The
great debate over Indian fry bread
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0820frybread20-ON.html
Aug.
20, 2005 09:45 PM
Associated
Press
SELLS-
When you first see it, plopped down on a paper plate in
all its caloric bliss, the round, doughy treat is so appealing,
so alluring it's hard to believe this wondrous sight can
cause anything but delight.
But
fry bread, that fluffy concoction American Indian women
lovingly make in their kitchens and people line up for at
powwows and western fairs, has come under attack as a hazard
to health.
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Suzan Shown Harjo, a Cheyenne and Muscogee Indian, wasn't
trying to cause a debate. She just was exhausted with yet
another one of her relatives dying of diabetes. She zoned
in on fry bread as a culprit and whipped out a January column
for Indian Country Today declaring it junk food that leads
to fat Indians.
She
made a New Year's resolution to abstain from fry bread.
Then she did something some Indians consider insane: She
asked them to give it up, too.
Word
spread through Indian Country. Outrage! The nerve of Harjo!
What started as a woman's disdain for the yummy delicacy
suddenly became the great fry bread debate. Ask any Indian
about it and you'll either be greeted with rolled eyes -
or sparkling, hungry eyes.
After
all, fry bread is synonymous with Indian culture. South
Dakota has just made it the official state bread. And many
Indians don't want anyone coming between them and their
hot, greasy skillets.
"It's
like giving up turkey at Thanksgiving," said Gayle
Weigle, an Anishinabe Indian who runs a Web site celebrating
fry bread stories and recipes. "It is a tradition."
---
Indian
women like Margarita Gonzalez on the Tohono O'odham reservation
here rise before dawn to start making fry bread. Gonzalez
makes four dozen each morning and makes her living selling
them in an empty lot in Sells.
"It's
like a craving you get for it, the aroma of it. You have
to try to keep yourself from it," she said, taking
a break from serving the lunch crowd.
To
say fry bread is tasty isn't doing it justice. It's scrumptious,
sweet, and puts a crazy spell on anyone who craves it.
But
it's loaded with pesky calories - at least 700 for one paper-plate
size piece - plus a whopping 27 grams of fat, according
to a nutritional analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"Those
things are awesome," tribal police officer Mario Saraficio
said, getting excited at the thought. "It's bad, but
it's good. If the doctor told me I had to give it up, I'd
say probably not."
Fry
bread came to be by necessity. When the government moved
Indians off their land and onto reservations in the 1800s,
they were kept from their traditional foods such as elk,
corn, deer and rabbit. In their place were rations of flour,
salt and lard, and Indian women did what they could with
it, creating the wonderful fry bread that would become part
of their culture.
Ingredients
vary today, but the main ones are still white flour, salt,
sugar and lard. Some call it a popover, and options are
endless for how to eat it. There's the Indian taco, fry
bread with red chili and beans, or the extra sweet version
with powdered sugar or honey on top.
In
Phoenix, there is the popular Fry Bread House restaurant,
where you can get fry bread pretty much anyway you want.
The most sinful? Fry bread topped with gooey chocolate syrup
and oozing with butter.
Sure,
folks there talked about the fry bread flap, but it didn't
seem to make much difference.
"They're
still in line," said restaurant owner Cecelia Miller.
Fry
bread is so embedded in the culture many Indians can't imagine
going without. T-shirts declare "Fry Bread Power Forever!"
or "FBI - Fry Bread Inspector." There's an entire
Web site dedicated to warm, fuzzy memories about fry bread.
So
Harjo's column was the equivalent of taking spray paint
to sacred petroglyphs.
Harjo,
who heads the Morning Star Institute, an Indian rights group,
compared fry bread to a "lead Frisbee" and even
likened it to "hard-core porn. No redeeming qualities."
"It's
the connecting dot between healthy children and obesity,
hypertension, diabetes, dialysis, blindness, amputations
and slow death," Harjo wrote, deeming it, quite simply,
"Rotten stuff."
On
the national radio show Native America Calling, the fry
bread furor was one of the most popular topics this year.
One man boasted that he downed 12 pieces in one sitting.
Another man said he was desperate for fry bread and couldn't
find any.
"Anytime
you say fry bread, people smile. Except Suzan Harjo,"
Weigle said. "It's almost sacred. It just makes you
happy."
Weigle
originally started her Web site www.frybreadlove.org to
talk about a benefit concert for the homeless children she
worked with in Minneapolis. Why that name? To her, fry bread
means comfort. Soon, she was posting fry bread recipes,
pictures and heartwarming stories. She's thinking now of
a recipe book.
---
Not
every case of obesity and diabetes among Indians can be
blamed solely on fry bread, of course. But Harjo has a point.
Among
Indians, the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes - the most common
form - is more than double what it is in the general population.
Fueled by obesity, poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle,
Type 2 diabetes is occurring a full decade sooner in Indians,
when people are between 20 and 29 years old.
Many
believe the diabetes rate began to skyrocket when Indians
stopped living off the land and began using government rations.
For decades, researchers with the National Institutes of
Health have been studying the Pima Indians in Arizona, who
have the highest incidence of diabetes in the world, to
determine if there is a genetic reason they are more susceptible
to the disease.
Here
on the Tohono O'odham reservation near Tucson, more than
half the 14,000 residents have diabetes. A $4 million dialysis
center is under construction, necessary to serve all the
people who have developed kidney disease from diabetes.
At
the Sells hospital, it's unusual for doctors to see a tribal
member who doesn't have diabetes. It is so prevalent, doctors
and nutritionists struggle to convince Indians they can
help prevent it.
The
attitude is, "I'm going to get it anyway," Dr.
Paul Weintraub said. "And to some extent, it's true.
They will get it."
Gloria
Maldonado has lived with diabetes for 22 years. Her mother
had it, so does her brother and her 24-year-old daughter.
"I
figured sooner or later I would get it," she said as
Weintraub examined her.
Fry
bread didn't get Maldonado, 53, in this situation by itself,
of course. She struggles to give up junk food and doesn't
exercise. But she has switched from cooking fry bread in
lard to dipping it in oil.
"It
isn't the culprit that has made Indian people heavy,"
said Tammy L. Brown, nutrition consultant with Indian Health
Service's diabetes division. "It's the fast foods,
the sugary drinks. It's the overall diet."
But,
if fry bread gets Indians talking about health, then that's
fine by Brown and Harjo.
"Just
because it was food that was forced on us doesn't mean we
have to keep embracing it," Harjo said.
For
a long time, Indians have made fun of commodities and even
refer to an overweight person as having a "commod bod."
Jokes are tossed around that fry bread has killed more Indians
than the federal government.
But
artist Steven Deo, a Creek and Euchee Indian, said laughing
is a way Indians have dealt with obesity and diabetes.
"At
some point, we have to confront that," he said. "We
have to prepare the next generation to come out of that
poverty, to strive for bigger and better things."
Deo
created a series of public service announcement posters,
and debuted his first one - a picture of a big, tan piece
of fry bread with the words: "Frybread Kills"
- at a show in New Mexico last year.
"It
has stirred some controversy," Deo said. "But
at least we're talking about it now."
---
It's
mid-day at the Health O'odham Promotion Program, or the
HOPP, and the step class is in full, sweaty swing. Health
lessons are postered around the gym, reminding Indians to
get their five fruits and vegetables a day and that white
bread and rice convert quickly to sugar. Music is blaring,
the treadmills are filling up and Mashone Antone, 36, is
on her second trip to the community gym today.
Last
October she took a hard look at her life: She was overweight
and so were two of her three children. They stayed in the
house a lot, ate fast food, indulged in fry bread and barely
thought about health.
But
Antone, a juvenile probation officer, wanted to change that,
for her children and for herself.
Now
she's up every day at 5 a.m. for a two-mile walk, then hits
the HOPP before work and again after work. She's shed 30
pounds and wants to lose 50 more. Her daughter often joins
her at the gym, and now the family takes walks and plays
basketball.
Soda
is out, fruits and vegetables are in, and fry bread is now
only a rare treat.
"When
I think about it, that was my downfall," Antone said.
"I don't miss it."
Harjo
would be proud.
But
getting someone with Antone's enthusiasm is a challenge
for the gym's staff. Nutritionists estimate 80 percent of
the Tohono O'odham people are obese. They hold a weight
loss challenge, fun runs, offer nutrition counseling, even
teach people how to shop for healthy food and host a camp
for children at risk for obesity and diabetes.
"I
do get a lot of resistance from people who say they want
to change their eating habits, but don't want to change
the way they cook," said dietitian Dolores Galaz.
Another
attitude Galaz encounters: Indians not wanting to be thin,
for fear they will be the odd one out in their overweight
families.
In
her column, Harjo had some parting advice: "The next
time you find yourself swallowing some leftover news du
jour or get that suicidal urge for fry bread, just slather
lard all over the magazine or television listing and apply
it directly to your midriff and backside. That way, you
can have the consequence of the rotten stuff, without having
to actually digest it."
The
gym staff isn't as harsh; they're just hoping to change
eating habits little by little. All the better if the fry
bread controversy jump-starts that.
"People
want to change because they see what's happening to their
elders and their parents. I just think they haven't known
how to go about changing," Galaz said.
That
means losing the lard and white flour in fry bread and trying
wheat flour and canola oil, (bea note: NO NO NO--not canola
oil !!!!) something tribal Chairwoman Vivian Juan-Saunders
has started doing.
"I
like to eat fry bread, but instead of eating the whole pie,
I eat half," she said.
