“Soul Food” is an example of a “make do” Black Experience that started during African American slavery. Actually, soul food consisted of the opposite of the tasty, nutritious food “fit for a king” that was served to the slaveowners and their families.
The food available to slaves had several problems. First, they were given the discards of what Whites did not want to eat. This included old tainted pork or the equivalent of the poorest quality of fish-herring. The fresh meat consisted of the intestines and feet of animals. To deal with the bad taste, the slaves called on a practice used by those ancient African sailors engaged in long sea voyages -- the application of lots of salt on their beef, pork, and fish to keep it from “stinking” and to give it flavor. Still, those meats were loaded with toxins.
Second, most vegetables consisted of the discarded “tops and tips” and that which bordered on weeds. Most vegetables lacked protein, albumoinoids, vitamins, calcium, and other universal nutrients.
Third, the quantity of food was meager. According to Fredrick Douglass (My Bondage and My Freedom p. 76, 78), the monthly allotment per adult slave was eight pounds of meat or fish, one bushel (32 quarts) of unbolted (the husk remains) Indian meal (of which 15% was fit only to feed pigs), and one pint of salt. In other words, this amounted to a quarter of a pound of meat per day and less than a peck (eight quarts) of cornmeal per week.
Of course, the meat nor the fish were refrigerated and eventually both became filled with maggots. Ingenuity and a return to African seasoning methods made eatable this bad quality, bad tasting food -- basically applying a great deal of lard, fat, and salt to the foods they had available. The “soul” portion of “soul food” reflected the belief that the best part about the food was its spiritual energy. The slaves reasoned that God’s essence must have been in this unhealthy food because it enabled them to survive their “dawn to dusk” heavy labor without starving to death.
Originally, the soul foods consisted of chitterlings (pig’s intestines), pig trotters (pigs’ feet), pig knuckles, fried catfish, collard and turnip greens (actually the green tops), the tails and the necks from hog butchering, and dumplings (cornmeal, flour, and water). The mainstay was cornbread “ash cakes” consisting of ashes added to hoecake (i.e. cornmeal and water). Favorite beverages were pot liquor, hambone soup, and coffee made from parched corn. As a rule each household ground its own ration, baked their pone (bread made of cornmeal), fried its own pork, and made cornbread containing cracklings (the crisp residue of pork skin left from the rendering of lard). Slaveowners continually accused slaves of “stealing” -- especially chickens, swine, and potatoes.
Following slavery, “soul food” embraced all the foods and cuisine created or developed during and after slavery by poor Southern Black American cooks. Today, it includes the above as well as South Carolina gumbo (mainly okra) and louisiana gumbo (mainly seafood), chopped barbecue and barbeque sauce, baked grits, maw (the mouth, throat, or gullet, especially of a meat-eating animal), “meeting house” potato salad, smothered pork chops, collard green with meat, mustard greens and ham hocks, barbequed beef short ribs, cole slaw, fried green tomatoes, cabbage and bacon, fried pork chops, red beans and rice, ham salad, biscuits, barbecued pigs feet, turkey wings and gravy, boiled string beans with ham, country fried okra, candied yams, butter beans with hambones and okra, glazed smoked ham, steamed cabbage with butter, black eyed peas with or without ham, southern spare ribs, short ribs in gravy, salt pork, and fried chicken.
Nevertheless, “soul food” is a double-edged sword in that it is delicious but can kill. The lard, salt pork, or fat back are extremely bad for the health of Black people -- and particularly those filled with bottled-up rage emotions. As a result, Black people are more prone to heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, and kidney disease.
Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D
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