To understand the food on our plates today, we have to start further back than anyone might expect. We have to trace the origins of a mindset—a way of seeing the world that began when we started to separate ourselves from the ecosystem, viewing ourselves as elevated above the plant, animal, and mushroom kingdoms that sustain us.
This can be a sensitive topic, and some might say not relevant to a book helping explain to someone what to eat. The solution we are recommending is simple: eat real foods, closest to the ground. This is most delicious, most nutritious, and most backed by science as beneficial. But it was also basically treated as “less than” more sophisticated dishes for at least two thousand years, and that has had an impact on our perception of food, and what we expect to see on our plates. Luckily, good food can be a win-win-win, appealing to look at, taste, AND be good for you, plus with an amazing story to go with it.
This underlying mindset shift (separation from nature) arguably made the later historical events (extraction, industrialization) possible, and even seem logical. It addresses the root worldview before detailing the specific historical actions. The historical devaluing of "simple food" is linked to our modern expectations and the rise of processed, "sophisticated" (but often unhealthy) options.
A useful starting point is the Roman Empire. When Julius Caesar expanded Rome's borders into what is now Britain, he encountered people he deemed "barbarians." The term itself, possibly mimicking the sound of an unfamiliar language ("bar, bar, bar"), reveals the core assumption: anyone different is lesser, less "civilized." But what does "civilized" truly mean? Does it mean possessing superior weapons and using force to conquer and enslave? Or does it imply the capacity for calm discussion and mutual understanding? For centuries, the warrior mentality has defined civilization. To heal our relationship with food, perhaps we must first redefine what it means to be civilized.
Our language itself carries the fossils of these ancient conflicts. English is a mutt, a crossbreed of the Latin-based French spoken by the Norman conquerors after 1066 and the Germanic tongue of the Anglo-Saxons they subjugated. It's often said it's easier to change someone's religion than their food preferences, and our vocabulary proves it. Despite 300 years of French rule, the Germanic words for basic, close-to-the-ground ingredients stuck: cow, pig, sheep, apple, milk, bread. The French words denote the refined, finished dishes on the aristocrat's table: beef (boeuf), pork (porc), mutton (mouton), sauté, braise, bouillon. The peasant raised the cow; the lord ate the beef. Every time we speak English, we unconsciously reinforce a bias: "refined" is superior to "simple." But modern science increasingly affirms the wisdom of the simple: food eaten closer to its source, with less processing, retains more nutrients.
The Ancient Roots: Extraction as Old as Empire
Rome wasn't just a linguistic influence; it provided the blueprint for extraction that shapes our world today. It was perhaps the first civilization utterly dependent on food sourced outside its borders. Lacking resources, Rome relied on its colonies, especially Egypt, the breadbasket of the ancient world. The infamous "bread and circuses" (panem et circenses)—free grain distributions (annona) and public spectacles—were funded by Egyptian wealth, keeping the Roman populace fed and pacified, dependent on a centralized supply controlled by the rulers. When Rome fell and these supply lines collapsed, the population plummeted to levels unseen until modern times. The empire existed only as long as it could extract.
This extraction wasn't just economic; it was cultural. Consider Egypt. For three thousand years, it was the most advanced civilization along the Mediterranean- possibly the known world, in rivalry with those of Mesopotamia, now known with the oblique term “Middle East”. Rulers of Rome tried at least twice to unite- with both Caesar and the next emperor: Antony having children (even the much sought after sons for inheritance) with the Eqyptian Queen.
After Cleopatra's death, Rome faced a choice: partnership, as Julius Caesar and Mark Antony envisioned, or extraction, as Augustus preferred. Augustus won. Egypt's grain, gold, and glory flowed to Rome. Temples were defaced, traditions outlawed. Within generations, Egyptians forgot their own language, their hieroglyphs becoming meaningless scratches. Egypt suffered cultural amnesia for nearly 1,800 years until the Rosetta Stone brought it back to life in 1824. The last known hieroglyphic inscription dates to 394 CE at Philae's Temple of Isis- a goddess of the Nile and mother of the sun god Ray. When Rome outlawed the Egyptian religion and scattered the priests—the mere 5% who held the knowledge of writing—the language proved terrifyingly easy to erase.
Rome perfected the template: Conquer. Extract. Erase. Rename. Control. Give people amnesia. Archeology suggests at least 25 distinct cultures vanished under Roman expansion. When Rome renamed the province of Judea to "Syria Palaestina" after the Bar Kokhba revolt (135 AD), it deliberately used the name of the ancient Philistines (Peleshet in Hebrew, meaning "invader"), the historical enemies of the Israelites, to sever the Jewish people's connection to their homeland. Jewish religious practices were restricted, people removed from their homeland, and Hebrew effectively ceased to exist as a daily spoken language for nearly two hundred years, surviving only through intense conscious effort to restore it.
Out of Rome grew Roman Catholicism, which became the administrative and spiritual arm of this imperial project. When the Western Empire fell, the Church carried the template forward. The Pope himself wrote letters that may have justified, and possibly trigger, the slave trade. The Papal Bulls Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455) provided the shocking moral justification for the next era of conquest, granting European powers the right to invade, subdue, and reduce to perpetual slavery any non-Christians.
This is a heavy claim- so let’s check that for a second. Could the pope of the Catholic church have given the pardon, and possible spark to initiate the whole slave trade? Here are the facts:
The Slave Trade Timeline
Letters from the pope in 1452 and 1455 laid the groundwork for the "Doctrine of Discovery," a concept used by European powers for centuries to legitimize their imperial expansion.
The two bulls (essentially laws, decrees, edicts) were issued by Pope Nicholas V, directed at King Afonso V of Portugal, in response to Portuguese expanding along the coast of West Africa. The King wanted to know if he had permission from the church to continue expansion efforts, and even get some favors while doing so. The answer, was Yes.
Dum Diversas (1452): This bull gave Portugal "full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens [Muslims] and pagans and any other unbelievers" of the Christian (Catholic) faith, and to reduce them to "perpetual servitude". Pagans are essentially anyone outside of the accepted Christian tradition.
Romanus Pontifex (1455): This bull reaffirmed and extended the authorizations of Dum Diversas. It granted Portugal exclusive rights to trade and colonize lands and seas along the African coast, and justified the enslavement of West Africans encountered during these voyages.
The papal bulls were not isolated documents, but part of a wider effort to give Christian nations religious authority for their colonial and expansionist ambitions. Summarized, these bulls, essentially laws, said that European Christians had a divine right to invade and seize the land of non-Christians. It gave explicit papal approval for the enslavement of non-Christian "pagans" in Africa.
This left Lingering legal precedent: In the 1823 U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson v. M'Intosh, the Doctrine of Discovery was used to establish that Native Americans had only a "right of occupancy" to their land, not the right to title.
The Vatican officially repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery in 2023, stating that the original papal bulls "did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples". However, the Vatican stopped short of officially rescinding the documents themselves.
The popes issued the bulls Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455) for two main reasons: to reward Portugal for its campaigns against Muslims and to grant Portugal a monopoly on trade and colonization in newly "discovered" territories. These religious decrees legitimized expansion and the enslavement of non-Christians. King Afonso V of Portugal specifically petitioned the Pope for this authority. (I wonder if he felt guilt, or was worried of the backlash?)
Portugal's expansion along the West African coast was a costly and risky enterprise. In the early 15th century, Prince Henry the Navigator launched these voyages to find a new sea route to India and to compete with the Muslim trans-Saharan trade caravans. To secure Portugal's investments and territorial claims, King Afonso V sought papal validation, which would:
Prevent rival Christian nations from interfering with Portuguese trade and colonization efforts.
Provide moral and religious justification for attacking non-Christian peoples and seizing their lands.
The bulls were framed as a mission to spread Christianity by conquering "Saracens (Muslims) and pagans". This framed violent conquest as a righteous mission and the enslavement of non-Christians as a pathway to conversion. The papal decrees established a legal blueprint for European overseas expansion. The logic of conquest and discovery became the basis for property law in Western nations.
They relied on Dehumanization: The doctrine operated on the idea that non-Christian inhabitants of a land had no right to their own property or sovereignty. The bulls referred to reducing non-believers to "perpetual servitude," effectively dehumanizing these populations and paving the way for the transatlantic slave trade.
After Portugal, other Catholic nations like Spain secured similar papal endorsements for their own imperial ambitions, notably Pope Alexander VI's Inter Caetera bull of 1493.
It even Influenced secular law: The logic of the Doctrine became ingrained in secular laws. The U.S. Supreme Court cited the Doctrine in the 1823 case Johnson v. M'Intosh, concluding that Native Americans only had a right of "occupancy" on their lands, not ownership.
The Slave Trade began in the late 1400’s, initiated by Portuguese and Spanish merchants after Christopher Columbus's voyages.
Portuguese and Spanish merchants began the systematic, large-scale movement of enslaved Africans to the Americas.
By the early 1500s, the Spanish established a demand for enslaved African labor to work on plantations, especially after so many Native Americans died (through cruelty or disease, approximately 90% of the population erased), and that workforce needed to be replaced.
The first direct slave voyage from Africa to the Americas is thought to have occurred in 1526.
Americans later in 1845 used the “Manifest Destiny” to expand through the America’s, explaining the land grab as justifiable with religion, even a necessary expansion west to be a divinely ordained right. It was rooted in biblical passages like Matthew 5:14-16 (“You are the light of the world…”).
The ideology of Manifest Destiny inspired a variety of measures designed to remove or destroy the native population, leading to their total relocation of the survivors to a reservation in Oklahoma in 1875.
The North and South fought over whether the new states admitted to the Union were to be free states or slave states, which inflamed sectional tensions over slavery, which ultimately led to the Civil War in 1865.
US President James Polk was the leader who used the idea of Manifest Destiny broadly, and in his single term also led the United States to resolve the boundary dispute with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory, which had been jointly occupied since 1818. Polk's administration negotiated the Oregon Treaty of 1846 with Britain, securing the states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, as well as parts of Montana and Wyoming.
Polk also led the United States to victory over Mexico in the Mexican-American War in 1846. This allowed for the purchase of the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, plus portions of Colorado, Wyoming, and Oklahoma. The debate over the Wilmot Proviso was one of the major events leading up to the Civil War. The proviso, which was strongly opposed by the slaveholding South, asserted that the Mexican-American War had not been fought for the purpose of expanding slavery, and stipulated that slavery would never exist in the territories acquired from Mexico in the war.
Something to consider, why do you think President Polk went to war with Mexico but negotiated with Great Britain? What sorts of policies were justified in the name of Manifest Destiny?
This wasn't a fringe idea; it was official doctrine authorizing the transatlantic slave trade and centuries of colonialism, blessing extraction and erasure as God's work itself. America had its own “Manifest Destiny”, again seeing religion tied with an effort to conquer land and people. Wherever European empires went, missionaries followed, often suppressing indigenous languages, burning sacred texts (like the entire Mayan written books), demonizing traditional religions, and replacing diverse foodways with colonial agriculture. Many of these traditions worshipped natural forces: seasons and the sun and the rain- which competed with their own visions of power.
These expansion and forced religious conversions had multiple consequences. Aside from devastating the cultures it was literally trying to erase, it put a strict embargo on the idea of happiness itself- the idea of inspiration, music, singing, dancing, feasting and celebrating in native ways, were all seen and described as “demonic”. Examples abound of places that disavowed singing, even in christianity, until enough generations passed that forgot that it was a tool of remembrance. The Serbian people invented a single stringed flute to get around the instrument embargo. Christian women went from singing with drums to not allowed to speak at all in church, in a matter of a couple hundred years. It would not be until very much later, in the 1800’s, when music would return again to the church, and only due to influence from places that never removed it- not matter how many attempts were made at eradication. In this way, any cultural elements that survive, whether musical (literally, of a muse), physical (dancing, movement), or something that may feel divinely inspired or even potentially put one into a trance would be demonized. Food, however, was one item nobody could steal cutlurally, so long as those plants were still available. Food is part of celebrations, however, and often can be traced to pre-christian religious connections.
Throughout the German lands, where mass conversions often happened on Easter when the King married a “refined” Christian woman of a European breed. Children often follow religions of the mother, and this played a pivotal role in conversions. The french used this idea again in the americas and Canada, when men were marrying native people, and starting families, and the French sent poor, educated girls overseas to help maintain French customs. It worked. Rome had explicit laws about not being able to marry foreign women, for the same reason. Marc Antony then, by marrying Cleopatra, explicitly broke this rule. He would not be the only Roman emperor to do so. Later Tacitus would fall for the Jewish Queen Berenice, even during the destructive moment of removing her people from their homeland around 79 AD.
I approach this history as someone who grew up Catholic but now finds more resonance in the intricate beauty of the natural world, as well as science. I see a design in natural systems, an innate rationality to each of our cells that mirrors so many other aspects of nature- that I could understand why someone would want to believe there had to have been some kind of mastermind at the start of it all. I see magic where science validates ancient wisdom—fermentation enhancing nutrients, bone broth healing the gut, seasonal eating aligning with our biology. My critique is not of personal faith, but of how institutional power, often cloaked in religious righteousness, has historically justified systemic brutality and extraction. Understanding this pattern is crucial for seeing how we arrived at our present moment.
The Pattern Repeats: Britain, America, and the World
Britain inherited Rome's mantle, perfecting the extraction model. In India, once a global center of textile manufacturing, Britain made it illegal for Indians to produce their own finished goods from their own cotton. Raw materials flowed to British factories; finished products were sold back at inflated prices. This systematic removal of their autonomy, coupled with new laws that forced them into extraction for others, led to devastating famines and economic destruction. This wasn't an accident; it was policy.
America itself won its independence from Britain only with crucial help from the French- who, for whatever reason, hated the British so much to essentially bankrupt themselves to piss them off. Soon enough, America inherited and amplified the extraction pattern on its own soil. Our nation was built on stolen land, ignoring the sustainable practices of Native peoples, whether in the plains or in the islands of Hawaii, all examples of locations where the land and human life was harmed. The very sugar industry, providing a cornerstone of the processed food revolution, was only possible through the brutality of slave labor until chemical production took over in the 1960s. We continued the pattern in Hawaii, where missionary descendants took control of land, dismantled sustainable indigenous agriculture (ahupua'a system), and replaced it with single crops of sugar cane and pineapple plantations, leaving the islands dependent on imported food today- bearing health outcomes that correspond to the nutrient profile of that food system.
This extractive model continues globally. In parts of Africa, forced policies and trade deals make laws against farmers saving their own seeds, requiring annual purchases of patented, genetically modified seeds from multinational corporations, locking them into dependency. Land grabs by foreign entities grow export crops while local populations face food insecurity. The pattern is consistent: undermine self-sufficiency, create dependency, extract wealth.
The saddest part of all of this is that the people of the native cultures, that lived sustainably for countless generations on real food, have the worst health outcomes today. Removed long enough to forget their ancient ways of life, and forced on the cheapest food options available to those on food stamps that can only afford processed foods. The Havasupai of the Grand Canyon have some of the highest rates of diabetes around the world- when they used to move with the seasons for food. African Americans have some of the worst health outcomes in America, with lower life expectancies and higher rates of chronic diseases. These were people who would braid seeds of plants into their hair to have some kind of food to bring with them across the ocean in the slave trades- forced from their home diets to the scraps of what was allowed them. They have created, in all these instances, wonderfully delicious menus with the foods they were given, but their native recipes had much more diversity in plants and meats that bring health.
Wars & Industrialization
The World Wars kicked this industrial extraction into overdrive. America's manufacturing and chemical manufacturing, perfected for warfare, needed something to sell once they found peace. Wartime innovations became consumer products:
Canola Oil: Industrial rapeseed oil, used as a lubricant for planes, was bred to be edible and marketed as a "healthy" fat (paying harvard scientists to cherry pick data to blame health issues on sugar), displacing traditional fats like butter with margarine (which is WAY worse for health).
Pesticides: Derived from nerve agents designed to kill humans, these chemicals were repurposed to kill insects, disrupting ecosystems and, with new studies, our own gut microbiomes. Glyphosate's origins trace back to components related to Agent Orange. Europe has many laws that do not allow it, but America sees too much profit in it to institute a hard pass.
Processed Foods: Chemical extractions and artificial flavors exploded after the war time era, driven by the need for food that stays stable on the shelf. Apples, like the Red Delicious, were selected for being able to sit on the shelf for 9 months, and for color, and to survive being sprayed with toxins countless times, but not for flavor. There is a reason heirloom tomatoes will beat out canned tomatoes in any kind of flavor competition. Factories producing for war time provisions predicted the next 50 years of most americans’ diets.
As Kurt Vonnegut aptly put it, "I'm sorry, we were drunk on petroleum." Our entire food system became oil-based—synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, plastic packaging, transportation, industrial seed oils.
The Addiction Playbook: From Tobacco to Twinkies
The final, cynical twist came from Big Tobacco. As the deadly link between smoking and cancer became undeniable in the 1960s and '70s, tobacco companies pivoted. They bought major food corporations (Kraft, Nabisco, General Foods) and brought their playbook:
Engineering Addiction: Hire chemists to find the "bliss point" of sugar, salt, and fat. Create hyperpalatable products designed to override satiety.
Creating Doubt: Fund biased research to confuse the public about nutrition science (e.g., demonizing fat while ignoring sugar).
Marketing: Target children relentlessly. Use psychology to create craving and habit.
Lobbying: Fight regulation, influence dietary guidelines, shift blame to "personal responsibility" and lack of exercise.
Food scientists perfected "vanishing caloric density" (like cheese puffs that melt away, tricking the brain) and ensured slogans like "Bet you can’t eat just one" were biologically accurate, not mere hyperbole. They taught us to equate calories (empty Amazon boxes) with nutrition (what's inside the box). Real food—almonds—delivers nutrients; processed calories—Skittles—deliver little but metabolic disruption.
The Violence of the System
This entire edifice rests on a foundation of violence, disproportionately harming marginalized communities:
Native Americans: Land theft, forced confinement, cultural erasure, and the systematic destruction of foodways. The bison, essential to Plains cultures and soil health, were slaughtered nearly to extinction as government policy to starve tribes into submission. The resulting dependence on commodity foods led to catastrophic health outcomes, as seen tragically in the Havasupai. Their pride in fry bread, born of rations, is a testament to resilience but also a symbol of profound loss.
African Americans: Centuries of stolen labor built American wealth. Enslaved people, denied access to their rich West African food heritage (greens, yams, legumes, fish), ingeniously created soul food from discarded scraps. This survival cuisine, later corrupted by industrial ingredients and economic hardship in food deserts, became intertwined with cultural identity even as it contributed to health disparities rooted in systemic injustice, not cultural failing. The systematic destruction of the Black family further compounded these challenges.
This pattern isn't just historical. It continues in the exploited labor of farmworkers, in food deserts lacking fresh produce, in fast-food chains targeting low-income neighborhoods, and in global policies prioritizing export crops over local food security.
Our Way Back
Food preferences, formed in childhood, are deeply ingrained, often more resistant to change than religion or language. We prefer the foods our parents gave us- for good reason. From around age 1, when we learn how to walk, we start to become picky, in case we walk up to something we are not meant to eat.
And cultures hold onto these local foods. Food words that survive become archaeological evidence of a shared past.
And because food remembers, it offers a path back. Reconnecting with real food—simple ingredients, prepared traditionally—is an act of reclaiming biology, culture, and health. Our bodies recognize real food. Our taste buds recalibrate. Flavor and nutrients, which evolved together, realign. Cooking becomes not a chore, but an act of wholeness.
This history can feel heavy, enraging even. But seeing the design removes its power. We know enough to change it now. None of this was inevitable. It was designed for profit, not health. It's not our fault. But the solution has to come from us- we cannot wait for it to come from the top down. What was designed can be redesigned, if we show there are people who want to eat real food again. Understanding how we got here is the essential first step in choosing who we want to be, one meal at a time.
We live in a time of unprecedented freedom and access. Don’t let this paralyze you, use it to set yourself free.
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Chapter 2: How We Got Here
To understand the food on our plates today, we have to start further back than anyone might expect. We have to trace the origins of a mindset—a way of seeing the world that changed when we started to separate ourselves from the ecosystem, viewing ourselves as elevated above the plant, animal, and seasonal world around us.
This underlying mindset shift arguably made later extraction techniques seem logical.
The point we are exploring here is simple: eat real foods, closest to the ground. This is most delicious, most nutritious, and most backed-by-science way to eat. But for centuries, this simple approach was treated as “less than” more sophisticated dishes, impacting our perception of what belongs on our plates. Luckily, real food offers a win-win-win: appealing to look at, delicious to eat, and feeds our cells at the deepest levels. Real food often also carries with it an amazing story.
A useful starting point for understanding this power shift is to look at our own food words. Words are living fossils that reveal a lingering prejudice against "simple" foods.
First, let’s jump all the way back to the Roman Empire. When Julius Caesar raided Britain in 55 BC, he deemed the locals "barbarians," his journals dripping with language of disdain for their simple way of life. He gained his reputation and fame for winning battles against the Gallic people in France, but was never able to fully conquer the island of Britain, and his contempt for 'crude' northern peoples set a precedent that would echo for centuries.
These perceptions carry a thousand years later into the Middle Ages, when the French, once again, try to overtake this small island of Britain. New Germanic tribes now lived there, admired for their strength, but mocked, still, by many Europeans of for their manners and simple foods.
The Germanic groups living in Britain at this time were known as the Anglo-Saxons, still fierce warriors, but also considered simple and crude, as they were in Julius Caesar’s day. This time, the French (descendants of Vikings known as Normans) would try a new tactic. After hours of brutal fighting, with the Saxon shield wall holding firm, the Normans feigned retreat. When the Saxons broke formation to pursue, the Normans wheeled back and slaughtered them. By nightfall, England had new masters. They were eventually able to take full power and hold onto a “French” rule in “Britain/England” for the next 200 years. The French language remained the language of power for the next three centuries. Many textbooks mark 1066 as the birth of 'English' history—erasing the Anglo-Saxon centuries before and glossing over the tactical deception that won the day.
Our English language started to really come together in the next 500 years, as a mutt of two languages: half Latin-based French, and the other Germanic.
The words that remained German tell us something about people- we can force people to do many things under new rulers, but it is always hard to change something as simple as food words. In this example, the Germanic words stuck for basic ingredients (cow, pig, sheep, apple, milk, bread), while French words denotes refined dishes (beef, pork, mutton, sauté). The peasant raised the cow; the lord ate the boeuf (beef). We unconsciously reinforce this bias: "refined" is superior to "simple."
Yet, science affirms something this history tries to override: simple foods, with less processing, often means more nutrients.
This linguistic class system didn't stay frozen in the Middle Ages. It evolved, but the prejudice remained: simple = inferior, refined = superior. By the 20th century, food manufacturers exploited this bias brilliantly. White bread became 'refined' flour. Processed foods became 'convenience' and 'sophisticated.' Meanwhile, the foods that actually nourished us—the bone broths, the organ meats, the fermented vegetables—were dismissed as peasant food, old-fashioned, too simple for modern life.
We're still eating according to a power dynamic established by conquest. It's time to recognize that the 'simple' foods our ancestors ate—closest to the ground, least processed, most whole—weren't inferior. They were optimal. And the science now proves what traditional cultures always knew.
The Ancient Roots: Extraction as Old as Empire
Rome provided a blueprint for extraction- one that many still use today, unknowingly.
Rome relied on extracting wealth from conquered people to feed its own citizens. It was a parasitic technique- its own land could not supply enough food for its growing population. It relied on its vassal states to pay for its wars of expansion, but also to extract food. Its greatest jewel of conquest was Egypt, which funded its "bread and circuses" with Egyptian grain and gold.
The problem with this techique, was that, as more destructive modes of extraction were used, the land could not last as long for sustainable living. We see one culture after another going to waste as we observe plunder, extract, and lay to waste.
We come again to Caesar to look at Egypt. Two Roman Emperors (if you want to call them that, the next, Augustus who is considered the first official emperor, would not yet be called an emperor in his day), had tried to unite Egypt with Rome before Augustus.
Both Caesar and Marc Antony united with Queen Cleopatra, and even both had sons (and daughters) with her. None would survive, except one daughter.
After the Queen of Egypt’s death, Augustus chose extraction over partnership. Egypt's grain, gold, and glory flowed to Rome. Temples were defaced, traditions outlawed. Within generations, Egyptians forgot their own language. Hieroglyphics, a 3,000-year-old writing system, died out. (Only the elite 5% could read and write this “language of the gods”. Not even the Greeks, who ruled Egypt for 300 years after Alexander the Great, would NOT be taught it).
The last known inscription dates to 394 AD at a Temple of Isis - a mother goddess, mother of the Sun god Ray/Horus (giving us words like sunRay, REIgn of a queen, REYes, and HORIZon), and even imagery that is strikingly similar to another Mother with divine Sun/Son in the Roman world.
Old religions don’t vanish easily. It requires laws and executions, that lead to loss of life, as well as plundering of the land. When Rome outlawed ancient religions and scattered the religious leaders, knowledge vanished. Ways of living sustainably disappeared. Egypt suffered cultural amnesia until the Rosetta Stone offered a key nearly 1,800 years later.
The Roman historian Tacitus recorded an anti-Roman speech given by a Caledonian (Scottish) chief: "They create a desolation and they call it peace".
Rome perfected the template: Conquer. Extract. Erase. Rename. Control. Give people amnesia. Archeology suggests at least 25 cultures vanished in its rise.
In another example, Rome renamed Judea to "Palaestina" after the Jewish people revolted over brutal rule in 135 AD, deliberately using the name of their ancient enemies, the ancient Philistines (Peleshet in Hebrew, meaning "invader") to sever the Jewish people's connection to their homeland. Hebrew as a language was outlawed, and effectively went extinct for 200 years, surviving only through conscious effort in private religious study.
Out of Rome grew Roman Catholicism. When the Western Empire fell, the Church carried the template of extraction forward.
Two letters from the Vatican Pope may have even given direct approval for countries to initiate the slave trade and permission for conquering new territories.
Two famous Bulls (essentially LAWS for Christians): Dum Diversas (1452 AD) and Romanus Pontifex (1455 AD) provided moral justification for European powers to invade, and turn to slaves, anyone who would not convert to Christianity.
This was official Church doctrine authorizing the transatlantic slave trade and centuries of colonialism. Wherever European empires went, missionaries climbed into the first boats, often suppressing indigenous languages, burning sacred texts (like Mayan libraries), demonizing traditional religions, and replacing diverse foodways with colonial agriculture- often to extract wealth for the ruling class. All under the explanation of “saving their souls”.
My Perspective
My critique here, if you want to explain this detail of history (our shared story) as such, is not of personal faith, but of how institutional power, often cloaked in religious righteousness, has historically justified systemic brutality and extraction. Understanding this pattern is crucial to seeing how our modern world treats our own food source as it does.
I say this as someone who grew up Catholic but now finds more resonance in the intricate beauty in both science, and observations of the natural world. I see a design in natural systems—an innate rationality in our cells mirroring ecosystems, that is beautiful and useful. The reflection is so intricate between us and the natural world, that I could understand anyone seeing life as needing a blueprint- and as such, needing an original designer. I see a blend of magic and science- where scientists are awed at what they find in nature and ancient wisdom: fermentation enhancing nutrients, bone broth healing the gut, seasonal eating aligning with our biology.
The Pattern Repeats: Britain, America, and the World
Britain inherited Rome's mantle. In India, once a global textile center, Britain made it illegal for Indians to produce finished goods from their own cotton. Raw materials flowed to British factories; finished products were sold back at inflated prices, leading to devastating famines and economic ruin. This wasn't accident; it was policy. The global drive for expansion, fueled by events like the fall of Constantinople disrupting trade routes to the rich East (India's textiles, spices), led explorers across oceans.
America, breaking from Britain (with French help), soon adopted the extraction pattern internally. Our nation was built on stolen land and stolen labor. The sugar industry, cornerstone of the processed food revolution, relied on slave labor until the 1960s. In Hawaii, missionary descendants dismantled sustainable indigenous agriculture (ahupua'a) for sugar and pineapple plantations, leaving the islands dependent on imported food and bearing corresponding health outcomes.
This model continues globally. In parts of Africa, laws (often pushed by foreign entities) forbid farmers from saving seeds, locking them into dependency on patented GMOs. Land grabs grow export crops while locals face hunger. The pattern is consistent: undermine self-sufficiency, create dependency, extract wealth.
Wars, Industrialization & the Addiction Playbook
The World Wars supercharged industrial extraction. America's wartime manufacturing and chemical prowess pivoted to consumer goods:
Canola Oil: Industrial rapeseed oil (a lubricant) was bred into an edible version and heavily marketed, displacing traditional fats.
Pesticides: Derived from nerve agents (some linked to Agent Orange components), repurposed to kill insects, potentially disrupting our gut microbiomes.
Processed Foods: Wartime needs spurred innovations in hydrogenation, preservatives, and artificial ingredients. Factories shifted from munitions to cereal. Apples like the Red Delicious were bred for shelf-life and pesticide resistance, not flavor. As Kurt Vonnegut said, "I'm sorry, we were drunk on petroleum."
The final twist came from Big Tobacco. Facing regulation in the 1960s-70s, they bought food giants (Kraft, Nabisco) and brought their addiction playbook: engineer hyperpalatable products ("bliss point," "vanishing caloric density"), fund doubt-creating research (demonizing fat, ignoring sugar), market relentlessly (especially to kids), and lobby aggressively. They taught us to count calories instead of nutrients, equating Skittles with almonds.
The Violence of the System & Food Justice
This entire system rests on violence, disproportionately harming marginalized communities:
Native Americans: Land theft, bison extermination (policy to break Plains tribes), forced confinement, dependence on commodity foods leading to catastrophic health (Havasupai diabetes). Fry bread, born of rations, became a symbol of resilience but also profound loss.
African Americans: Centuries of stolen labor built American wealth. Denied access to rich West African food heritage (greens, yams, legumes, fish), enslaved people ingeniously created soul food from scraps. This survival cuisine, later corrupted by industrial ingredients and food apartheid (lack of access to fresh food), became intertwined with identity even as it contributed to health disparities rooted in systemic injustice, amplified by the systematic destruction of the Black family over centuries.
This pattern persists today: exploited farmworkers, food deserts, targeted fast-food marketing, global policies prioritizing exports over local needs.
Our Way Back Through Food
But food remembers. Food preferences, won in childhood, are deeply wired. Cultures hold onto recipes. Food words survive erasure—okra, yam, gumbo (West African); succotash, squash (Native American); bagel, knish (Yiddish); naranja (Arabic via Spanish). They are archaeological clues.
Because food remembers, it offers a path back. Reconnecting with real food—simple ingredients, perhaps traditional preparations—is an act of reclaiming biology, culture, and health. Our bodies recognize real food. Taste buds recalibrate. Flavor and nutrients realign. Cooking becomes an act of wholeness.
This history is heavy, enraging. But seeing the design removes its power. It wasn't inevitable. It was designed for profit, not health. It's not our fault. But the solution must come from us. What was designed can be redesigned, if we demand real food again. Understanding how we got here is the first step in choosing who we want to be, one meal at a time. Use the unprecedented freedom and access we have now. Use it to set yourself free.
Chapter 2: How We Got Here
To understand the food on our plates today, we have to start further back than anyone might expect. We have to trace the origins of a mindset—a way of seeing the world that began when we started to separate ourselves from the ecosystem, viewing ourselves as elevated above the plant, animal, and mushroom kingdoms that sustain us.
This can be a sensitive topic, and some might say not relevant to a book helping explain to someone what to eat. The solution we are recommending is simple: eat real foods, closest to the ground. This is most delicious, most nutritious, and most backed by science as beneficial. But it was also basically treated as “less than” more sophisticated dishes for at least two thousand years, and that has had an impact on our perception of food, and what we expect to see on our plates. Luckily, good food can be a win-win-win, appealing to look at, taste, AND be good for you, plus with an amazing story to go with it.
This underlying mindset shift (separation from nature) arguably made the later historical events (extraction, industrialization) possible, and even seem logical. It addresses the root worldview before detailing the specific historical actions. The historical devaluing of "simple food" is linked to our modern expectations and the rise of processed, "sophisticated" (but often unhealthy) options.
A useful starting point is the Roman Empire. When Julius Caesar expanded Rome's borders into what is now Britain, he encountered people he deemed "barbarians." The term itself, possibly mimicking the sound of an unfamiliar language ("bar, bar, bar"), reveals the core assumption: anyone different is lesser, less "civilized." But what does "civilized" truly mean? Does it mean possessing superior weapons and using force to conquer and enslave? Or does it imply the capacity for calm discussion and mutual understanding? For centuries, the warrior mentality has defined civilization. To heal our relationship with food, perhaps we must first redefine what it means to be civilized.
Our language itself carries the fossils of these ancient conflicts. English is a mutt, a crossbreed of the Latin-based French spoken by the Norman conquerors after 1066 and the Germanic tongue of the Anglo-Saxons they subjugated. It's often said it's easier to change someone's religion than their food preferences, and our vocabulary proves it. Despite 300 years of French rule, the Germanic words for basic, close-to-the-ground ingredients stuck: cow, pig, sheep, apple, milk, bread. The French words denote the refined, finished dishes on the aristocrat's table: beef (boeuf), pork (porc), mutton (mouton), sauté, braise, bouillon. The peasant raised the cow; the lord ate the beef. Every time we speak English, we unconsciously reinforce a bias: "refined" is superior to "simple." But modern science increasingly affirms the wisdom of the simple: food eaten closer to its source, with less processing, retains more nutrients.
The Ancient Roots: Extraction as Old as Empire
Rome wasn't just a linguistic influence; it provided the blueprint for extraction that shapes our world today. It was perhaps the first civilization utterly dependent on food sourced outside its borders. Lacking resources, Rome relied on its colonies, especially Egypt, the breadbasket of the ancient world. The infamous "bread and circuses" (panem et circenses)—free grain distributions (annona) and public spectacles—were funded by Egyptian wealth, keeping the Roman populace fed and pacified, dependent on a centralized supply controlled by the rulers. When Rome fell and these supply lines collapsed, the population plummeted to levels unseen until modern times. The empire existed only as long as it could extract.
This extraction wasn't just economic; it was cultural. Consider Egypt. For three thousand years, it was the most advanced civilization along the Mediterranean- possibly the known world, in rivalry with those of Mesopotamia, now known with the oblique term “Middle East”. Rulers of Rome tried at least twice to unite- with both Caesar and the next emperor: Antony having children (even the much sought after sons for inheritance) with the Eqyptian Queen.
After Cleopatra's death, Rome faced a choice: partnership, as Julius Caesar and Mark Antony envisioned, or extraction, as Augustus preferred. Augustus won. Egypt's grain, gold, and glory flowed to Rome. Temples were defaced, traditions outlawed. Within generations, Egyptians forgot their own language, their hieroglyphs becoming meaningless scratches. Egypt suffered cultural amnesia for nearly 1,800 years until the Rosetta Stone brought it back to life in 1824. The last known hieroglyphic inscription dates to 394 CE at Philae's Temple of Isis- a goddess of the Nile and mother of the sun god Ray. When Rome outlawed the Egyptian religion and scattered the priests—the mere 5% who held the knowledge of writing—the language proved terrifyingly easy to erase.
Rome perfected the template: Conquer. Extract. Erase. Rename. Control. Give people amnesia. Archeology suggests at least 25 distinct cultures vanished under Roman expansion. When Rome renamed the province of Judea to "Syria Palaestina" after the Bar Kokhba revolt (135 AD), it deliberately used the name of the ancient Philistines (Peleshet in Hebrew, meaning "invader"), the historical enemies of the Israelites, to sever the Jewish people's connection to their homeland. Jewish religious practices were restricted, people removed from their homeland, and Hebrew effectively ceased to exist as a daily spoken language for nearly two hundred years, surviving only through intense conscious effort to restore it.
Out of Rome grew Roman Catholicism, which became the administrative and spiritual arm of this imperial project. When the Western Empire fell, the Church carried the template forward. The Pope himself wrote letters that may have justified, and possibly trigger, the slave trade. The Papal Bulls Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455) provided the shocking moral justification for the next era of conquest, granting European powers the right to invade, subdue, and reduce to perpetual slavery any non-Christians.
This is a heavy claim- so let’s check that for a second. Could the pope of the Catholic church have given the pardon, and possible spark to initiate the whole slave trade? Here are the facts:
The Slave Trade Timeline
Letters from the pope in 1452 and 1455 laid the groundwork for the "Doctrine of Discovery," a concept used by European powers for centuries to legitimize their imperial expansion.
The two bulls (essentially laws, decrees, edicts) were issued by Pope Nicholas V, directed at King Afonso V of Portugal, in response to Portuguese expanding along the coast of West Africa. The King wanted to know if he had permission from the church to continue expansion efforts, and even get some favors while doing so. The answer, was Yes.
Dum Diversas (1452): This bull gave Portugal "full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens [Muslims] and pagans and any other unbelievers" of the Christian (Catholic) faith, and to reduce them to "perpetual servitude". Pagans are essentially anyone outside of the accepted Christian tradition.
Romanus Pontifex (1455): This bull reaffirmed and extended the authorizations of Dum Diversas. It granted Portugal exclusive rights to trade and colonize lands and seas along the African coast, and justified the enslavement of West Africans encountered during these voyages.
The papal bulls were not isolated documents, but part of a wider effort to give Christian nations religious authority for their colonial and expansionist ambitions. Summarized, these bulls, essentially laws, said that European Christians had a divine right to invade and seize the land of non-Christians. It gave explicit papal approval for the enslavement of non-Christian "pagans" in Africa.
This left Lingering legal precedent: In the 1823 U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson v. M'Intosh, the Doctrine of Discovery was used to establish that Native Americans had only a "right of occupancy" to their land, not the right to title.
The Vatican officially repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery in 2023, stating that the original papal bulls "did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples". However, the Vatican stopped short of officially rescinding the documents themselves.
The popes issued the bulls Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455) for two main reasons: to reward Portugal for its campaigns against Muslims and to grant Portugal a monopoly on trade and colonization in newly "discovered" territories. These religious decrees legitimized expansion and the enslavement of non-Christians. King Afonso V of Portugal specifically petitioned the Pope for this authority. (I wonder if he felt guilt, or was worried of the backlash?)
Portugal's expansion along the West African coast was a costly and risky enterprise. In the early 15th century, Prince Henry the Navigator launched these voyages to find a new sea route to India and to compete with the Muslim trans-Saharan trade caravans. To secure Portugal's investments and territorial claims, King Afonso V sought papal validation, which would:
Prevent rival Christian nations from interfering with Portuguese trade and colonization efforts.
Provide moral and religious justification for attacking non-Christian peoples and seizing their lands.
The bulls were framed as a mission to spread Christianity by conquering "Saracens (Muslims) and pagans". This framed violent conquest as a righteous mission and the enslavement of non-Christians as a pathway to conversion. The papal decrees established a legal blueprint for European overseas expansion. The logic of conquest and discovery became the basis for property law in Western nations.
They relied on Dehumanization: The doctrine operated on the idea that non-Christian inhabitants of a land had no right to their own property or sovereignty. The bulls referred to reducing non-believers to "perpetual servitude," effectively dehumanizing these populations and paving the way for the transatlantic slave trade.
After Portugal, other Catholic nations like Spain secured similar papal endorsements for their own imperial ambitions, notably Pope Alexander VI's Inter Caetera bull of 1493.
It even Influenced secular law: The logic of the Doctrine became ingrained in secular laws. The U.S. Supreme Court cited the Doctrine in the 1823 case Johnson v. M'Intosh, concluding that Native Americans only had a right of "occupancy" on their lands, not ownership.
The Slave Trade began in the late 1400’s, initiated by Portuguese and Spanish merchants after Christopher Columbus's voyages.
Portuguese and Spanish merchants began the systematic, large-scale movement of enslaved Africans to the Americas.
By the early 1500s, the Spanish established a demand for enslaved African labor to work on plantations, especially after so many Native Americans died (through cruelty or disease, approximately 90% of the population erased), and that workforce needed to be replaced.
The first direct slave voyage from Africa to the Americas is thought to have occurred in 1526.
Americans later in 1845 used the “Manifest Destiny” to expand through the America’s, explaining the land grab as justifiable with religion, even a necessary expansion west to be a divinely ordained right. It was rooted in biblical passages like Matthew 5:14-16 (“You are the light of the world…”).
The ideology of Manifest Destiny inspired a variety of measures designed to remove or destroy the native population, leading to their total relocation of the survivors to a reservation in Oklahoma in 1875.
The North and South fought over whether the new states admitted to the Union were to be free states or slave states, which inflamed sectional tensions over slavery, which ultimately led to the Civil War in 1865.
US President James Polk was the leader who used the idea of Manifest Destiny broadly, and in his single term also led the United States to resolve the boundary dispute with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory, which had been jointly occupied since 1818. Polk's administration negotiated the Oregon Treaty of 1846 with Britain, securing the states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, as well as parts of Montana and Wyoming.
Polk also led the United States to victory over Mexico in the Mexican-American War in 1846. This allowed for the purchase of the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, plus portions of Colorado, Wyoming, and Oklahoma. The debate over the Wilmot Proviso was one of the major events leading up to the Civil War. The proviso, which was strongly opposed by the slaveholding South, asserted that the Mexican-American War had not been fought for the purpose of expanding slavery, and stipulated that slavery would never exist in the territories acquired from Mexico in the war.
Something to consider, why do you think President Polk went to war with Mexico but negotiated with Great Britain? What sorts of policies were justified in the name of Manifest Destiny?
This wasn't a fringe idea; it was official doctrine authorizing the transatlantic slave trade and centuries of colonialism, blessing extraction and erasure as God's work itself. America had its own “Manifest Destiny”, again seeing religion tied with an effort to conquer land and people. Wherever European empires went, missionaries followed, often suppressing indigenous languages, burning sacred texts (like the entire Mayan written books), demonizing traditional religions, and replacing diverse foodways with colonial agriculture. Many of these traditions worshipped natural forces: seasons and the sun and the rain- which competed with their own visions of power.
These expansion and forced religious conversions had multiple consequences. Aside from devastating the cultures it was literally trying to erase, it put a strict embargo on the idea of happiness itself- the idea of inspiration, music, singing, dancing, feasting and celebrating in native ways, were all seen and described as “demonic”. Examples abound of places that disavowed singing, even in christianity, until enough generations passed that forgot that it was a tool of remembrance. The Serbian people invented a single stringed flute to get around the instrument embargo. Christian women went from singing with drums to not allowed to speak at all in church, in a matter of a couple hundred years. It would not be until very much later, in the 1800’s, when music would return again to the church, and only due to influence from places that never removed it- not matter how many attempts were made at eradication. In this way, any cultural elements that survive, whether musical (literally, of a muse), physical (dancing, movement), or something that may feel divinely inspired or even potentially put one into a trance would be demonized. Food, however, was one item nobody could steal cutlurally, so long as those plants were still available. Food is part of celebrations, however, and often can be traced to pre-christian religious connections.
Throughout the German lands, where mass conversions often happened on Easter when the King married a “refined” Christian woman of a European breed. Children often follow religions of the mother, and this played a pivotal role in conversions. The french used this idea again in the americas and Canada, when men were marrying native people, and starting families, and the French sent poor, educated girls overseas to help maintain French customs. It worked. Rome had explicit laws about not being able to marry foreign women, for the same reason. Marc Antony then, by marrying Cleopatra, explicitly broke this rule. He would not be the only Roman emperor to do so. Later Tacitus would fall for the Jewish Queen Berenice, even during the destructive moment of removing her people from their homeland around 79 AD.
I approach this history as someone who grew up Catholic but now finds more resonance in the intricate beauty of the natural world, as well as science. I see a design in natural systems, an innate rationality to each of our cells that mirrors so many other aspects of nature- that I could understand why someone would want to believe there had to have been some kind of mastermind at the start of it all. I see magic where science validates ancient wisdom—fermentation enhancing nutrients, bone broth healing the gut, seasonal eating aligning with our biology. My critique is not of personal faith, but of how institutional power, often cloaked in religious righteousness, has historically justified systemic brutality and extraction. Understanding this pattern is crucial for seeing how we arrived at our present moment.
The Pattern Repeats: Britain, America, and the World
Britain inherited Rome's mantle, perfecting the extraction model. In India, once a global center of textile manufacturing, Britain made it illegal for Indians to produce their own finished goods from their own cotton. Raw materials flowed to British factories; finished products were sold back at inflated prices. This systematic removal of their autonomy, coupled with new laws that forced them into extraction for others, led to devastating famines and economic destruction. This wasn't an accident; it was policy.
America itself won its independence from Britain only with crucial help from the French- who, for whatever reason, hated the British so much to essentially bankrupt themselves to piss them off. Soon enough, America inherited and amplified the extraction pattern on its own soil. Our nation was built on stolen land, ignoring the sustainable practices of Native peoples, whether in the plains or in the islands of Hawaii, all examples of locations where the land and human life was harmed. The very sugar industry, providing a cornerstone of the processed food revolution, was only possible through the brutality of slave labor until chemical production took over in the 1960s. We continued the pattern in Hawaii, where missionary descendants took control of land, dismantled sustainable indigenous agriculture (ahupua'a system), and replaced it with single crops of sugar cane and pineapple plantations, leaving the islands dependent on imported food today- bearing health outcomes that correspond to the nutrient profile of that food system.
This extractive model continues globally. In parts of Africa, forced policies and trade deals make laws against farmers saving their own seeds, requiring annual purchases of patented, genetically modified seeds from multinational corporations, locking them into dependency. Land grabs by foreign entities grow export crops while local populations face food insecurity. The pattern is consistent: undermine self-sufficiency, create dependency, extract wealth.
The saddest part of all of this is that the people of the native cultures, that lived sustainably for countless generations on real food, have the worst health outcomes today. Removed long enough to forget their ancient ways of life, and forced on the cheapest food options available to those on food stamps that can only afford processed foods. The Havasupai of the Grand Canyon have some of the highest rates of diabetes around the world- when they used to move with the seasons for food. African Americans have some of the worst health outcomes in America, with lower life expectancies and higher rates of chronic diseases. These were people who would braid seeds of plants into their hair to have some kind of food to bring with them across the ocean in the slave trades- forced from their home diets to the scraps of what was allowed them. They have created, in all these instances, wonderfully delicious menus with the foods they were given, but their native recipes had much more diversity in plants and meats that bring health.
Wars & Industrialization
The World Wars kicked this industrial extraction into overdrive. America's manufacturing and chemical manufacturing, perfected for warfare, needed something to sell once they found peace. Wartime innovations became consumer products:
Canola Oil: Industrial rapeseed oil, used as a lubricant for planes, was bred to be edible and marketed as a "healthy" fat (paying harvard scientists to cherry pick data to blame health issues on sugar), displacing traditional fats like butter with margarine (which is WAY worse for health).
Pesticides: Derived from nerve agents designed to kill humans, these chemicals were repurposed to kill insects, disrupting ecosystems and, with new studies, our own gut microbiomes. Glyphosate's origins trace back to components related to Agent Orange. Europe has many laws that do not allow it, but America sees too much profit in it to institute a hard pass.
Processed Foods: Chemical extractions and artificial flavors exploded after the war time era, driven by the need for food that stays stable on the shelf. Apples, like the Red Delicious, were selected for being able to sit on the shelf for 9 months, and for color, and to survive being sprayed with toxins countless times, but not for flavor. There is a reason heirloom tomatoes will beat out canned tomatoes in any kind of flavor competition. Factories producing for war time provisions predicted the next 50 years of most americans’ diets.
As Kurt Vonnegut aptly put it, "I'm sorry, we were drunk on petroleum." Our entire food system became oil-based—synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, plastic packaging, transportation, industrial seed oils.
The Addiction Playbook: From Tobacco to Twinkies
The final, cynical twist came from Big Tobacco. As the deadly link between smoking and cancer became undeniable in the 1960s and '70s, tobacco companies pivoted. They bought major food corporations (Kraft, Nabisco, General Foods) and brought their playbook:
Engineering Addiction: Hire chemists to find the "bliss point" of sugar, salt, and fat. Create hyperpalatable products designed to override satiety.
Creating Doubt: Fund biased research to confuse the public about nutrition science (e.g., demonizing fat while ignoring sugar).
Marketing: Target children relentlessly. Use psychology to create craving and habit.
Lobbying: Fight regulation, influence dietary guidelines, shift blame to "personal responsibility" and lack of exercise.
Food scientists perfected "vanishing caloric density" (like cheese puffs that melt away, tricking the brain) and ensured slogans like "Bet you can’t eat just one" were biologically accurate, not mere hyperbole. They taught us to equate calories (empty Amazon boxes) with nutrition (what's inside the box). Real food—almonds—delivers nutrients; processed calories—Skittles—deliver little but metabolic disruption.
The Violence of the System
This entire edifice rests on a foundation of violence, disproportionately harming marginalized communities:
Native Americans: Land theft, forced confinement, cultural erasure, and the systematic destruction of foodways. The bison, essential to Plains cultures and soil health, were slaughtered nearly to extinction as government policy to starve tribes into submission. The resulting dependence on commodity foods led to catastrophic health outcomes, as seen tragically in the Havasupai. Their pride in fry bread, born of rations, is a testament to resilience but also a symbol of profound loss.
African Americans: Centuries of stolen labor built American wealth. Enslaved people, denied access to their rich West African food heritage (greens, yams, legumes, fish), ingeniously created soul food from discarded scraps. This survival cuisine, later corrupted by industrial ingredients and economic hardship in food deserts, became intertwined with cultural identity even as it contributed to health disparities rooted in systemic injustice, not cultural failing. The systematic destruction of the Black family further compounded these challenges.
This pattern isn't just historical. It continues in the exploited labor of farmworkers, in food deserts lacking fresh produce, in fast-food chains targeting low-income neighborhoods, and in global policies prioritizing export crops over local food security.
Our Way Back
Food preferences, formed in childhood, are deeply ingrained, often more resistant to change than religion or language. We prefer the foods our parents gave us- for good reason. From around age 1, when we learn how to walk, we start to become picky, in case we walk up to something we are not meant to eat.
And cultures hold onto these local foods. Food words that survive become archaeological evidence of a shared past.
And because food remembers, it offers a path back. Reconnecting with real food—simple ingredients, prepared traditionally—is an act of reclaiming biology, culture, and health. Our bodies recognize real food. Our taste buds recalibrate. Flavor and nutrients, which evolved together, realign. Cooking becomes not a chore, but an act of wholeness.
This history can feel heavy, enraging even. But seeing the design removes its power. We know enough to change it now. None of this was inevitable. It was designed for profit, not health. It's not our fault. But the solution has to come from us- we cannot wait for it to come from the top down. What was designed can be redesigned, if we show there are people who want to eat real food again. Understanding how we got here is the essential first step in choosing who we want to be, one meal at a time.
We live in a time of unprecedented freedom and access. Don’t let this paralyze you, use it to set yourself free.
——
To understand the food on our plates today, we have to start further back than anyone might expect. We have to trace the origins of a mindset—a way of seeing the world that changed when we started to separate ourselves from the ecosystem, viewing ourselves as elevated above the plant, animal, and seasonal world around us. This underlying shift made later extraction and processing techniques seem not just logical, but desirable.
The point we are exploring here is simple: eat real foods, closest to the ground. This is the most delicious, most nutritious, and most science-backed way to eat. But for centuries, this simple approach was treated as "less than" more sophisticated dishes, profoundly shaping our perception of what belongs on our plates.
Luckily, real food offers a win-win-win: beautiful to look at, delicious to eat, and nourishing to our cells at the deepest levels. Real food often also carries with it an amazing story—and understanding that story helps us see through the lies we've been sold.
Words as Living Fossils
A useful starting point for understanding this power shift is to look at our own food words. Language is a living fossil that reveals lingering prejudice against "simple" foods—prejudice that has nothing to do with nutrition and everything to do with conquest.
When Julius Caesar raided Britain in 55 BC, he deemed the locals "barbarians," his journals dripping with disdain for their simple way of life. Though he never conquered the island, his contempt for "crude" northern peoples set a precedent that would echo for a thousand years. The pattern was clear: Mediterranean "civilization" looked down on northern "simplicity."
Fast forward to 1066. The island was now home to the Anglo-Saxons—Germanic tribes with a rich culture, formidable in battle, but still dismissed by continental Europeans as unsophisticated. The Normans (Viking descendants who had settled in northern France and adopted French language and culture) saw an opportunity.
On October 14, 1066, at the Battle of Hastings, history pivoted on a single day of tactical brilliance. After hours of brutal fighting, with the Saxon shield wall holding firm against repeated assaults, the Normans employed a devastating strategy: they feigned retreat. The Saxons, thinking victory was theirs, broke formation to pursue the fleeing enemy. The Normans wheeled back and slaughtered them. When Saxon King Harold fell—legend says from an arrow to the eye—England's fate was sealed. By nightfall, the island had new masters.
The Normans ruled for the next two centuries, but French remained the language of power, law, and sophistication for over three hundred years. English as we know it emerged from this pressure cooker—two languages, two classes, living side by side for half a millennium. The ruling class spoke French. The workers spoke Germanic English. And crucially, they had to speak to each other. You cannot run an estate without communicating with the people who tend your animals and harvest your crops.
The Class System Baked Into Your Vocabulary
What resulted is a language where the power dynamic is literally embedded in the words we use for food.
Germanic words remained for the basic ingredients and the work of raising them:
Cow, pig, sheep, chicken, deer
Milk, bread, apple, water
Work, help, eat, drink
French words took over for the refined dishes and the pleasure of consuming them:
Beef (bœuf), pork (porc), mutton (mouton), poultry (poulet), venison (venaison)
Dine, sauté, blanch, cuisine itself
Refined, gourmet, sophisticated
The pattern is unmistakable: The peasant raised the cow. The lord ate the beef.
Germanic people did the labor in the fields. French aristocrats enjoyed the results at the table. The animal had a Germanic name when it was alive and a French name when it was cooked. This wasn't an accident—it was a linguistic map of who had power and who didn't.
Even today, we unconsciously reinforce this ancient bias. We say "refined" and mean superior. We say "simple" and mean lesser. We describe processed food as "sophisticated" and whole food as "basic" or "rustic." We've inherited a value system built not on nutrition, but on conquest.
The Irony Science Reveals
Here's what makes this particularly infuriating: Science now affirms the wisdom of simple. Less processing means more nutrients. The foods closest to the ground—the ones our ancestors ate, the ones that built strong bodies and sharp minds—are nutritionally superior to the "refined" dishes that came to symbolize status.
The Anglo-Saxons eating their porridge, their bone broths, their roasted meat and roots? They were doing it right. The elaborate French preparations that buried food under sauces and removed it further from its natural state? Those weren't superior—they were just the foods of people with enough wealth and leisure to complicate what didn't need complicating.
We are still eating according to a power dynamic established by conquest a thousand years ago. We've been taught to reach for "refined" white flour over whole grains, processed "convenience" over real cooking, "gourmet" packaged foods over simple vegetables. Food manufacturers have exploited this linguistic prejudice brilliantly, slapping words like "refined," "enriched," and "sophisticated" on products that are nutritionally bankrupt.
Meanwhile, the foods that actually nourish us—bone broths, organ meats, fermented vegetables, whole grains, seasonal produce—have been dismissed as peasant food, old-fashioned, too simple for modern, educated people.
It's time to see this bias for what it is: a lie we've been sold that serves profit, not health.
The "simple" foods our ancestors ate weren't inferior. They were optimal. And reclaiming them—choosing the cow over the factory, the whole over the refined, the real over the processed—is an act of rebellion against a system that has literally been broken since 1066.
——
Chapter 2: How We Got Here
To understand the food on our plates today, we have to start further back than anyone might expect. We have to trace the origins of a mindset—a way of seeing the world that began when we started to separate ourselves from the ecosystem, viewing ourselves as elevated above the plant, animal, and mushroom kingdoms that sustain us.
This can be a sensitive topic, and some might say not relevant to a book helping explain to someone what to eat. The solution we are recommending is simple: eat real foods, closest to the ground. This is most delicious, most nutritious, and most backed by science as beneficial. But it was also basically treated as “less than” more sophisticated dishes for at least two thousand years, and that has had an impact on our perception of food, and what we expect to see on our plates. Luckily, good food can be a win-win-win, appealing to look at, taste, AND be good for you, plus with an amazing story to go with it.
This underlying mindset shift (separation from nature) arguably made the later historical events (extraction, industrialization) possible, and even seem logical. It addresses the root worldview before detailing the specific historical actions. The historical devaluing of "simple food" is linked to our modern expectations and the rise of processed, "sophisticated" (but often unhealthy) options.
A useful starting point is the Roman Empire. When Julius Caesar expanded Rome's borders into what is now Britain, he encountered people he deemed "barbarians." The term itself, possibly mimicking the sound of an unfamiliar language ("bar, bar, bar"), reveals the core assumption: anyone different is lesser, less "civilized." But what does "civilized" truly mean? Does it mean possessing superior weapons and using force to conquer and enslave? Or does it imply the capacity for calm discussion and mutual understanding? For centuries, the warrior mentality has defined civilization. To heal our relationship with food, perhaps we must first redefine what it means to be civilized.
Our language itself carries the fossils of these ancient conflicts. English is a mutt, a crossbreed of the Latin-based French spoken by the Norman conquerors after 1066 and the Germanic tongue of the Anglo-Saxons they subjugated. It's often said it's easier to change someone's religion than their food preferences, and our vocabulary proves it. Despite 300 years of French rule, the Germanic words for basic, close-to-the-ground ingredients stuck: cow, pig, sheep, apple, milk, bread. The French words denote the refined, finished dishes on the aristocrat's table: beef (boeuf), pork (porc), mutton (mouton), sauté, braise, bouillon. The peasant raised the cow; the lord ate the beef. Every time we speak English, we unconsciously reinforce a bias: "refined" is superior to "simple." But modern science increasingly affirms the wisdom of the simple: food eaten closer to its source, with less processing, retains more nutrients.
The Ancient Roots: Extraction as Old as Empire
Rome wasn't just a linguistic influence; it provided the blueprint for extraction that shapes our world today. It was perhaps the first civilization utterly dependent on food sourced outside its borders. Lacking resources, Rome relied on its colonies, especially Egypt, the breadbasket of the ancient world. The infamous "bread and circuses" (panem et circenses)—free grain distributions (annona) and public spectacles—were funded by Egyptian wealth, keeping the Roman populace fed and pacified, dependent on a centralized supply controlled by the rulers. When Rome fell and these supply lines collapsed, the population plummeted to levels unseen until modern times. The empire existed only as long as it could extract.
This extraction wasn't just economic; it was cultural. Consider Egypt. For three thousand years, it was the most advanced civilization along the Mediterranean- possibly the known world, in rivalry with those of Mesopotamia, now known with the oblique term “Middle East”. Rulers of Rome tried at least twice to unite- with both Caesar and the next emperor: Antony having children (even the much sought after sons for inheritance) with the Eqyptian Queen.
After Cleopatra's death, Rome faced a choice: partnership, as Julius Caesar and Mark Antony envisioned, or extraction, as Augustus preferred. Augustus won. Egypt's grain, gold, and glory flowed to Rome. Temples were defaced, traditions outlawed. Within generations, Egyptians forgot their own language, their hieroglyphs becoming meaningless scratches. Egypt suffered cultural amnesia for nearly 1,800 years until the Rosetta Stone brought it back to life in 1824. The last known hieroglyphic inscription dates to 394 CE at Philae's Temple of Isis- a goddess of the Nile and mother of the sun god Ray. When Rome outlawed the Egyptian religion and scattered the priests—the mere 5% who held the knowledge of writing—the language proved terrifyingly easy to erase.
Rome perfected the template: Conquer. Extract. Erase. Rename. Control. Give people amnesia. Archeology suggests at least 25 distinct cultures vanished under Roman expansion. When Rome renamed the province of Judea to "Syria Palaestina" after the Bar Kokhba revolt (135 AD), it deliberately used the name of the ancient Philistines (Peleshet in Hebrew, meaning "invader"), the historical enemies of the Israelites, to sever the Jewish people's connection to their homeland. Jewish religious practices were restricted, people removed from their homeland, and Hebrew effectively ceased to exist as a daily spoken language for nearly two hundred years, surviving only through intense conscious effort to restore it.
Out of Rome grew Roman Catholicism, which became the administrative and spiritual arm of this imperial project. When the Western Empire fell, the Church carried the template forward. The Pope himself wrote letters that may have justified, and possibly trigger, the slave trade. The Papal Bulls Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455) provided the shocking moral justification for the next era of conquest, granting European powers the right to invade, subdue, and reduce to perpetual slavery any non-Christians.
This is a heavy claim- so let’s check that for a second. Could the pope of the Catholic church have given the pardon, and possible spark to initiate the whole slave trade? Here are the facts:
The Slave Trade Timeline
Letters from the pope in 1452 and 1455 laid the groundwork for the "Doctrine of Discovery," a concept used by European powers for centuries to legitimize their imperial expansion.
The two bulls (essentially laws, decrees, edicts) were issued by Pope Nicholas V, directed at King Afonso V of Portugal, in response to Portuguese expanding along the coast of West Africa. The King wanted to know if he had permission from the church to continue expansion efforts, and even get some favors while doing so. The answer, was Yes.
Dum Diversas (1452): This bull gave Portugal "full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens [Muslims] and pagans and any other unbelievers" of the Christian (Catholic) faith, and to reduce them to "perpetual servitude". Pagans are essentially anyone outside of the accepted Christian tradition.
Romanus Pontifex (1455): This bull reaffirmed and extended the authorizations of Dum Diversas. It granted Portugal exclusive rights to trade and colonize lands and seas along the African coast, and justified the enslavement of West Africans encountered during these voyages.
The papal bulls were not isolated documents, but part of a wider effort to give Christian nations religious authority for their colonial and expansionist ambitions. Summarized, these bulls, essentially laws, said that European Christians had a divine right to invade and seize the land of non-Christians. It gave explicit papal approval for the enslavement of non-Christian "pagans" in Africa.
This left Lingering legal precedent: In the 1823 U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson v. M'Intosh, the Doctrine of Discovery was used to establish that Native Americans had only a "right of occupancy" to their land, not the right to title.
The Vatican officially repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery in 2023, stating that the original papal bulls "did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples". However, the Vatican stopped short of officially rescinding the documents themselves.
The popes issued the bulls Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455) for two main reasons: to reward Portugal for its campaigns against Muslims and to grant Portugal a monopoly on trade and colonization in newly "discovered" territories. These religious decrees legitimized expansion and the enslavement of non-Christians. King Afonso V of Portugal specifically petitioned the Pope for this authority. (I wonder if he felt guilt, or was worried of the backlash?)
Portugal's expansion along the West African coast was a costly and risky enterprise. In the early 15th century, Prince Henry the Navigator launched these voyages to find a new sea route to India and to compete with the Muslim trans-Saharan trade caravans. To secure Portugal's investments and territorial claims, King Afonso V sought papal validation, which would:
Prevent rival Christian nations from interfering with Portuguese trade and colonization efforts.
Provide moral and religious justification for attacking non-Christian peoples and seizing their lands.
The bulls were framed as a mission to spread Christianity by conquering "Saracens (Muslims) and pagans". This framed violent conquest as a righteous mission and the enslavement of non-Christians as a pathway to conversion. The papal decrees established a legal blueprint for European overseas expansion. The logic of conquest and discovery became the basis for property law in Western nations.
They relied on Dehumanization: The doctrine operated on the idea that non-Christian inhabitants of a land had no right to their own property or sovereignty. The bulls referred to reducing non-believers to "perpetual servitude," effectively dehumanizing these populations and paving the way for the transatlantic slave trade.
After Portugal, other Catholic nations like Spain secured similar papal endorsements for their own imperial ambitions, notably Pope Alexander VI's Inter Caetera bull of 1493.
It even Influenced secular law: The logic of the Doctrine became ingrained in secular laws. The U.S. Supreme Court cited the Doctrine in the 1823 case Johnson v. M'Intosh, concluding that Native Americans only had a right of "occupancy" on their lands, not ownership.
The Slave Trade began in the late 1400’s, initiated by Portuguese and Spanish merchants after Christopher Columbus's voyages.
Portuguese and Spanish merchants began the systematic, large-scale movement of enslaved Africans to the Americas.
By the early 1500s, the Spanish established a demand for enslaved African labor to work on plantations, especially after so many Native Americans died (through cruelty or disease, approximately 90% of the population erased), and that workforce needed to be replaced.
The first direct slave voyage from Africa to the Americas is thought to have occurred in 1526.
Americans later in 1845 used the “Manifest Destiny” to expand through the America’s, explaining the land grab as justifiable with religion, even a necessary expansion west to be a divinely ordained right. It was rooted in biblical passages like Matthew 5:14-16 (“You are the light of the world…”).
The ideology of Manifest Destiny inspired a variety of measures designed to remove or destroy the native population, leading to their total relocation of the survivors to a reservation in Oklahoma in 1875.
The North and South fought over whether the new states admitted to the Union were to be free states or slave states, which inflamed sectional tensions over slavery, which ultimately led to the Civil War in 1865.
US President James Polk was the leader who used the idea of Manifest Destiny broadly, and in his single term also led the United States to resolve the boundary dispute with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory, which had been jointly occupied since 1818. Polk's administration negotiated the Oregon Treaty of 1846 with Britain, securing the states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, as well as parts of Montana and Wyoming.
Polk also led the United States to victory over Mexico in the Mexican-American War in 1846. This allowed for the purchase of the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, plus portions of Colorado, Wyoming, and Oklahoma. The debate over the Wilmot Proviso was one of the major events leading up to the Civil War. The proviso, which was strongly opposed by the slaveholding South, asserted that the Mexican-American War had not been fought for the purpose of expanding slavery, and stipulated that slavery would never exist in the territories acquired from Mexico in the war.
Something to consider, why do you think President Polk went to war with Mexico but negotiated with Great Britain? What sorts of policies were justified in the name of Manifest Destiny?
This wasn't a fringe idea; it was official doctrine authorizing the transatlantic slave trade and centuries of colonialism, blessing extraction and erasure as God's work itself. America had its own “Manifest Destiny”, again seeing religion tied with an effort to conquer land and people. Wherever European empires went, missionaries followed, often suppressing indigenous languages, burning sacred texts (like the entire Mayan written books), demonizing traditional religions, and replacing diverse foodways with colonial agriculture. Many of these traditions worshipped natural forces: seasons and the sun and the rain- which competed with their own visions of power.
These expansion and forced religious conversions had multiple consequences. Aside from devastating the cultures it was literally trying to erase, it put a strict embargo on the idea of happiness itself- the idea of inspiration, music, singing, dancing, feasting and celebrating in native ways, were all seen and described as “demonic”. Examples abound of places that disavowed singing, even in christianity, until enough generations passed that forgot that it was a tool of remembrance. The Serbian people invented a single stringed flute to get around the instrument embargo. Christian women went from singing with drums to not allowed to speak at all in church, in a matter of a couple hundred years. It would not be until very much later, in the 1800’s, when music would return again to the church, and only due to influence from places that never removed it- not matter how many attempts were made at eradication. In this way, any cultural elements that survive, whether musical (literally, of a muse), physical (dancing, movement), or something that may feel divinely inspired or even potentially put one into a trance would be demonized. Food, however, was one item nobody could steal cutlurally, so long as those plants were still available. Food is part of celebrations, however, and often can be traced to pre-christian religious connections.
Throughout the German lands, where mass conversions often happened on Easter when the King married a “refined” Christian woman of a European breed. Children often follow religions of the mother, and this played a pivotal role in conversions. The french used this idea again in the americas and Canada, when men were marrying native people, and starting families, and the French sent poor, educated girls overseas to help maintain French customs. It worked. Rome had explicit laws about not being able to marry foreign women, for the same reason. Marc Antony then, by marrying Cleopatra, explicitly broke this rule. He would not be the only Roman emperor to do so. Later Tacitus would fall for the Jewish Queen Berenice, even during the destructive moment of removing her people from their homeland around 79 AD.
I approach this history as someone who grew up Catholic but now finds more resonance in the intricate beauty of the natural world, as well as science. I see a design in natural systems, an innate rationality to each of our cells that mirrors so many other aspects of nature- that I could understand why someone would want to believe there had to have been some kind of mastermind at the start of it all. I see magic where science validates ancient wisdom—fermentation enhancing nutrients, bone broth healing the gut, seasonal eating aligning with our biology. My critique is not of personal faith, but of how institutional power, often cloaked in religious righteousness, has historically justified systemic brutality and extraction. Understanding this pattern is crucial for seeing how we arrived at our present moment.
The Pattern Repeats: Britain, America, and the World
Britain inherited Rome's mantle, perfecting the extraction model. In India, once a global center of textile manufacturing, Britain made it illegal for Indians to produce their own finished goods from their own cotton. Raw materials flowed to British factories; finished products were sold back at inflated prices. This systematic removal of their autonomy, coupled with new laws that forced them into extraction for others, led to devastating famines and economic destruction. This wasn't an accident; it was policy.
America itself won its independence from Britain only with crucial help from the French- who, for whatever reason, hated the British so much to essentially bankrupt themselves to piss them off. Soon enough, America inherited and amplified the extraction pattern on its own soil. Our nation was built on stolen land, ignoring the sustainable practices of Native peoples, whether in the plains or in the islands of Hawaii, all examples of locations where the land and human life was harmed. The very sugar industry, providing a cornerstone of the processed food revolution, was only possible through the brutality of slave labor until chemical production took over in the 1960s. We continued the pattern in Hawaii, where missionary descendants took control of land, dismantled sustainable indigenous agriculture (ahupua'a system), and replaced it with single crops of sugar cane and pineapple plantations, leaving the islands dependent on imported food today- bearing health outcomes that correspond to the nutrient profile of that food system.
This extractive model continues globally. In parts of Africa, forced policies and trade deals make laws against farmers saving their own seeds, requiring annual purchases of patented, genetically modified seeds from multinational corporations, locking them into dependency. Land grabs by foreign entities grow export crops while local populations face food insecurity. The pattern is consistent: undermine self-sufficiency, create dependency, extract wealth.
The saddest part of all of this is that the people of the native cultures, that lived sustainably for countless generations on real food, have the worst health outcomes today. Removed long enough to forget their ancient ways of life, and forced on the cheapest food options available to those on food stamps that can only afford processed foods. The Havasupai of the Grand Canyon have some of the highest rates of diabetes around the world- when they used to move with the seasons for food. African Americans have some of the worst health outcomes in America, with lower life expectancies and higher rates of chronic diseases. These were people who would braid seeds of plants into their hair to have some kind of food to bring with them across the ocean in the slave trades- forced from their home diets to the scraps of what was allowed them. They have created, in all these instances, wonderfully delicious menus with the foods they were given, but their native recipes had much more diversity in plants and meats that bring health.
Wars & Industrialization
The World Wars kicked this industrial extraction into overdrive. America's manufacturing and chemical manufacturing, perfected for warfare, needed something to sell once they found peace. Wartime innovations became consumer products:
Canola Oil: Industrial rapeseed oil, used as a lubricant for planes, was bred to be edible and marketed as a "healthy" fat (paying harvard scientists to cherry pick data to blame health issues on sugar), displacing traditional fats like butter with margarine (which is WAY worse for health).
Pesticides: Derived from nerve agents designed to kill humans, these chemicals were repurposed to kill insects, disrupting ecosystems and, with new studies, our own gut microbiomes. Glyphosate's origins trace back to components related to Agent Orange. Europe has many laws that do not allow it, but America sees too much profit in it to institute a hard pass.
Processed Foods: Chemical extractions and artificial flavors exploded after the war time era, driven by the need for food that stays stable on the shelf. Apples, like the Red Delicious, were selected for being able to sit on the shelf for 9 months, and for color, and to survive being sprayed with toxins countless times, but not for flavor. There is a reason heirloom tomatoes will beat out canned tomatoes in any kind of flavor competition. Factories producing for war time provisions predicted the next 50 years of most americans’ diets.
As Kurt Vonnegut aptly put it, "I'm sorry, we were drunk on petroleum." Our entire food system became oil-based—synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, plastic packaging, transportation, industrial seed oils.
The Addiction Playbook: From Tobacco to Twinkies
The final, cynical twist came from Big Tobacco. As the deadly link between smoking and cancer became undeniable in the 1960s and '70s, tobacco companies pivoted. They bought major food corporations (Kraft, Nabisco, General Foods) and brought their playbook:
Engineering Addiction: Hire chemists to find the "bliss point" of sugar, salt, and fat. Create hyperpalatable products designed to override satiety.
Creating Doubt: Fund biased research to confuse the public about nutrition science (e.g., demonizing fat while ignoring sugar).
Marketing: Target children relentlessly. Use psychology to create craving and habit.
Lobbying: Fight regulation, influence dietary guidelines, shift blame to "personal responsibility" and lack of exercise.
Food scientists perfected "vanishing caloric density" (like cheese puffs that melt away, tricking the brain) and ensured slogans like "Bet you can’t eat just one" were biologically accurate, not mere hyperbole. They taught us to equate calories (empty Amazon boxes) with nutrition (what's inside the box). Real food—almonds—delivers nutrients; processed calories—Skittles—deliver little but metabolic disruption.
The Violence of the System
This entire edifice rests on a foundation of violence, disproportionately harming marginalized communities:
Native Americans: Land theft, forced confinement, cultural erasure, and the systematic destruction of foodways. The bison, essential to Plains cultures and soil health, were slaughtered nearly to extinction as government policy to starve tribes into submission. The resulting dependence on commodity foods led to catastrophic health outcomes, as seen tragically in the Havasupai. Their pride in fry bread, born of rations, is a testament to resilience but also a symbol of profound loss.
African Americans: Centuries of stolen labor built American wealth. Enslaved people, denied access to their rich West African food heritage (greens, yams, legumes, fish), ingeniously created soul food from discarded scraps. This survival cuisine, later corrupted by industrial ingredients and economic hardship in food deserts, became intertwined with cultural identity even as it contributed to health disparities rooted in systemic injustice, not cultural failing. The systematic destruction of the Black family further compounded these challenges.
This pattern isn't just historical. It continues in the exploited labor of farmworkers, in food deserts lacking fresh produce, in fast-food chains targeting low-income neighborhoods, and in global policies prioritizing export crops over local food security.
Our Way Back
Food preferences, formed in childhood, are deeply ingrained, often more resistant to change than religion or language. We prefer the foods our parents gave us- for good reason. From around age 1, when we learn how to walk, we start to become picky, in case we walk up to something we are not meant to eat.
And cultures hold onto these local foods. Food words that survive become archaeological evidence of a shared past.
And because food remembers, it offers a path back. Reconnecting with real food—simple ingredients, prepared traditionally—is an act of reclaiming biology, culture, and health. Our bodies recognize real food. Our taste buds recalibrate. Flavor and nutrients, which evolved together, realign. Cooking becomes not a chore, but an act of wholeness.
This history can feel heavy, enraging even. But seeing the design removes its power. We know enough to change it now. None of this was inevitable. It was designed for profit, not health. It's not our fault. But the solution has to come from us- we cannot wait for it to come from the top down. What was designed can be redesigned, if we show there are people who want to eat real food again. Understanding how we got here is the essential first step in choosing who we want to be, one meal at a time.
We live in a time of unprecedented freedom and access. Don’t let this paralyze you, use it to set yourself free.
—-
Chapter 2: How We Got Here
To understand the food on our plates today, we have to start further back than you might expect. We need to trace the origins of a mindset—a way of seeing the world that changed when we started separating ourselves from the ecosystem, viewing humans as elevated above the plant, animal, and seasonal cycles that sustain us. This underlying shift made later techniques of extraction and industrial processing seem not just logical, but desirable.
The solution we explore in this book is simple: eat real foods, closest to the ground. This is the most delicious, most nutritious, and most science-backed way to eat. But for centuries, this approach was treated as “less than” more sophisticated dishes, profoundly shaping our perception of what belongs on our plates. Luckily, real food offers a win-win-win: beautiful to look at, delicious to eat, and nourishing to our cells at the deepest levels. Real food often carries an amazing story—and understanding that story helps us see through the idea of food we've been sold.
A useful starting point for understanding this power shift is to look at our own food words. Language is a living fossil, revealing a lingering prejudice against "simple" foods—a prejudice rooted in conquest.
Words as Living Fossils: The Battle Baked Into English
When Julius Caesar raided Britain in 55 BC, he deemed the locals "barbarians," his journals dripping with disdain for their simple way of life. Though he never fully conquered the island, his contempt for "crude" northern peoples set a precedent: Mediterranean "civilization" looked down on northern "simplicity."
Fast forward a thousand years to 1066 AD. The island was now home to the Anglo-Saxons—Germanic tribes, formidable in battle, but still dismissed by continental Europeans as unsophisticated. The Normans (Viking descendants settled in France, adopting French language and culture) saw their chance.
On October 14, 1066, at the Battle of Hastings, history pivoted. After hours of brutal fighting, with the Saxon shield wall holding firm, the Normans faked retreat. The Saxons broke formation to pursue. The Normans wheeled back and slaughtered them. By nightfall, “England” had new masters.
The Norman French ruled England for the next two hundred years, and French remained the language of power, law, and sophistication for an additional hundred years. English as we know it emerged from this pressure cooker—a mutt of Latin-based French (the rulers) and Germanic English (the workers).
You can force people to do many things under new rulers, but it's hard to change what they call their food. The words that survived tell a story:
Germanic words stuck for the basic ingredients and the work of raising them:
Cow, pig, sheep, chicken, deer
Milk, bread, apple, water
Work, help, eat, drink
French words took over for the refined dishes on the aristocrat's table:
Beef (bœuf), pork (porc), mutton (mouton), poultry (poulet), venison (venaison)
Dine, sauté, blanch, cuisine itself
Refined, gourmet, sophisticated
The pattern is stark: The peasant raised the cow. The lord ate the beef. Germanic people did the labor; French aristocrats enjoyed the results. The live animal kept its Germanic name, while the French name is presented on menua. This provides a linguistic map of power embedded in our daily language.
Even today, we unconsciously reinforce this ancient bias. We say "refined" and mean superior. We say "simple" and often mean lesser. We describe processed food as "sophisticated" and whole food as "basic." We've inherited a value system built on conquest, not nutrition.
Here's the infuriating irony: Science now affirms the wisdom of simple. Less processing means more nutrients. The foods closest to the ground—the "simple" foods dismissed by conquerors—are nutritionally superior. The Anglo-Saxons with their porridge, bone broths, and roasted roots were eating optimally. The elaborate French preparations weren't inherently better; they were just the foods of people with the wealth to complicate things.
This linguistic class system didn't stay frozen. By the 1900’s, food manufacturers exploited this bias brilliantly. "Refined" white flour sounded better than whole grain. Processed foods became symbols of "convenience" and "modernity." Even the idea of Home Ec in schools was paid for by food companies to help share how to used these newly processed foods in our kitchens. Meanwhile, the foods that actually nourished us—bone broths, organ meats, fermented vegetables—were dismissed as peasant food, old-fashioned, too simple for educated people.
We are still eating according to a power dynamic established a thousand years ago. It's time to see this bias for what it is: a system serving profit, not health. The "simple" foods weren't inferior; they were optimal- they held power. Foods held power that EMpowered its people and threatened the ruling class. Reclaiming them—choosing the cow over the factory product, the whole over the refined, the real over the processed—is an act of rebellion against a system broken since at least 0 BC/AD.
Science now proves what traditional cultures always knew, and what our own language tried to tell us all along.
Wisdom in Traditional Cultures
Upon more digging into old journals with modern research tools, we learn that native people, wherever they lived, maintained close ties with the earth. The gods were the sun and moon and rain. Foods were understood as sacred, and integrally connected with life and the changing seasons. These same gods could not be seen as powerful, since they challenged other beliefs in the divine. So their gods, and foods, had to be diminished.
We should look to people that were able to sustain communities for thousands of years (like Egyptians and Native Americans and Hawaiians), to understand how to live truly sustainably on the same land, over many generations, to help solve our modern food crisis. We still have not figured out how to live intelligently on our land so we are not just extracting, and ruining the earth for the next generations- even with all our science and technology.
Because as native cultures were overtaken, their insights were overlooked. Their “primitive” nature and cooking techniques were not marvelled over, they were mocked. We are lucky if any of their wisdom survives. Even today, some descendants remain, and it is up to us to listen, and even learn their languages, to understand this ancient world view that may help us understand ourselves even more today.
This dismissal of 'simple' wasn't just linguistic; it meant ignoring profound wisdom. Traditional cultures, those sustaining communities for millennia (like ancient Egyptians, Native Americans, Hawaiians), held deep knowledge about living with the land, not just extracting from it... Their insights were overlooked, their 'primitive' techniques mocked, precisely because they didn't fit the 'civilized' model of dominance
Of course, the extraction (and history lesson) does not end there.
Extraction as Old as Empire
Rome provided a blueprint for extraction- one that many still use today, unknowingly.
Rome relied on extracting wealth from conquered people to feed its own citizens. It was a parasitic technique- its own land could not supply enough food for its growing population. It relied on its vassal states to pay for its wars of expansion, but also to extract food. Its greatest jewel of conquest was Egypt, which funded its "bread and circuses" with Egyptian grain and gold.
The problem with an extractive technique in land management, was that, as more destructive modes of farming are used, the less sustainable it becomes. We see one culture after another going to waste as we observe plundered, extracted, and laid it to waste.
We come again to Caesar in Egypt to see a moment when Rome had a choice. Two first two Roman Emperors proposed partnership with Egypt, but extraction won out.
Caesar himself then Marc Antony were some of the first rulers of Rome after the Republic, and both united with Queen Cleopatra with a shared vision, even seeing Egypt as being a potential location for the new capital for Rome. The Queen of Egypt had 4 children with the Rulers of Rome. But only one daughter would survive.
Emperor Augustus, however, chose extraction over partnership. Once the Queen and her Roman lovers (and children) were killed, Egypt's grain, gold, and glory flowed to Rome. Temples were defaced, traditions outlawed. Within generations, Egyptians forgot their own language. Hieroglyphics, a 3,000-year-old writing system, died out. (Only the elite 5% could read and write this “language of the gods”. Not even the Greeks, who ruled Egypt for 300 years after Alexander the Great, would NOT be taught it).
The last known inscription dates to 394 AD at a Temple of Isis - a mother goddess, mother of the Sun god Ray/Horus (giving us words like sunRay, REIgn of a queen, REYes, and HORIZon), and even imagery that is strikingly similar to another Mother with divine Sun/Son in the Roman world.
Old religions don’t vanish easily. It requires laws and executions, that lead to loss of life, as well as plundering of the land. When Rome outlawed ancient religions and scattered the religious leaders, knowledge vanished. Ways of living sustainably disappeared. Egypt suffered cultural amnesia until the Rosetta Stone offered a key nearly 1,800 years later.
The Roman historian Tacitus recorded an anti-Roman speech given by a Caledonian (Scottish) chief: "They create a desolation and they call it peace".
Rome perfected the template: Conquer. Extract. Erase. Rename. Control. Give people amnesia. Archeology suggests at least 25 cultures vanished in its rise.
In another example, Rome renamed Judea to "Palaestina" after the Jewish people revolted over brutal rule in 135 AD, deliberately using the name of their ancient enemies, the ancient Philistines (Peleshet in Hebrew, meaning "invader") to sever the Jewish people's connection to their homeland. Hebrew as a language was outlawed, and effectively went extinct for 200 years, surviving only through conscious effort in private religious study.
Out of Rome grew Roman Catholicism. When the Western Empire fell, the Church carried the template of extraction forward.
Two letters from the Vatican Pope may have even given direct approval for countries to initiate the slave trade and permission for conquering new territories.
Two famous Bulls (essentially LAWS for Christians): Dum Diversas (1452 AD) and Romanus Pontifex (1455 AD) provided moral justification for European powers to invade, and turn to slaves, anyone who would not convert to Christianity.
This was official Church doctrine authorizing the transatlantic slave trade and centuries of colonialism. Wherever European empires went, missionaries climbed into the first boats, often suppressing indigenous languages, burning sacred texts (like Mayan libraries), demonizing traditional religions, and replacing diverse foodways with colonial agriculture- often to extract wealth for the ruling class. All under the explanation of “saving their souls”.
The Pattern Repeats: Britain, America, and the World
Britain inherited Rome's mantle. In India, once a global textile center, Britain made it illegal for Indians to produce finished goods from their own cotton. Raw materials flowed to British factories; finished products were sold back at inflated prices, leading to devastating famines and economic ruin. This wasn't accident; it was policy. The global drive for expansion, fueled by events like the fall of Constantinople disrupting trade routes to the rich East (India's textiles, spices), led explorers across oceans.
America, breaking from Britain (with French help), soon adopted the extraction pattern internally. Our nation was built on stolen land and stolen labor. The sugar industry, cornerstone of the processed food revolution, relied on slave labor until the 1960s. In Hawaii, missionary descendants dismantled sustainable indigenous agriculture (ahupua'a) for sugar and pineapple plantations, leaving the islands dependent on imported food and bearing corresponding health outcomes.
This model continues globally. In parts of Africa, laws (often pushed by foreign entities) forbid farmers from saving seeds, locking them into dependency on patented GMOs. Land grabs grow export crops while locals face hunger. The pattern is consistent: undermine self-sufficiency, create dependency, extract wealth.
Wars, Industrialization & the Addiction Playbook
The World Wars supercharged industrial extraction. America's wartime manufacturing and chemical prowess pivoted to consumer goods:
Canola Oil: Industrial rapeseed oil (a lubricant) was bred into an edible version and heavily marketed, displacing traditional fats.
Pesticides: Derived from nerve agents (some linked to Agent Orange components), repurposed to kill insects, potentially disrupting our gut microbiomes.
Processed Foods: Wartime needs spurred innovations in hydrogenation, preservatives, and artificial ingredients. Factories shifted from munitions to cereal. Apples like the Red Delicious were bred for shelf-life and pesticide resistance, not flavor. As Kurt Vonnegut said, "I'm sorry, we were drunk on petroleum."
The final twist came from Big Tobacco. Facing regulation in the 1960s-70s, they bought food giants (Kraft, Nabisco) and brought their addiction playbook: engineer hyperpalatable products ("bliss point," "vanishing caloric density"), fund doubt-creating research (demonizing fat, ignoring sugar), market relentlessly (especially to kids), and lobby aggressively. They taught us to count calories instead of nutrients, equating Skittles with almonds.
The Violence of the System & Food Justice
This entire system rests on violence, disproportionately harming marginalized communities:
Native Americans: Land theft, bison extermination (policy to break Plains tribes), forced confinement, dependence on commodity foods leading to catastrophic health (Havasupai diabetes). Fry bread, born of rations, became a symbol of resilience but also profound loss.
African Americans: Centuries of stolen labor built American wealth. Denied access to rich West African food heritage (greens, yams, legumes, fish), enslaved people ingeniously created soul food from scraps. This survival cuisine, later corrupted by industrial ingredients and food apartheid (lack of access to fresh food), became intertwined with identity even as it contributed to health disparities rooted in systemic injustice, amplified by the systematic destruction of the Black family over centuries.
This pattern persists today: exploited farmworkers, food deserts, targeted fast-food marketing, global policies prioritizing exports over local needs.
My Perspective
I explain this detail of history (our shared story) as not a critique of personal faith, but of how institutional power, often cloaked in religious righteousness, has historically justified systemic brutality and extraction. Understanding this pattern is crucial to seeing how our modern world treats our own food as it does.
I say this as someone who grew up Catholic but now finds more resonance in the intricate beauty in both science, and observations of the natural world. I see a design in natural systems—an innate rationality in our cells mirroring ecosystems, that is beautiful and useful. The reflection is so intricate between us and the natural world, that I could understand anyone seeing life as needing a blueprint- and as such, needing an original designer that could put something together so intricately. I see it all as a blend of magic and science- where scientists are awed at what they find in nature and ancient wisdom: fermentation enhancing nutrients, bone broth healing the gut, seasonal eating aligning with our biology.
Our Way Back Through Food
But food remembers. Food preferences, won in childhood, are deeply wired. Cultures hold onto recipes. Food words survive erasure—okra, yam, gumbo (West African); succotash, squash (Native American); bagel, knish (Yiddish); naranja (Arabic via Spanish). They are archaeological clues.
Because food remembers, it offers a path back. Reconnecting with real food—simple ingredients, perhaps traditional preparations—is an act of reclaiming biology, culture, and health. Our bodies recognize real food. Taste buds recalibrate. Flavor and nutrients realign. Cooking becomes an act of wholeness.
This history is heavy, enraging. But seeing the design removes its power. It wasn't inevitable. It was designed for profit, not health. It's not our fault. But the solution must come from us. What was designed can be redesigned, if we demand real food again. Understanding how we got here is the first step in choosing who we want to be, one meal at a time. Use the unprecedented freedom and access we have now. Use it to set yourself free.