 Welcome to Ancestral Health Today, evolutionary insights into modern health. On today's episode of Ancestral Health Today, we have Pilar Egués. Pilar is an Ecuadorian cultural anthropologist. She's a writer and award-winning filmmaker. Over the past 20 years, she has lived, worked, and carried out research and community-based projects in and about Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and Japan. She's a co-founder and director of Comidas que Cura, Foods that Heal, an independent food education and media company, dedicated to researching and promoting traditional food knowledge through ethnographic research and film. Her award-winning documentaries have been screened in three different languages across North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. Through her research, public speaking, and films, she amplifies the voices of older men and women who are the bearers of traditional knowledge about food and medicine in Latin America. She has brought this work to communities in Ecuador through filmmaking and research education projects, as well as to U.S. college students in the United States through film screening and lectures. She's published, she's a published author and speaks internationally on topics ranging from cultural history, food heritage, health, nutrition, and conflict transformation. Pilar, welcome to the show, and can you please tell us a little bit about yourselves? Sure. Thank you, Isabel, and everyone that makes this podcast possible for inviting me. Well, I'm from Ecuador. I'm from Quito, the capital, and so from the highlands. I grew up there and partially went to school there, and then I came to the U.S. to finish my bachelor's degree, and then I went back to Ecuador for a while to get my master's and also work for a while, and then I came back here to Illinois to do a PhD in socio-cultural anthropology, and after that I did a postdoc for two years at U of I in community health, and that's when I started my food anthropology research, focusing on Ecuador, and I've been doing that for the past about 10 years. I started this project called Comidas que curan, Food that Heal, which is now like a production company, film production and research project that I've been working on for several years. I love to study and research about food, so I'm an anthropologist, so I work with communities, I go into different communities, especially in Ecuador. That's been my focus for the past 10 years, and I work with youth and older people, especially older women who are the bearers of the traditional knowledge with respect to medicine and food, and I also teach, so I do educational programs for the youth, the children and youth in the communities, so we've done a couple of participatory collaborative films with the people in communities as well as other documentaries that still have the participatory component, but last year was particularly good because we aired, I think there were two, two new documentaries, and it was a great year because of that, yeah. Amazing, that's a lot to unpack. What career to study anthropology in the first place? So I was doing my undergrad in economics, that was my major, it was really boring, I mean I was really good at it, I kind of like, I really like math and I was good at, you know, I did really well, but it was really boring because they always talked about models that didn't align with my experience in Latin America and Ecuador, growing up in Ecuador, so the economic models that I was learning about, they didn't align, and it was mostly based on speculations and like, based on the history also like of the US, and I was pretty disappointed, so I wanted, I ended up taking an elective class, it was an anthropology class with these anthropologists that were focusing on the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico, and that's where I fell in love with anthropology because they, I mean, they really look at issues from this holistic perspective where not only the political aspects matter, but also the cultural aspects, economic aspects, and the political economy aspects with respect to the broader global economy and the broader global context, so it was, and then the spiritual aspects, and we talked about food and we talked about culture, so that's, yeah, that's what made me, you know, engage with anthropology and shift my career. And then from there, what gave you the impetus to even dive deeper into food anthropology and make that a big part of your focus? So, yeah, I took a break, well, yeah, I was doing anthropology, but no, I looked more at the history, so after that, well, I was, I was working with communities first in Ecuador and then I looked at issues of women's health and sexuality for a while, and then I was looking at human history, so that was my dissertation focus, and so after that, I was ready to do something more in the field, and my motivation to start with food studies or food anthropology was, it was very personal, it was my personal journey with food and with health, so I had been for the whole time that I was doing my PhD, I really struggled with my health. Looking back, I realized it was, it had a lot to do with stress, that, yeah, it couldn't be fixed with the diets, but I kept looking in the diets, like for answers, and I did, yeah, a bunch of diets, including vegan and, what's this other one, comparable to vegan, that you just eat rice and vegetables, so I got really, I became, yeah, I lost a lot of weight, I was really skinny that whole time, and I was always cold, and my gut was, I mean, that's when I really, like, destroyed my gut, just eating, I mean, I was eating a lot of oatmeal, I ate it every day, like, I ate oatmeal every day, I didn't soak it or anything, I was just eating oatmeal because I felt that that was, you know, it was healthy, and then, you know, the more vegetables and raw vegetables, I didn't understand, and a lot of beans also, and then I kept in touch with a friend from Ecuador, and she, you know, we exchanged a lot of this kind of information, and one day, she gave me the Sally Fallon's book, Norwegian Traditions, and then I found my mom's recipe for quinoa soup, which is a very, it's a very traditional soup, it's a traditional recipe from from Ecuador, especially from the highlands where I am from, so I was surprised to find that in that book, and you know, I read the book, and I was surprised to find all of this, like, this new perspective on, that was for me, like, new because I had been looking in veganism or vegetarianism for answers, and then all of a sudden, like, you know, this book had a lot of good arguments for eating the traditional way, the way that my mom raised me with, and my grandmother raised me with, and it was really simple for me to just try it, and as soon as I tried, I started eating meat, and because I was also, yeah, I didn't eat, like, beef or pork for a long time, so I started, you know, introducing more meat, and eating more the traditional way, like, you know, chicken and rice and vegetables, tortillas with cheese or whatever, and it's more close to my heart, and then immediately, I started feeling better, so going back to your question, that's what made me, that made me interested in pursuing food anthropology as a research path, because I realized how much wealth of knowledge was in my own family, and, you know, that's what I found on this book, and I was surprised that it was a book written in English, and it was a best-selling book, and I wasn't looking at this for my own, for my own health, and I felt that other people also needed to know, because everything made sense at that moment for me, like, everything made sense, like, this knowledge is being tested for so many generations, and it's being passed on, you know, by my grandmother's ancestors, and then I have that knowledge as well, not only for food and for recipes, but also for medicinal recipes with herbs and other things that are part of the way we are raised in Latin America, even my generation, I grew up in the city, but I got all of this knowledge from my elders who were raised in the country, that they were closer to the herbs, to the garden, to the animals, and so they have all of this folk knowledge about food and medicine, so that's what made me start this project. Wonderful. So, tell me more about how you grew up, and what was the food and culture intersection? How did people relate to food? Who prepared those foods? When was that, when different foods were utilized within your culture, and how that impacted people's relationships and celebrations and so forth and so on, and then what was the difference when you came to the States? Yeah, there were a lot of questions there, but one of the questions was who prepared the food, so for us it was my mom, we were raised, my brother and I were raised by my mom because my parents got divorced when I was five, so I was raised by my mom, and she's the one that made the food, and I remember, I remember that she sometimes gave a soup or beans and rice, not so much meat, I don't remember meat, but beans and rice for breakfast or soup for breakfast, which is very different to what my peers in school were having because I went to private school, and my friends in school, or not my friends, but my classmates, they were like wealthier, and it was an American school, so there's this cultural hegemony, I don't know if that makes sense, or I cannot pack it, but basically it's this idea that you have to try to mimic the US and US culture and whatever is related to the United States, and whatever is on Hollywood or the magazines from the States, so my classmates were, I mean, I know because sometimes I stayed overnight, like sleepover at their home after doing an assignment, and I know what they were having for breakfast, like cornflakes and milk and orange juice and pancakes from the box, because these were very wealthy families, the kids from wealthy families were my classmates, and so this is the class of people that used to go to Miami on the weekends, so they're being big landowners, they're in the political, also they also have a lot of political control in the country for a long time, they're part of the oligarchy, you would say, so they have money, so they go to Miami and sometimes they bring stuff from there, because at that time it was not so easy to get this kind of stuff, like in the supermarkets, right now you can get like Panky syrup in the supermarket, in some supermarkets, but back then you have to, some of these things, like very cultural, US cultural foods bring them directly from the US, so it was pretty sad, but I mean I was bullied, you know, like in school for eating these foods that my mom made, because we were not of this social class, like my mom was working class, she was a nurse and she was a single mom, so she sometimes sent me also these traditional snacks, like in my lunchbox, and it was totally unacceptable within my circle, because it would be like toasted corn, we call it tostado, with churros, which is lupin, which is like a, it's a kind of bean that grows in the Andean region that is very high in protein, and these are also, these are very, these are traditional foods, like even ancestral foods in this region, like for example lupin is native, is native to the Andes, so my classmates were bringing like, you know, packaged stuff, and that was a cool thing to do, and yeah, so that's what I remember in terms of my growing up, I also remember my mom going, you know, doing a lot of effort to, to bring me homemade food to wherever I was, so after, after school, like high school, or school, I went to music school in the afternoon, so I took the bus and dropped me off at the music school, and I spent my afternoon there, and then my mom would bring me the prepared food for me to eat, like on the sideway, or on the sidewalk, or like, just the entrance of the music school, like, you know, hall, and I would be eating that, and it was kind of shameful at the time for me, like, you know, be eating that way, because she didn't want me to eat the foods from the, from the store, like, you know, the packaged foods, she would really take care of, of us in that way, like, through the food that she would give us, and what I said about the breakfast is, is something very traditional in the country, you know, it's very, it's a very much of a part of the rural culture to have this, quote unquote, heavy breakfast, what you, for us, for anyone today, like, having soup for breakfast, or like, meat and beans and rice for breakfast is considered heavy, but in the country, it's traditional, it's traditional, so that's, yeah, that's one of, one of the ways I think my mom showed us her love, by really, you know, putting so much effort in, in really thinking in our nutrition, even though we didn't like it, because it was not aligned with, you know, with what everybody else was doing, and with our, you know, with classmates were doing, but yeah, and then in terms of the rituals and stuff that you were talking about, we always got together with my family, especially my mom's side family, and my grandmother was like the matriarch, she was the mom of five sisters, like, that were the sisters of my mom, my aunts, and they were many, especially a few or two or three of them were like my mom's, my second mom's also, like, they raised me, they know a lot, they knew a lot about like traditional foods and how to cook, how to cook, I really like this knowledge of cooking traditional foods as well as medicine, so they taught me a lot of the other things I know about the herbs, even though it's not a lot, but when I see other people, like, other people don't know anything, but I know, I realize when I come here, how much I know about herbs, because my aunts taught me that, like, they would prescribe certain herbs and preparations and remedies in special circumstances, and I learned all of those things growing up with them, so when we got together, it was all of them cooking and the kitchen was a mess, and my grandmother was usually very stressed out, she was super stressed out because these traditional dishes are very complicated to make, some of them, they are very, in Spanish, my grandmother would say laborioso, which means it takes a lot of labor, like a lot of work, it's very complicated, cumbersome to do, so she would have an entire crew of people, like all of her daughters, helping out, and then it would be a delicious meal, I mean, I can tell you about some of the recipes that are very dear to me that my grandmother used to make, like the plantain ball soup, that's one of my favorites, rompope, she used to make these, they're kind of like buns, but they're made with this tuber, which is, again, I think only found in the Andes, I think in Ecuador and Colombia, we call it sanoria blanca, which would translate as white carrot, but it's not the white carrot or the parsnip that you find in the store here, it's a different kind of tuber, it's a mix between yuca and something else, but it's one of my favorite foods, and she used to make, just even boiled that with some salt and olive oil, and she would tell me like all of the health benefits that is good for fertility, that is good for, it's like a very light food that you can eat at night so it can help you sleep, things like that, I mean, she knew everything about every food. That's amazing, so you go back and forth to your hometown or? Yeah, especially recent, I mean, I've never, I've always stayed in touch, especially over the past, like I said, 10 years because I've been doing the research there, so I go like every year, at least one time, but this past couple of years I've been going back several times a year because I've been working on films, so and research. Have you seen those traditions changed or have they stayed the same for the most part? Totally, yeah, I mean, I would say like it's not a new change, but it's changing more and more, like for example, over the past, I don't know, five to 10 years that I've been going back. What I've seen is that it's surprising a lot, is like I go there with a lot of expectation to eat good food, because foods that you cannot find here in the States, and I go and ask friends or acquaintances, like, oh, can you recommend a place to eat? And a lot of them would say, just go to the mall, and go to the mall to the food court, so everything like I said, you know, there's this cultural imperialism that we are trying to mimic, you know, the United States in every way. So the malls look like a lot of them look like the malls here in the States, and they have a food court with a lot of these chains, a lot of which are U.S. food chains, and but a lot of them are also like local food national chains also. So for example, if you want ceviche or you want like arroz con menestra or something like very, very traditional, very Ecuadorian, quote unquote, it's very difficult to talk about Ecuadorian food because it's so diverse. There's so much of the regional cuisines, but for example, there's some chains that you can find at the malls where you can find ceviche and other things. And for me, the experience is terrible because one of the things for me, most important for me is like to be able to eat in real, like with real silverware and in real plates. And at these malls, it's always at the, it's always, you know, the paper plates and the plastic silverware. And for me, that completely changes the experience of eating and the taste, everything like. And because they're masks, they're chains, it's not, it's not, it's not the same. I was looking, you know, whenever I go, I always try to look for the hole in the wall type of places. But there's also a lot of new, new cuisines, like the chefs that are like academic chefs, they've gone to school, and they're trying to use the traditional foods as a base and then create new recipes, which, you know, some of them are really good. Others are a rip off, is my perspective. And they also, I think they also, I am very critical of the way a lot of the chefs or the chefs inferiorize the traditional foods. And they claim to be doing something better. I think the traditional foods and the traditional recipes can't be improved. They are always already perfect. You can innovate, you can create something different. And that's fine. But you cannot claim that it's better. And a lot of these chefs, I mean, that's what they thought in schools, in the schools and in the culinary schools, because they follow the European models, the French cuisine and the Italian cuisine. And I think that's a very Eurocentric way of looking at food and culture. And it's unfortunate because we have such a rich culture, food culture, and we don't need to try to mimic anything or anybody. I mean, that's a very colonial kind of approach to food. So. Yeah. And how do you think that those changes are affecting the health of the population? What have you observed? Well, it's been going, it's been following the trend in the developing world, in the US and Europe, like our epidemiological profile of the population is, no, increased prevalence of chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, etc. But it's coexisting with infectious type like profile and malnutrition. Malnutrition is widespread. It's widespread, especially in the rural areas. So it's a combined kind of scenario. Definitely, the standardization of the diet is what is behind a lot of these outcomes in terms of health. There used to be a lot more diversity in the diet in terms of the ingredients. And that's where my work with the seed savers come in because, you know, there's a movement of farmers in Ecuador to try to save the seeds of many of these vegetables and fruits and even animals that used to be eaten. And they're they're getting forgotten or they're not grown anymore. And because it's becoming more and more standardized, like just a few vegetables and, you know, they're just standard. In spite of that, if you go to a color to a supermarket, you will find a lot more diversity than you find in the US, especially in some somewhere like the Midwest, for example, where I have lived for a long time, it's pretty pathetic. Like, you know, just apples and bananas that come from somewhere else, like nothing's local. Over there, yes. But not just that standardization, but, you know, it's it's all grown in, you know, as monocrops. And there's widespread use of pesticides and and it's obviously affecting people's health because of that. And then I mean, as cities have grown more and more. For example, if I go back to to my home city, Quito, I don't recognize 80% of the city, you would drop me there. I don't I don't know where I am because only a tiny bit of it, it remains from from the time where I grew up. So it's been growing so rapidly. People I mean, there's a lot of immigration and the city has grown so much that that it's just impossible to for me to to recognize it. So what I what I'm trying to get at is that all of these changes bring along lifestyle changes for people, right? So there's like so much contamination and so much traffic in the streets because population is growing and growing and and all of these entails changes in how people eat. So it's really hard for people to go back to their I mean, it's a city lifestyle, you don't go back to your house to eat your food. It's hard, you know, it's even, you know, people don't have time to make food at home and the foods that they find in the in the street, there's some good options. But a lot of it is fast food, a lot of it is like convenience is winning. And that's impacting a lot of what people are experiencing in terms of health, I think. Yeah, the food of sterilization and the, you know, fast foods and everybody's out to work and this traditional roles within families that don't really exist anymore, really change the landscape and it affects food culture, it affects health, it affects community. It's a ripple effect into everything. Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up because just yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine who is from from from my home city. And she was complaining about something I have also experienced that when I go back to Ecuador, I, I noticed that a lot of people don't get together any as often as they used before and getting to, I mean, like, I mean, I like to emphasize it. It's not just the food that you eat, but how you eat it that makes a difference in, you know, in, in how you're going to take that in how the impact is going to have in your body, etc. So these opportunities to eat with your loved ones to eat in community. I mean, this is how we evolve to eat. We evolve to eat with other people, right, to share our food with other people. That's, that's, it's kind of like in our brain, right? At least, and it's, it's very, it used to be, I think it's, it's much more still, you know, still a tradition or a way of, of eating that that is more prevalent in, in Latin America and in Ecuador in general, compared to the US, like in the US is more common for people to be okay eating by themselves. But in Ecuador, no, in Ecuador is very, is very much of a communal, a social activity. So, especially after the pandemic, this was, I mean, this really, it really changed the way that people interact with each other. And with people with cities growing, like I said, for example, I, I have family members that live in a part of the city that is very, like kind of far from, from the, like in a valley compared to the, you know, the main city. And they just don't like to go. They don't go because it's the traffic and, you know, it's the distance and they have a lot of these valleys that the surrounding cities and the servers have grown so much that they have all their facilities like the banks and, you know, other things in that area. And they don't have to go to the other area for any reason. So that's an excuse not to reunite with their, with their friends. So my friend was complaining that, you know, she has a group of friends and they never get together. They live in the same city. And every time we go back, like as immigrants, right, like we are always looking to meet with our loved ones, like with our friends. But we find out that they never get together. If we don't go back and, you know, create an excuse. So I think that this tendency to like alienate yourself from others is like ongoing and ongoing one, but it has been strengthened after the pandemic. And it has hurt. I mean, it definitely hurts your physical health, your mental health. And I still think that there's a lot more research to be done in terms of what the impact is of, you know, these psychosocial factors in, in your health through food. So not just what you eat, but in the context in which what you eat. I think some of those studies exist here in the US in terms of obesity, for example, child obesity, they look at how like family meals make a difference compared to like eating in front of the TV or eating by yourself. So I think it's a big deal, you know, creating more opportunities to eat in community. And that not only entails like, you know, people getting together, but how spaces are organized. And like I said, the more, you know, the more we try to mimic the US, the more we are going to resemble these infrastructures and these structures that promote or facilitate you just grabbing something and eating it by yourself, wherever you are, or wherever, wherever you go. Instead of creating this, you know, this, this infrastructure, I remember, I think there's a chef's table episode with this Italian chef that refused to, to put separate tables in his area. It's amazing. It's a, it's, I thought it was, you know, it was revolutionary because he said, this is the point. I mean, it really doesn't matter what you're eating. It matters that you, you are all the, if you're coming to my restaurant, you have to all sit in this one table with two benches on the side so that we can have a communication around the food because that's, that's what's making a difference. Yeah, that's important for sure. So tell me more about the work that you're doing about food. Let's start with Komi das Kukuran, Foods That Heal. Yeah, like I said, it was a project that was inspired in my, in my desire to learn more and communicate to the world and to, especially to my community about the value there is in the, in our heritage, in our cultural heritage. And that is a life in the memory of grandmothers and mothers and, and even in us, you know, so that we need to really document it. We need to promote it. We need to know about it and, and we need to raise awareness of the value it has and the urgency of, of holding onto it. Because I think it's one of the treasures we have in our culture and in our country. And I know this because I've been living in the US for more than 15 years now. And I see that that kind of generational communication of knowledge that transmission is being interrupted for a long time here. Because the industry has taken the place of the, of the moms and the grandmothers. So the industry is the one who tells you what to eat because of through advertisements or whatever is available in the store. But, but it's not those heritage recipes, the one or, or your mom. I mean, but your mom might be cooking something that is significant for the family. And that's great. But it's, I mean, it's long disconnected from the local traditions and from the local foods. Right. So that's something that we still have in Ecuador, that we still have a regional cuisine. That means that it's a cuisine whose value comes from the, the fact that it's cooked with, with local ingredients with the, with the vegetables, with the fruits, and with the animals that are raised in the local area in that area. And that have been, you know, for generations from thousands of, for thousands of years. For example, one of my documentaries looks at a fishing community. They have been fishing their ancestors. I mean, as far as we know, where they're like 5000 years before Christ, they were fishing and they were diving and they were collecting their own food. And the people there today continue to do the same. So I mean, this is really powerful. If you look at yourself or the, you know, ground where you're standing, how much of the food that you eat comes from the local, the local traditions, the local, the local vegetables, the local fruits, maybe 1%, maybe for some people, maybe nothing, maybe everything that they eat comes from somewhere else. They don't even know where it comes from. It may come from as far as China, you know? So there's such a disconnect from this, from the land, you know, from the land where you're standing, which is a really powerful way to build a sense of belonging. And belonging is a very, very powerful factor in mental health and physical health. I mean, it's one of the things that keep us going. You need to have this sense of belonging, this belonging, this community. And food is one way in which you reinforce that belonging. It's really important for mental health. The fact that your food is meaningful, it means something. It has a tradition, it has a story that is shared and that has been passed along for so many years in this community that you're part of. So this is what drove me to do this work and put it in the film format. So put it in a video format because younger generations, like kids and, you know, teenagers, they're not too interested in listening to their grandmothers. It's not interesting to them. So that was one of the ways that I and my colleague Alejandra came up with in terms of how to entice, how to motivate especially younger generations by creating this space, not only to engage with this knowledge in an audio visual format, like in our digital age, but also to create learning opportunities for them to also participate in the making and be the protagonists. So be the ones that are in the big screen, both as youth and to see their elders as protagonists in these films is very empowering. It's very empowering for everybody in the community. And I just heard from some friends in Esmeraldas where I did one of my, like two of my films are based in Esmeraldas, which is an area in the coast with a very strong tradition, Afro-Colorian tradition. Majority of the population is of African descent. And the food is such an important part, but again, they have all of these influences from the city and from abroad, from the U.S. And they brought the film to my two of these films, two of my films to the communities. And they just told me about how excited the kids were to see themselves in the film and to see their family members in the film, because it's a big deal, you know, it's a big deal, especially if they know it's been screened somewhere else, it's received recognition, it's like awards. I hope one day we will be on the TV, you know, we will get these films to show on the mainstream media because it's such a powerful influence for people, right? So that's, you know, that's kind of like the philosophy behind this project. There's a lot of us in the U.S. that have come from other places, other countries. How do you think we can best balance maintaining those traditions alive and telling those stories to our children and keeping that knowledge going without having access to the land where those foods come from? One of the things that I struggle with, I love my Dominican food, but, you know, that food is traveling a lot of miles is one thing and, you know, that struggle between eating that and putting more emphasis on what's local to the area where I am in the Northeast, which is nothing like what I grew up with or like the most. So how do you keep that balance going? I love that question. Yeah, because I struggle with the same, but I think you can do both things because I don't, I'm not like, I don't advocate for like a fanatic kind of like, you know, close-minded approach to eating and food. I think food is really, it's meaning, it's the meaning you make or you put in the food or the meaning that the food has for you. Like I said, it connects a lot with your emotions, with your memory, with your sense of belonging, with your connection to other people who we are eating with. So if we, like us, we are immigrants, right? We are sharing with other people that might or might not be our family members or members of our ethnic community. We're still building a community. We're still building a bond through the food, whatever food it is. We are still building a bond, a community, and we are still nourishing ourselves by sharing that food with other people, no matter what it is. Again, I am all for agriculture and, you know, organic foods and everything, but this is not the only way of looking at health. I mean, if we look at health from an integral, from a holistic perspective, like I said at the beginning, it's much more than that. It's much more than what you put in your plate. So for me, you can do that. You can still do that. The first thing I did here was try to find like what are the farms that are nearby? There are so many farms and they have local produce. They have milk. They have cheese. They have stuff. And for me, it's always a discovery. I just discovered a skier. I didn't know about it until I came here. And it's amazing, like they make it with the maple syrup that they make here. And for me, that's part of life. That's part of health that is being able to feel pleasure from experimenting new things and new flavors and new sensations. And I mean, traditional is great, but we are human beings. We are made to try new things and experiment, and we get pleasure from that. And pleasure is good for us. It's healing. It's repairing ourselves. But on the other hand, I also think that we have a right to our nostalgic foods. Yeah, so I think, I mean, it's very powerful. I have a friend who studies this concept of food nostalgia. And it's something that develops early in our years, like as we are developing our brain, you know, our brain develops in our early years. And this is when these memories of the first foods stick to our brain and stay with us for the rest of our life. So, and again, they are tied to memories and a sense of security that came with that space, and that was our home. And for immigrants, I mean, we navigate these feelings and these emotions in various ways, but it's still part of who we are. And I think we have a right to it, because it's, I mean, it's so, it never goes away. And it again, it's a source of pleasure. It's a source of peace of mind, of comfort that we get from, you know, reproducing, replicating, trying to replicate, attempting to replicate. Sometimes it's impossible to replicate, but these attempts to replicate our nostalgic foods, our traditional foods from home also have a healing benefit for us, like a healing potential, because they are they are having this effect of, you know, generating pleasure and, and, and, you know, having this whole effect in our body. So I hear you about, you know, the carbon footprint with, you know, bananas or plantains traveling, like, I don't know how many kilometers to reach this grocery store. But, but I think that I think we, we are not to, first of all, I advocate for a guilt-free food. And guilt-free eating in that sense, not in the sense that we get in the, in the, in the tags from the food industry, like, oh, it doesn't have sugar. That's why you, you are, you don't have to feel guilty. No, we, we shouldn't feel guilty at all from eating any food, because if you add the guilt to the food, you're harming yourself, you're eating something toxic. Really? I mean, you're having a talk, like, you're, you're really hurting yourself by, by just adding guilt to food. And there's, that's again, like a big, a big question mark for, for research. I think the psychology, food psychologists are, are doing a lot of, a little bit of research on, on the impacts of, you know, what is the state, our emotional state when we eat, and a lot of us are eating with guilt. And a lot of us are eating with fear. And stress, and frazzled. And stress, and stress. So we, really, that's something that this is, this is the diet that we need to follow, like, you know, a guilt free, eating experience in the sense that wherever, whatever comes to your plate, give an opportunity, you know, to nourish you, you need to, you need to, you need to get out of that place of guilt and of fear and whatever is, is preventing you from enjoying that moment as it is with the people that you have around, because a lot of these diets, they put a lot of restrictions and they, they, they keep us away, you know, they, they, they take us away, they distance us from these opportunities to share food with other people. And I think that's really, I mean, it's, it's, it's harming, it's very harmful, because we are losing a huge opportunity to build a bond with someone because we are making a food choice. And yeah, I think that's, that's, that's pointless. And in terms of, of, like feeling guilty for the footprint, I don't think we are the ones I call that I don't think we, we, because we were eating our plantain or whatever, like our traditional food, we are not a, we are not responsible for a huge amount of that, you know, that damage, whatever it is for the, for the, I think there's, there's bigger forces, there's bigger forces compared to the ones that address the needs of immigrants or that demand that there is in the markets for, for these nostalgic foods. And, and us, I mean, it's, it's part of the world we live in. I think we go back and forth more and more often. And as, you know, transportation becomes more available, I mean, and it's just part of the world we live in. I think we, we, we can't, we, we can't turn away from that at this point, because immigration is something that is something like a continuum, right? I mean, it's, it, and in terms of, like you're saying, like preserving the traditions or feeding into those, I think borrowing a little bit from the local and, you know, appreciating and teaching our, you know, younger generations to appreciate what's local, but at the same time to feel bright and love for your heritage, because a lot of, like I was saying at the beginning, a lot of us experience shame around our heritage, our cultural heritage when it comes to food. And it should be the case. You know, we shouldn't be feeling ashamed for what we're eating, because it's, there's nothing to be ashamed. I mean, it's a big value that we bring to the, to our community, to ourselves, and to the world. Yeah. So beautifully said. And that ancestral way of eating is just, it's not just what's on your plate, but how you're experiencing the food and how it's nourishing, who you are sharing it with and going back to those traditions of food, bringing us together and being at the center, no matter what it is. Yeah, absolutely. So if someone is listening to this and, you know, they may be the typical person who lives alone, works many hours, eats on the go, and they want to learn more about this way of experiencing food, where would you advise them to start? Well, I would, I mean, I always tell people to watch my films. I mean, a little bit of these is registered there in some of my films. I've also written about this in a few papers and they're in English. So they're on my website, comidasquecuran.org. Maybe you can include it in your Yeah, so I'll put it on the show notes. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I mean, invite me to teach a class. I've taught workshops and classes where I do a lot of these exercises like this. I have people have different experiences with eating, like eating alone, eating with someone else, and eating with an enemy, eating with a friend. It's part of my interest in conflict transformation. I use some of these exercises with eating in different contexts to understand some of the ways in which we can communicate across conflict. So yeah, I love to teach these classes. There's not an online class right now, but I'm always accepting proposals to teach and bring these ideas to communities, whether it's spiritually or in person. And I think that's what I can say for now. Wonderful. So comidasquecuran.com.org and we'll link that in the show notes. Any other places that people can find you, social media that you'd like to share? Yeah, Instagram is comidasquecuran and I'm on Twitter as Pilar A. West, even though I'm not very active on Twitter, but more Instagram and Facebook. My Instagram and also in Instagram, I have a Craspando underscore Coco, which is my one of my first film. I try to post in English and Spanish, but you can still use the translator to find out what I'm talking about. I've conveyed a lot about this in the papers I've written and some of my talks are also listed on the website. So yeah, that's where you can find me. And also our ancestral health symposium, YouTube channel. Some of your talks are also in there. So I hope you can go and see those. Yes. Wonderful. Thank you so much for being with us today, Pilar. This has been an amazing conversation and I'm sure that people will enjoy it and give some more thoughts about the place that food has in their lives and how it can be a transformative experience. Awesome. Thank you, Isabel. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Ancestral Health Today. We hope you enjoyed our discussion on how evolutionary insights can inform modern health practices. 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