.

What inspired you to start sharing your knowledge on TikTok?

I’m not a social media person. My assistant felt that people would benefit from learning from me, even if they weren’t clients or mentees. I gave it a whirl, and it just took off.

I’m just sharing my two cents, and if it resonates, beautiful. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I started to learn the different misinformation that was out there because it’s so easy to make money . . . I feel sometimes people can get a little drunk on that, which could cause them to overpromise a product that’s going to underdeliver, at best. I wanted to make sure that I share that herbs are [simply] a tool.

In my practice, sometimes we don’t even mention an herb. People may just need a place to vent or feel safe. Their inner dialogue was causing the nausea and anxiety; the peppermint tea wasn’t needed.

Some people use TikTok as an alternative to Google, so it’s important for people to disseminate information responsibly. What are your thoughts on that?

The fact that people use it as Google kind of scares me. Even though I believe self-diagnosing has its place, specialists are specialists for a reason. Anyone can get a TikTok account. Anyone can buy a book, regurgitate it, and then say, “This product can get you that result.” It’s disheartening because I’ve seen [social media remedies] hurt people.

For example, sea moss could be beneficial, but there are some cases where it is not beneficial. I’ve had clients come to me or put themselves in the hospital because [of] something that they saw online—someone promising how it benefited them without understanding certain contraindications.

Are there any herbs you had a relationship with as a child that you still use now?

Ginger, onion, garlic. Broths were pretty big.

One of the first cough syrups I ever made as an herbalist was a honey-onion cough syrup. [I was] learning about nature’s antibiotics and then, feeling spiffy, added garlic to it. [I remember] tasting it and thinking, “This reminds me of childhood. Why does this remind me of childhood?’

Things like that started coming back. I started making my own salad dressings but using my cough syrup as a base. Then it was like, “Ah, yes! Food can be medicine!” It just starts to click.

Are there any remedies that are popular among herbalists today that are safe to try?

There is no cookie-cutter answer to this. It’s out of my scope to diagnose, treat, or prescribe, so I’m simply sharing.

(For eczema and psoriasis), chickweed is a mild, nutritive herb that can be consumed internally and used externally as a fomentation, which is a fancy way of saying using a tea topically.

Nettle! In my personal life, I love it whenever I’m dealing with seasonal allergies.

Oh, and for menstrual cramps, red raspberry leaf coupled with ginger root. Bring some ginger to a boil and combine that tea on top of red raspberry leaves. Remove it from heat, let it steep, and consume that. The ginger is an anodyne or analgesic, meaning pain-relieving. It’s also blood-thinning and a circulatory herb. Red raspberry is touted for being a uterine tonic and a nutritive.

I have read that enslaved Black Americans used cayenne pepper in their shoes or on their feet to treat colds. Have you heard of this?

I have heard the remedy more times than you can believe! Cayenne is a circulatory herb that is also considered a diaphoretic herb, so it can increase your body’s temperature.

Putting cayenne in your shoes can burn, depending on if you have sensitive skin, so you will want to maybe use a carrier oil like olive oil, jojoba oil, or coconut oil. Even then, it feels like Icy Hot.

I’ve used it for camping. It kept my feet warm. So, I think [enslaved Americans] were attempting to increase body temperature to assist. Cayenne is a diaphoretic herb and can cause sweating, so if it’s coming from that place and that’s how that person responded, their body could positively be influenced.

Anecdotes like that are fascinating and important to me as a Black American. Are people holding tradition more closely now?

(More) than ever before. I’m 36. Thinking of my childhood, there was an undertone to religion or maybe they’d tie it to biblical times. Nowadays, people are dipping back into their roots, if they know what those roots are. But some are just going back to the basics and revering nature. That’s how it started with me.

I’ve seen a surge of Black herbalists, particularly among millennials and Gen Z. How has social media opened the door for Black people who want to celebrate these traditions but may not have had the family background or access to that knowledge?

It’s given a platform to everyone, melanated or otherwise. I do think it may be connecting more and more people within the diaspora. There are different cultures that look similar that are learning that they have similar thoughts for health and wellness, utilizing what the Earth provides. It’s a great opportunity to share knowledge and connect. I’ve had individuals join live [streams] and say, “I didn’t even know this was an option!” Stuff like that feels good to know, and it cuts across racial lines.

Why have the contributions Black Americans have made to herbal medicine been overlooked and undocumented?

At one point, it was illegal [for Black people] to read and write. They didn’t have the opportunity or know-how for publishing. Typically, storytelling [was how] things were passed down. All of those factors could be perceived as barriers to how this knowledge was traditionally shared.

What does healing mean to you?

Alignment of mind, body, spirit. Balance. It’s your inner dialogue, your stress-coping mechanisms. It’s pain, or lack thereof. It’s what you choose to consume visually, auditorily, or via digestion and spirit. It’s your connection to source, whatever that looks like, religious or spiritual. It’s where you draw strength from.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The post On TikTok, A Revival of Black Herbalism appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2024/08/13/on-tiktok-a-revival-of-black-herbalism/feed/ 0 https://civileats.com/2024/07/01/can-cooking-in-community-slow-dementia-and-diabetes/ https://civileats.com/2024/07/01/can-cooking-in-community-slow-dementia-and-diabetes/#respond Mon, 01 Jul 2024 09:00:36 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=56745 “They teach us how to cook a dish without meat, and I love it,” Pratt, a charismatic New Orleans native, told me on a recent afternoon in Oakland. “I have more energy and I just feel better when I eat better.” Several people in the class, including Pratt, are Black women living with diabetes. The […]

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Gail Pratt is the oldest of seven sisters and the only one who didn’t learn to cook growing up. When a friend told her about a cooking class at The Good Life, an Oakland, California-based nonprofit offering healthy aging activities for older adults, she decided to enroll. For the past four years, 69-year-old Pratt has logged on most Thursday mornings from her kitchen, joining about 50 other women in her age group from all over the San Francisco Bay Area for an hourlong virtual lesson.

“They teach us how to cook a dish without meat, and I love it,” Pratt, a charismatic New Orleans native, told me on a recent afternoon in Oakland. “I have more energy and I just feel better when I eat better.” Several people in the class, including Pratt, are Black women living with diabetes.

“If you have type 2 diabetes left unchecked, unmanaged, then you are absolutely increasing your risk of developing dementia at later stages of life.”

The Good Life originated in 2020 as a clinical research study on dementia and diabetes prevention led by the U.C. Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Some researchers have dubbed dementia “type 3 diabetes” or “diabetes of the brain,” linking blood sugar levels to cognitive decline, though more research is needed to link the conditions.

“If you have type 2 diabetes left unchecked, unmanaged, then you are absolutely increasing your risk of developing dementia at later stages of life,” said Shanette Merrick, U.C. Davis’ clinical research supervisor and The Good Life’s executive director. She and her team recently concluded a study, she said, designed to show that “a healthy lifestyle change would slow down or stop the onset of dementia and diabetes.”

Shanette Merrick’s live cooking class with Mattie Stevenson in attendance, pictured second row from top. (Image courtesy of The Good Life)

Food holds significance at various stages of Alzheimer’s and other dementias—the third leading cause of death for older residents in Alameda County, where The Good Life operates. Early warning signs of Alzheimer’s include forgetting directions to familiar locations like the grocery store and struggling to organize a shopping list. At later stages of the disease, individuals may have difficulty preparing meals and recognizing the food on their plate as edible; some ultimately forget to chew or have difficulty swallowing due to muscle weakness and changes in the brain region responsible for coordination. Cooking and eating nutritious foods, meanwhile, has shown promise in helping individuals maintain and even enhance their cognitive function. Cooking with others may amplify these benefits, by reducing social isolation—a growing problem and one that’s associated with an even greater risk for dementia.

Projects like The Good Life and others around the country are tackling multiple needs. They improve nutrition, social connection, and mental well-being, especially for people living in communities burdened by chronic disinvestment and disease. The Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research, for example, is working to feed Black elders while reducing health disparities. With The Good Life, Merrick set out to transform the way Black elders perceive food, hoping to influence dietary changes within entire families. “I see it happening,” she said.

Cooking to Heal

Merrick works closely with David K. Johnson, a clinical psychologist who designed U.C. Davis’ study. He found a civic partner for his research in the city of Oakland. Initially, The Good Life’s cooking and exercise classes were scheduled at the East Oakland Sports Center, which shares a parking lot with a senior center, but pandemic shelter-in-place orders thwarted their plans. Merrick, who lives in East Oakland, proposed online classes to bring people together and address something she was seeing in her community: Black elders grappling with extreme isolation and fear of their vulnerability to the coronavirus. An avid cook and self-identified creative, Merrick offered to teach the cooking class herself. She did not expect classes to last more than a few months, but now, four years later, interest is still growing: Merrick sees 40 to 55 participants weekly, including the core group of around 30 women who’ve been with her since the beginning.

“When they first started the class, I would always add some meat to my dishes, like some shrimp or some chicken,” said Pratt, who is one of those early members. “And now I can do the dishes without the meat, so they’re really helpful as far as teaching us how to cook healthy meatless meals.” (Studies have shown that a vegan or high-vegetable diet may reduce risk of dementia.)

Polemic proclamations aside, refrigeration speaks volumes about our food system, says Nicola Twilley, seasoned journalist and co-host of the podcast Gastropod. The ability to manufacture cold has shaped not just our diet and health, she argues, but our economy, landscape, and geopolitics. “Its fingerprints are everywhere,from the height [increases in] 19th-century army recruits to Irish Independence and women’s liberation.”

Her new book, Frostbite, plunges readers into the chilly depths of the cold chain—the refrigerated infrastructure that envelops our food as it moves from farm to table—and the far-reaching consequences of developing a food system utterly dependent on cold preservation, storage, and delivery.

As the cold chain continues to expand at a frenzied pace, however, it comes at a shiver-inducing cost, Twilley says—to our health, the socioeconomic and geopolitical landscape, and climate change.

Civil Eats spoke with Twilley about her book, how refrigeration has transformed our relationship with food, and the implications of feeding the world’s seemingly insatiable appetite for manufactured cold.

What exactly is the cold supply chain?

It’s an interconnected network of refrigerated spaces, trucks, shipping containers, and air transportation. About three-quarters of everything on American plates passes through it, starting on the farm, extending to the supermarket, and ending at your fridge. The cold chain has created this vast artificial winter and the global food system that we have today—a world with out-of-season produce, [imported] meats, and Alaskan salmon that’s pin-boned in China, then sold in the U.S.

Can you explain the logistics of creating a cheeseburger entirely from scratch, and how the refrigerated food system makes that possible?

I tell the story of [open-data activist] Waldo Jaquith, who went off the grid with his wife in 2010 to test the limits of self-sufficiency. They built a home in rural Virginia, growing their own vegetables and raising chickens, and set off on a mission to make a cheeseburger—this sort of pinnacle of industrial food—from scratch.

He outlined the steps: He’d grow his own tomatoes, mustard plant, and wheat for the buns. It was the meat and cheese, though, where things fell down. In a pre-refrigeration scenario, you’d slaughter the cow in the cool winter months, but to make cheese at the same time as the beef, you’d need another [cow] that’s nursing [to get the milk and rennet].

Then if you want a tomato on your burger, that’s a late summer produce; if you want lettuce leaf, that’s spring or fall. Without refrigeration, none of those things can be ready at the same time. Sure, you could turn the tomatoes into ketchup and age the cheese. But when you think about how many cheeseburgers Americans eat, bringing those ingredients together in a pre-refrigeration world would have been like dining on a peacock stuffed into a swan—an incredible feat of food sourcing that requires a lot of preparation and planning.

So, the cheeseburger couldn’t have existed without our refrigerated supply chain, and they didn’t; the earliest records are from the 1920s.

Like so many innovations that we consider essential, including the internet, refrigeration comes at a steep price.

It’s a fascinating conundrum. Refrigeration has been seen as an unarguable benefit to society—without it, a third of everything [grown] used to go bad before it could be sold. Food waste has huge environmental and economic impacts on food security, water use, and methane emissions from rotting food, so on that level alone, it’s incredible.

Refrigeration allows apple farmers in Washington, for example, to store their annual harvest and spread out sales over the next year. Cold transport allows banana growers in Central America to access a huge export market. People now talk about eating seasonally without having any idea of how it used to be. Historians think that much of Europe used to be pre-scorbutic (a pre-scurvy condition due to vitamin C deficiency) right before spring, from the lack of fresh fruit and vegetables. So, manufactured cold has given us the abundance that we have today, including sheer cool delights like cocktails and ice cream.

Still, a century of refrigeration has also revealed equally enormous downsides. For growers, the economic benefits aren’t so long term: Once the market opens up globally, the money and opportunities tend to go to whoever can do it for the absolute least, and that pushes prices and revenue down for everyone. Refrigeration has contributed to unsustainable monocultures that promote pests, diseases, and resource depletion; although we can have asparagus out of season in the U.S., exports from Peru are draining that country’s aquifer.

The global domination of bananas—the world’s most popular fruit—is made entirely possible by refrigerated shipping and [artificial] ripening. But through consolidation and dependence on a single crop, big plantations in Central America and the foreign corporations that run them have also [left a legacy of] political monoculture in the region.

There are also subtle downsides to taste and nutrition. Fruits and vegetables have been reshaped to fit into a refrigerated supply chain, and part of that has removed flavor—literally switched off genes responsible for producing it. There’s also evidence that nutrient levels have fallen as crops are bred for the cold chain. Yet as consumers, we’ve voted with our dollars to have [produce that’s] cold and sturdy—rather than tasty or healthy.

At the planetary level, refrigerant gases and the energy used for cooling are among the biggest contributors to climate change. Astonishingly, refrigeration hasn’t reduced food waste—it’s just moved it to the other end [of the consumption pipeline]. In overstuffing our fridges and supermarket shelves, we’re chucking a third of our food supply and [creating even more] greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the global cold chain keeps expanding—between 2018 and 2020, world [refrigeration] capacity increased nearly 20 percent. I think it’s a potential time bomb.

What is refrigeration’s role in transforming the beef industry?

A lot of the beef industry’s development was driven by the need to feed an increasing urban population. Historically, cattle would walk themselves to market—losing weight en route—and get slaughtered in the city. The cold chain allowed livestock to be raised far away from cities and put meatpacking plants in places where you could bypass pesky things like a unionized workforce. It took skilled butchering jobs away from urban stockyards and made [slaughterhouses] more dangerous.

In the big picture, I think refrigeration contributes to the detachment we have from our meat supply and what happens to these animals before they arrive on our plates. That fosters an approach that says, “I just want the cheapest price possible,” because essentially, that’s the only information we have about the meat.

It’s also led to massive industry consolidation, with four companies now controlling more than 70 percent of the U.S. beef market.

The cold chain only makes economic sense at a certain scale, one that tends to rule out small producers. Cattle farmers in New England, where land is more expensive, can’t compete with those in the American West, who have economic advantages that come with being big. That spurs consolidation: Along with gigantic industrial feedlots, meat processing plants capable of slaughtering thousands of cattle a day have become the norm.

What are the implications of the rest of the world rushing to build U.S.-style cold systems?

Currently, 70 percent of all food consumed in the U.S. passes through a cold chain, while in China, less than a quarter of meats and 5 percent of fruits and veg are sold under refrigeration. With mechanical cooling already responsible for [a significant portion of] global greenhouse emissions, the implications are you can’t build an American-size [system] around the world using current technology and stay within the 2-degree [Celsius global temperature] threshold of the U.N. Paris Climate Agreement. It’s literally not possible.

Conversely, reimagining and reinventing cold technology offers a lot of hope for building a better food system. Rwanda, for instance, is developing a National Cooling Strategy, the first of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa. Although there’s a minimum size required to make refrigeration work economically, in a country where small-scale farmers make up nearly half the population, the system has to be implemented so that it doesn’t throw people off their land or lead to monoculture.

Meanwhile, how can we make the U.S. system more sustainable? The Biden administration is investing in developing a more resilient meat supply chain, for example, largely by decentralizing the industry. Will initiatives like that help? 

It’s obviously harder in the U.S., where we have an entrenched system. But there are so many advantages to making things smaller—the industry will definitely be more resilient if one E. coli contamination doesn’t shut down a tenth of your meat supply. While you need to have some level of aggregation, focusing on infrastructure like community refrigeration hubs can help bring the cost of the cold chain down and make [smaller producers] more competitive with agribusiness.

For perishable products, the mantra in the American food system is “the cold chain, the cold chain, the cold chain.” We refrigerate when we don’t need to. If the U.S. mandated salmonella vaccinations for chickens as the U.K. does, you wouldn’t need to refrigerate eggs. Also, there’s a company producing a permeable, edible coating for [harvested] produce that drastically slows ripening—essentially what cold does, with fewer impacts on flavor. Some European countries regulate supermarket size in order to preserve downtowns while curbing massive weekly shopping trips that encourage food waste.

There are solutions at all points along the chain that don’t require new technology. We’re dealing with an entrenched system, however, so we need regulation and incentives to make it work.

As you state, our country’s dependence on refrigeration is disproportionately high—the average U.S. fridge is 40 percent bigger than a French one, while 1 in 4 American households owns multiple units. What can consumers do to wean themselves off cold food?

Unplug that second refrigerator in your garage and recycle it properly to have the gases captured; you’lll find that it reduces food waste and electric bills simultaneously. And there’d be less wishful thinking if we shopped more frequently, in smaller amounts; we buy to fill the space you have. Go to the farmers’ market and buy what’s in season locally. Produce tastes better [that way], too—it’s not just some myth made up by Alice Waters (laugh).

Do you see any glimmer of hope in all of this?

Post-harvest science and technology is this Cinderella-like sector of research and development. There are people doing great work here, but almost nothing is being spent on it. If you want to enter a field that could transform the world, that’s a place where you’re needed.

There’s one striking aspect to note about our food system: It has only been refrigerated for a little more than a century. If it’s that recent, we can transform it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post Look What Nicola Twilley Found in the Fridge appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2024/06/24/look-what-nicola-twilley-found-in-the-fridge/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2024/05/08/far-from-home-the-curry-leaf-tree-thrives/ https://civileats.com/2024/05/08/far-from-home-the-curry-leaf-tree-thrives/#comments Wed, 08 May 2024 09:00:27 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=56186 On the last day of one of our trips, there was one final item to be packed. A housekeeper knelt under a towering 20-foot curry leaf tree and dug up one of the dozens of saplings at its base. She wrapped it in a wet towel and secured it in a plastic bag. My parents […]

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When I was a child in the 1980s, my family traveled nearly every summer from our home in Los Angeles to the other side of the world. We spent monsoon-drenched weeks on my grandparents’ farm in southern India’s Kerala state.

On the last day of one of our trips, there was one final item to be packed. A housekeeper knelt under a towering 20-foot curry leaf tree and dug up one of the dozens of saplings at its base. She wrapped it in a wet towel and secured it in a plastic bag. My parents stowed it in a shoe in their suitcase, and we flew back home without encountering any inspections.

Once they transplanted the sapling into a pot, they kept it warm inside the house and watched over it carefully. But it never took to the mild, dry climate of Los Angeles, and it wilted a few weeks later. After two more saplings met the same fate, my parents gave up.

But another stowaway did make the journey successfully.

Instead of a sapling, Anand Prasad brought curry leaf seeds. He is now one of the largest commercial growers in the country, with an estimated 5,000 trees on his farm outside Los Angeles.

The idea was inspired by his grandfather, who left India with a pocketful of curry leaf seeds in the early 20th century and moved to Fiji as an indentured laborer. When his grandson Prasad emigrated from the South Pacific island to Los Angeles in 1980, he tucked several seeds into his pocket. With a lot of care, they sprouted in his new home.

“It was so hard, because those seeds were not adapted here,” Prasad said. “It’s like bringing a baby from hot weather to cold weather. But once they germinate, they start growing, and then the plants are adapted.”

He recalled covering the plant with a sheet in winter and bringing it into his house. He eventually planted it in the yard, and it grew tall. That single curry leaf tree was how his farm began.

Like other non-native plants, the curry leaf tree (Murraya koenigii), which grows in tropical parts of Asia and South Asia, has taken root, adapted, and thrived in the United States. Not to be confused with curry powder, the tree’s leaves are a staple ingredient in Indian, Sri Lankan, and other Asian cuisines. Dark green and intensely fragrant, they are roasted in hot oil to release their nutty and complex citrus flavor for curries, stews, and chutneys.

The exact date of the plant’s introduction to the U.S. is difficult to pinpoint. Now, along with the widespread availability of fresh leaves in Asian grocery stores and even on Amazon, the plant itself can be purchased for windowsill pots and kitchen gardens.