Cal State professor teaches students to ‘Decolonize Your Diet’

*From the article: ” . . . immigrants — and Mexican-Americans, in particular — should embrace the inexpensive and wholesome culinary traditions of their heritage, foods like homemade corn tortillas, beans and soups. Before the Spanish conquest and the introduction of wheat, she noted, food in the Americas was gluten-free.” What’s for lunch? VL

By Katy Murphy, San Jose Mercury News

HAYWARD — For years, Maira Perez thought to be healthy she had to eat salad — and certainly not the food her grandparents and parents grew up eating in Mexico.

Even her doctor once suggested she “slow down on the tortillas,” she recalls, as they discussed managing her weight. After a string of short-lived and frustrating diets, the CSU East Bay student found the inspiration she needed in professor Luz Calvo’s ethnic studies course, which gave her a new, healthier take on traditional Mexican food, inspiring her to cook “the tamales, the beans, the fresh tortillas, nopales — the things we thought of as unhealthy.”

“It’s something that changed my life,” Perez, 23, said of the class, “as a student, as a mother, as a person.”

Calvo’s class, “Decolonize Your Diet,” is an exploration into the health and diet of Latinos — recent immigrants as well as those who have adopted American customs and food tastes.

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