implement a traditional diet

For Some Native Americans, Pregnancy Helps Forge a Path Toward Traditional Foods  With Native Americans experiencing the nation’s second highest risk of pregnancy-related mortality, a renewed focus on traditional foods is helping them achieve healthy births while addressing ongoing traumas of colonization and food apartheid.

Gonzales is actively learning about traditional Navajo foods and knows that the day when people in her community can easily implement a traditional diet are still a ways off. For one, knowledge keepers are not always accessible except when groups like the Changing Woman Initiative, Cihuapactli Collective, or other nonprofits or grassroots Native groups host traditional food classes or workshops.

Gonzales grew up on the Navajo Nation and ate many processed, convenient foods that were high in fat, sugar, and salt. As she made her way through college and midwifery school, she was introduced to a wide variety of fresh ingredients and flavors from other areas of the globe.

Now, her diet is made up of mainly fresh vegetables and proteins. She loves to cook and learn about Indigenous ingredients, like blue corn, and all the ways it can be used in breakfast, dinner, and dessert; a simple hot bowl of corn mush or as corn muffins, breads, or pancakes. And until there are meaningful and effective solutions that address the trauma caused by colonization around Indigenous food and nutrition, she hopes her midwives and prenatal clients will be inspired to cook and share knowledge about fresh, local, and traditional foods at the community level.

“We’re not going to change everybody at once, but we can make that change in ourselves one at a time,” Gonzales said.

https://civileats.com/2021/08/17/for-some-native-americans-pregnancy-helps-forge-a-path-toward-traditional-foods/