How Cultural Erasure Sneaks Onto the Plate
And, how we can start reclaiming the dishes we were once taught to fear.
My grandma Lula was hands down the best cook in the family. I remember countless family meals devouring delectable dishes, such as baked mac and cheese, fried chicken, collard greens, and sweet potato pie. Those foods were staples in my childhood, but as my grandparents got sicker, they soon became foods that were no longer “healthy” for us to eat.
Slowly but surely, foods from other cultures replaced our cultural staples. But at the time, I didn’t see what was happening as “cultural erasure,” but just my family’s goal to eat “healthier” so that we could live longer without illness.
When I obtained my nutrition certification in 2016, I was convinced that the Mediterranean diet was the gold standard. The cultural staples I had grown up eating were foods I needed to avoid at all costs to guarantee my health, at least, that's what I tried to tell myself.
But a part of me felt something wasn’t sitting quite right. It just didn’t seem to make sense to me that:
🍽 Brown rice should replace our white rice
🥬 Kale should replace our collard greens
🌱 Quinoa should replace our cornmeal
It wasn’t until I got diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and Sjögren’s syndrome in 2019 that I understood exactly why I wasn’t fully committed to this “clean eating” lifestyle.
👉🏽 The lie I once believed was that my grandparents’ food was “unhealthy” and that was the only reason they were sick.
Obtaining my Master of Arts (MA) in Sustainable International Development taught me about the social determinants of health. I realized that various factors contribute to adverse health outcomes, from healthcare quality to the neighborhoods where we live.
I can credit my MA for a few things, but I have taken the value it placed on culturally relevant teaching into the health space. When clinicians, coaches, and educators provide health education through a lens of culturally relevant teaching, they are recognizing the unique lived experiences that their patients, clients, and students face.
Even though my grandparents’ doctors did their best, they didn’t provide them with culturally relevant teaching that gave them nutritional recommendations that would work for their dietary preferences or lifestyle. They encouraged them to make nutritional changes without considering the unique barriers they needed to overcome to make them sustainable.
So, when my grandparents’ health didn’t improve they falsely assumed it was because they didn’t care about their health. Instead, the nutritional recommendations they were being given weren’t inclusive of their lived experience.
However, the mistakes my grandparents’ doctors made decades ago do not need to be the mistakes we continue to make today.
That’s why I created this free masterclass:
I created How to Make Your Nutrition Advice More Inclusive in Just 60 Minutes (Without Reinventing Your Whole Approach) because I understand clinicians, coaches, and educators' struggles when making nutritional recommendations.
As an RA and Sjögren’s patient, I get that there are certain foods my doctors want me to eat, while there are others they believe I should avoid.
As someone who joined the field as a health coach, I know that encouraging clients to make dietary changes is both an art and a science.
As a health writer, I’ve seen that low health literacy makes it difficult for the average consumer to know what and whom to believe.
In other words, overcoming the unique obstacles that clinicians, coaches, and educators face often requires them to:
✔️ Recognize hidden biases in mainstream nutrition guidance
✔️ Understand why “health” advice can still cause harm
✔️ Offer care that respects, not erases, cultural identity
Therefore, I’m hosting a FREE masterclass on Monday, June 9th, at noon EDT.
📝 You can save your seat today here: https://www.enhanceblackwomenshealth.com/masterclass
I look forward to sharing more about the importance of inclusive nutrition in the coming weeks and explaining why it starts with what we’ve been taught and what we’re willing to unlearn.
Talk soon,
Tomesha
P.S. Plus, when you show up live, you’ll get a free 🎁 gift! My 5 Phrases to Replace in Your Nutrition Advice Today is a quick-reference guide that gives practical swaps to make your language more inclusive and trust-building.