293: How Food Defines Us: A Dialogue with Author Psyche A. Williams-Forson

Tracy Stuckrath [00:00:06]:
Hey, everybody. I'm excited to be here with this amazing woman that is doctor Psyche Williams Forsen, who is a professor and chair of American studies at the University of Maryland, College Park and a leading scholar in black food studies. She's the award winning author of Eating While Black, Food Shaming and Race in America, and Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs, Black Women, Food and Power.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:00:32]:
Hello. Hello. And thank you for having me.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:00:36]:
You're welcome. And I'll tell everybody, I reached out to you, what, like a year ago maybe?

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:00:41]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:00:42]:
Yeah. Because I was listening to you being interviewed on Food Talk or Food Tank's podcast episode. And again, I was listening to you in the car like I was telling you before we started. And I'm like, oh my gosh. I have to talk to and. And I'm like, writing all these notes down, listening to you,

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:00:57]:
and it's Well, I'm glad we got it to work.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:00:59]:
Me too. Me too. So I am I let's just start off. What do you besides starting with the book, and actually, let's put this title up here, How food defines as a dialogue with you, really around how food does define us. And and I in the book or list reading the book, listening to the book, there's a lot of things that food does. It's very complicated.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:01:26]:
Yeah. It is. It is complicated. Catering you explain that? Yeah. Well, most people tend to think that food is is just about eating. Right? But it's not. I mean, from everything from nutrients, are you getting the right nutrients to foods are you choosing or do you have access to? What foods do you like? What how do various foods represent your upbringing or your evolution? Right? What foods do you eat in the workplace? What foods do you eat at home? What foods might you eat at a guest home? So there are all these different layers that involve, our understanding of food. And then don't forget the number of different questions and decisions we go through on a day to day basis, right, about and around food.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:02:19]:
So, yeah, it can be a little messy. Mhmm.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:02:22]:
Yeah. Well and how did you I mean, it in the book, there's so much talk about culture and media and and how that impacts all of us. But especially in for the perspective of the book, Eating While Black, Can you explain how why this cook was so important to share? And it did and I'll provide everybody a link to it as well.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:02:45]:
Okay. Thank you. So Eating While Black came about as a result of my first book, Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs Mhmm. Black Women, Food, and Power. That was my PhD thesis. Mhmm. And I started out researching the stereotype of black people and chicken because in 1999, I heard a commercial for KFC. And the commercial, it turns out, was a part of the NCAA for that year.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:03:25]:
Well, it it was a animated colonel with a voice kosher that sounded like a a black man was advertising chicken, and it sounded very different from what we tended to know as the colonel. Right. So that happened. The other thing is tiger Tiger Woods won the the masters for the first time. So a lot of things were happening at that time, and the comment was made after Tiger Woods won the masters about not choosing chicken or collard greens or whatever the hell those people eat. Right? Fuzzy Zeller said that. So all these things were happening, and I was like, oh, we're here at the dawn of the twenty first century. Are black people still being associated with chicken, stereotypically? So I started out trying to understand that phenomenon, which very much involved changing technologies and media at the dawn of the 20 fir of the twentieth century.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:04:16]:
Greeting cards, sheet music, needs, all of this stuff had these images of black men in particular with chicken. So that's how I I, started my study of black people and and food more formally. I had been doing this work for about ten years prior while I was in grad school. Well, after the book was published and I was circling around and giving talks and catering, I we started to see a major shift in society. Dollar Tree started to get refrigeration. Walmart started selling food. Target started selling food. Lots of people started selling food.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:04:59]:
And more and more people were returning to gardening. And so what was happening was people would come up to me and say things like, well, I just don't know why people don't wanna grow their own food. And so there was this sort of moral imperative around the need to grow food. And if you didn't grow food, you essentially were not a good person on this earth. So that's what really started this, the narrative, right, of eating while black and food shaming. Because most often those comments were directed toward African American people or black people. You have to grow. Black people's diets are horrible and so forth and so on.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:05:41]:
So I just saw it on these different levels and felt like something had to be said about the ways in which the complicated ways in which we see food as a weapon Mhmm. Right, to shame people. Mhmm. Whether it's a matter of obesity to disliking what someone else eats or yucking someone else's yum Mhmm. Or saying, oh my god. I can't believe you don't you you buy food from this place, that place, and the other. Mhmm. We very seldom are we deliberate in in making these comments, but I wanted folks to just be aware of the damage that it can do because as as I started, most people's food cultures, everybody's food cultures derives from some element of their of their past, whether it's related to food, family, or region, or what have you.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:06:37]:
And and and people shouldn't have their food culture shamed at all.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:06:42]:
No. And I when I was telling my mom, I I got home yesterday from driving and I was listening to the book, and and I I thought about how I make fun of my mom for putting mayonnaise on hamburgers. And I was telling her I was listening to her. She's like, you're shit you are shaming me because but we think about because it's not what I like that it's not good.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:07:07]:
Mhmm. Mhmm. No. It is. Some people eat pickle sandwiches or tomato sandwiches or something like that. Well, if you grew up in the South where especially at a particular time, you grew your own tomatoes or whatever, you had farm fresh tomatoes, that's a great sandwich. Right? Salt and pepper, sliced tomatoes on bread with mayo. Some people eat their fries with mayo.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:07:30]:
It's not what I like, and sometimes our faces give it away because we're like, oh my god. I've but but it it can come down to something as simple as peanut butter and jelly. Well, what kind of jelly do you like? I like grape, but I like strawberry. Oh my god. How do you so I think it's just a matter of communication and just being aware of when we are shaming. It could be at that level to the level of policy, quite frankly. Right.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:07:58]:
Well and it was well okay. So yeah. Go to politics. I was actually looking up the because you and Tambor Ray Stevenson were talking about policy in the DC area and your your interview at politic.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:08:13]:
Politics and pros.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:08:14]:
Politics and pros. Thank you. I wanna make sure I got it right. And the local food policy councils. And so I was looking up where there was one in North Carolina, like, to see what how I could potentially find out what's going on here. But policies do make a lot, and I spent twenty two years in Atlanta in Southwest at Downtown Atlanta.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:08:35]:
Okay.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:08:35]:
And so I being a person in that neighborhood, policies were kind of avoided in that neighborhood.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:08:43]:
Right. Right. Well, let me give you an example. I, just taught this article again this year. Several years ago, as gentrification really started to ramp up in the DC area and more and more late twenty, early thirties to forties, white couples started to move into the city. An article appeared in the local paper about the presence of chicken bones littering various parts of the city. Mhmm. And community groups began to get together and really wanted to ban, or get close the number of eateries that populate urban areas like Washington DC

Tracy Stuckrath [00:09:29]:
Mhmm.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:09:29]:
Which are usually small hole in the wall, small business, mom and pop, small business owner, Asian outlets, right, or or otherwise. Sometimes it's just a 07:11 or what have you. Well, they they decided these these residents decided they wanted to protest and and pretty much said without saying, it's because black folks are eating chicken and they're just discarding their chicken bones. Well, come to find out, many folks are actually discarding their chicken bones, but, you know, they also have a rodent problem in DC. And squirrels. And squirrels were moving these bones from places to places. Well, had that policy gone into effect or or any policy similar to it, it could have really affected the livelihood of a lot of entrepreneurs. Right? And it becomes fundamentally associated and then imbricated in issues of race, of class, of region, of location.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:10:38]:
So food just becomes the focus, but there are all these other tentacles that stretch out from food that directly affect the policy or or laws that could be passed. Right? And and and a more a different kind of example that I write about in meetings while black had to do with farmers markets and who gets to vend at a farmers market. How do you even how do you even get a premium space at these markets? Right? So there's a lot of a lot of issues. There are a lot of issues that are tied to food and food spaces that the average person tends to just not see because you're not thinking along those lines. Right.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:11:21]:
Well and just being in Southwest Atlanta and and just talking about the farmers market, it reminds me of I think it's the community farmers markets of Atlanta. They were trying to get in put that access to a farmer's market in Southwest Atlanta. Well, they ended up putting it at a mar partnering partnering with MARTA and putting some different MARTA stations around the city in some of those areas. But it also makes me think too is, like, I worked at a catering class school there, and we went to Decatur to teach the school cafeteria woman how to make hummus and how to make other food because it wasn't something that they will because they were all buying it from a commissary and just heating it up. And trying to

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:12:09]:
get more local food there, but just listening to your book,

Tracy Stuckrath [00:12:14]:
it it's like trying to put this this hummus in into the sh into the chef's hands of a cafeteria worker who's probably never even heard of what hummus is.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:12:24]:
Or chickpeas. Right? Right. Or or any of that. Well, I'm always curious and perplexed by who makes these decisions. Right? Mhmm. Because, again, food is very personal. Food is very particular to individuals and groups. For example, you have a number of immigrant communities, obviously, in The United States, a very hot and vexed issue.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:12:50]:
But when I think about, our area, for example, the DC, Washington Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia area, those spaces become very much hubs for moving peoples, but also they become hubs for community and belonging. Mhmm. Right? And so who's making this decision about what should be fed in schools? Because you've got a hodgepodge of folks there. Right? Mhmm. And you've got some people who grew up on canned food. You have some people who grew up on maybe largely raw and fresh foods. You have other people whose taste palates are more and, others for whom rice is a steak. I mean, it it it's such a vast array.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:13:36]:
Right? And so what we try to do, because we're trying to feed people very quickly during the school day, is we normalize it. We're just gonna feed everybody pizza and salad or burgers and fries or or whatever the case may be. Nothing necessarily wrong with that. But when you're asking people to do make something like hummus, which has, very particular types of origins, whose hummus are we talking about? Right? And asking a person for whom hummus is is a part of their is a part of their diet to eat something that is grainy or gritty or has a different texture than they're used to. All of those kinds of things can really end up being as less productive than what we hope they would be. Mhmm. Right? Just going back to this notion of of choosing these kinds of of food, every February, we hear that some food company has created or, unintentionally made a faux pas by serving watermelon or collard greens or chicken or having some kind of meal that they think really represents celiac dietary ma. And it's interesting because black people do eat chicken and watermelon and black eyed peas and halal, But we also eat kosher, and we eat pizza, and

Tracy Stuckrath [00:14:59]:
we eat Chinese food, and we

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:15:00]:
eat, you know, rice and sauces and broccoli and spinach. I mean, so when you have those kinds of efforts taking place, especially in the k 12, it's unfortunate that everything has in our society today has collapsed around this notion of woke and DEI because those are perfect teachable moments to help students to see about and, a variation of food. Mhmm. Two, about how culture affects our everyday lives. Three, about taste. Because we all develop a palette. And so we miss very clear opportunities to be able to talk about history and, and economics and politics, because we are very short sighted in our understanding of how culture works in the world and the ways in which material objects function in our everyday lives.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:15:58]:
Well and that, I think, brings me in my mind to the story of the young girl from DC who was, I don't remember

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:16:05]:
her. Oh, in the book? Latricia? Yeah. Latricia. Yeah. Yeah.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:16:10]:
Mhmm. And all of the questions that you came up with after reading the article Mhmm. And looking at the photo essay. Right? Right. You know, like, well, do we know what her actual family situation is? She lives under godmother slash aunt. Why does she want to lose weight? Right?

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:16:29]:
Right. Right.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:16:31]:
And what's pushing her to do that? Right? Right. Right.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:16:34]:
Yeah. I vegan, so we're talking about the expose that the Washington Post had did many years ago called young lives at risk, and they were talking about obesity among young people in the DMV, which this is not to say those issues are not a problem. Where I took, issue with the Washington Post is the way in which they reduced this young woman's life, and it wasn't just her. And and and the young people were of all races, of all cultural backgrounds and ethnicities, various ages. But this particular story was very compelling for me because at the time, I believe, my daughter was around her age and had experienced some things in school and then subjected to some some comments that were just inappropriate and demoralizing, right, from from her gym teacher. And and so I was very struck by this this story. And and what I ended up as I read through her narrative in the post, and then I saw the photo array that accompanied it. She was 12 years old.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:17:45]:
She was on the heavier side. She was tall and dark skinned. And the article reinforced over and over and over and over in in multiple captions that she was teased and believed by the other kids. That was never addressed and unpacked, which is itself, it's and an issue of bullying, right, in schools. But but what ended up happening was the article pretty much put Latricia's weight and all of her issues around her weight on her. And it was She's 12. She's 12. Right? And so it was it was dietary about how she doesn't lose weight because she doesn't want to eat healthy and all of this.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:18:26]:
So there was no mention made of the fact that this young lady was was living with a caretaker. Right? And she was and so the part of what you're asking about are these questions that I'm asking, like, why is she living with a caretaker? And how long has she lived there? And is she in an unfamiliar area of of Washington And? There are pictures that show her walking but there was no mention made. Hey beverage walking is a form of exercise. Right? Mhmm. What what the article did point out was that she lives in dietary that is unsafe and so forth. And so it the and, again, in which the article was written very much puts the emphasis on this young girl not being responsible for her health, and then she becomes a stand in for the entire race on some level depending upon who's reading the article. Mhmm. And looking at where she was living, there was this angled shot that showed a liquor store and a Popeye's.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:19:33]:
Well, if we had panned out, would we have seen other stores as well? So, part of what I talk about in that piece is just the ways in which, again, media helps to foster particular types of narratives around black people in particular in my inter in my area of interest. Black people in food. And these are issues that follow us regardless of who we are because society doesn't differentiate, right, between us regarding class or location or anything else.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:20:08]:
Well, and I which brings me back to some other stories that you were sharing too about well, one was the school teacher who took the three boys to or that actually, that was from a television show.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:20:19]:
Well, that was from The Wire. Yeah. The Wire. Yeah. And, though. Right? It happens. I mean, I used it because I used it because it happens. Mhmm.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:20:28]:
We miss the nuances of not only of class, but of age. Again, going back to Latricia, she's 12 years old.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:20:37]:
Right. She's not buying the food. Her stuff.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:20:39]:
Not buying the food, but also what what was not pointed out is her caretaker was teaching her how to cook, and that particular meal is one that was reserved for Easter and for Sundays. Mhmm. It wasn't as if she eats this way on a regular basis. On a regular basis, she might eat oatmeal every morning or fresh fruit or what have you, but there was no mention of anything else that she ate. It just showed us this one meal, and it also showed us another picture of her picking raw broccoli out of a salad. Well, I I can show you tons of adults who don't wanna eat raw brack broccoli in their halal. Steamed maybe, but not necessarily raw. So, again, this goes back to yucking people's yum, and it goes back to taking a morsel of what we see, a smidgen of what we see, and making a a molehill out of it, which results in in shaming people.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:21:37]:
When Katrina happened, and I talk about this in the book as well, when Katrina happened, people were forcibly displaced nor when this past hurricane and. Right? People were forcibly displaced. One of the things that helps people signify home and remember home is food. So, I mean, I don't know about you, but after traveling for about two or three days, I'm ready to come home because I'm tired of eating food on the road. Right. So being displaced and having to be away from foodstuffs that's familiar is even more comforting and disquieting. Right. And it's even more the case when you're from a completely different religious, and you may, for example, eat foods that are reflective of the waterways that are close to you or the land that is close to you.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:22:33]:
Grass fed beef or or beef that is or cheese that is freshly made does not taste like cheese that's been sitting on the shelves of Food Lion or Wegmans or or Aldi or what have you. Right? And so we have to give room in place for people to live their food lives in ways that best represent them.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:22:56]:
So exactly. Now I there's one thing that you there's a couple of ways that I see this or the ways that you said this that I see too is, like, one, you need to be able to read the room. Right? And you share a bunch of different in stories about you going to different food functions events. And and then I wanna tie it back to meeting events and meetings as well just because we're talking about we're on a podcast called catering and meeting. Reading that room, but also having reading the room and having empathy Mhmm. Your guests. Mhmm. How do we as adults who are planning events, how do we do that? Yeah.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:23:37]:
Especially when we're maybe taking them out of their normal religious, like you're from South Southern County, you're from DC, and we're having a meeting in Southwest Texas. Right? Mhmm. Different scenarios. How do we do that? Right. I mean,

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:23:53]:
it would be, to my way of thinking, the way that we do anything else. And and we live in a very interesting time because we have to ask a lot more questions about people's food choices and and so forth now than we did even twenty years ago. Are there food allergies? Are there foods you don't eat? So forth and so on. I've been in a number of different events where I felt like the mark has been missed. I was at an event, couple of years ago where it was a fabulous event. A number of various chefs were spotlighted. The food was was awesome. But the main dish was something that most people don't eat necessarily.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:24:37]:
I've I've had this experience even at the Southern Foodways Alliance, right, where I've had to say, I I have learned to say, what is the theme of the year and then what is the primary food that's going to be served? Because I don't eat pork. And so when I know when I'm going to the South, I need to always ask that question. Right? Because pork is still everywhere. Yeah. It tends to be heavy in rotation, and that's fine. I just need to know ahead of time so I can plan something different. If I'm going to New England, I have an expectation on some level that maybe I will be able to eat from the waterways. Again, crab, lobster, what have you.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:25:20]:
But for people food whom that may not and if you have a lot of people coming in, maybe you should ask people, do folks have a shellfish allergy or what have and? But then there are also things like mushrooms that people don't eat and other foods. And so I think how we get to that, especially in workplace eating, is to ask the question. What are folks what do people like and don't like? Where we run into the problem is when we make assumptions based on our food habits, our personal food habits, and we assume that that's gonna work for everyone. Right? I tell this story, and I've told it in a couple practices about a workplace eating situation. Many years ago when I was first starting my career, I was on a diversity committee along with another colleague, and we had gone to these meetings throughout the semester to make recommendations and what have you. Well, when the final report came out, it turns out none of our suggestions were really taken. So we were like, okay. And this was in the late eighties.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:26:23]:
And so shortly after the meeting, group disbanded, we received messages from one of the higher ups saying, hey. I'm having a function. You should come, which we understood that to not be an invitation, but a request for our presence. Right? Mhmm. So typical Southerner that I am, I was like, oh, okay. Well, you know, what should I bring? I wanna contribute. No. No.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:26:49]:
Just come. Just you don't have to bring anything. Well, when we got there, long and short of it, it was that the host had made tofu kebabs.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:27:01]:
Not my choice.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:27:03]:
Wasn't our choice either. And one of my colleagues turned to me and said, what is this? And I said, in a word, it's power. This person had our very existence in the palms of their hands because they were ultimately our supervisor. We had been asked to serve on a committee. We our ideas were not taken. We voiced our opposition about that. Then we were we were told we needed to be at this event, but don't bring meetings, And there was nothing there that we could eat. And I think we spent probably the better part of an hour nibbling on chips and drinking catering, soda, what have you.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:27:43]:
And that's significant because unlike today where you can get all kinds of tasty dishes with tofu back then, not everyone was really eating tofu. Right? It was Mhmm. It was sort of and so the these kebabs were made without seasoning. They would just put on a skewer and put on the grill. And so you had all these plates of floating soybean curd sitting around. And so that's the and of thing that I'm talking about. The only person who was there who was a vegetarian was the host. Wow.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:28:15]:
Yeah. So what are the rest of us supposed to do?

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:28:17]:
You don't even have a and? So I look at situations like that around workplace and the ways in which so this circles back to how we started. The ways in which we make food decisions really can, again, speak to how we feel about our colleagues. Right? It can speak to workplace culture. You go out and you get food for everyone who's there, and you don't ask me if I want meetings, and then you come back and you're doling out food. How am I supposed to feel about that? Mhmm. And yet it happens more often than we would like to believe.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:28:53]:
Oh, I think every day. Yeah.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:28:55]:
Absolutely beverage day. Or we order up a whole bunch of things and you've got a nice group of folks, one or two, events just one, who are gluten free, and you have nothing that they can consume. These are real life and death issues for some people. Right? Right. Yeah. So I think when we talk about eating in a meeting or at a meetings, that the host of that event has has a lot more that they have to contend with than just what's the meeting agenda, especially if food is going to be present.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:29:29]:
Somebody just piped in here. Joan just said, in that example, that decision was not inclusive.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:29:35]:
Yeah. It wasn't inclusive. It was also very selfish, quite frankly, because as I said, this was the eighties. And I remember when we heard, oh, it was almost like, yeah, it was also vegetarian. Unlike today where that's, like, no big deal. I mean, events, twenty five years ago, you were almost just slightly out of the counterculture of of a hippie movement where you have had more vegetarian, and you're at a era where, you know, meat was king. Where's the beef? Right? That's what Burger King was saying in the eighties. Right? And so there wasn't even a salad.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:30:11]:
It was just raw tofu, essentially. And, again, just too few people were even eating tofu. And so why would you do that? Now here's the other thing to think about. It wasn't inclusive, but it also may not have been intentional. Okay. I I would I would venture to say it was, but let's just say for the sake of argument that it wasn't. If it's case, that was just a person who did not have really good hosting skills and probably should not have been hosting a a dinner party, because literally, I think no one was able to eat. Wow.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:30:48]:
Yeah. And just kind of going back and then kind of relating that to your story of your friend who invited you all over and she had made or she had found that sausage type. Oh, okay. And your, your and friend said it tasted like kielbasa. But how thinking through that and, I had the connection into my brain just like ten seconds ago.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:31:13]:
Well, I I mean, I'll make the connection as well.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:31:17]:
My friend was very excited for us to come kosher,

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:31:20]:
and she wanted us to taste this sausage that is heavily consumed in in New Orleans. And her dad had sent sent some of the sausage up and everything. Well, I think she forgot that two of the four of us, herself included, do not eat pork.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:31:40]:
She doesn't eat pork either?

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:31:42]:
No. My other girlfriend Oh, okay. Pork. She does. The host does, but we didn't. Okay. And I think she forgot we didn't eat pork. Mhmm.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:31:51]:
Right? And so there was no harm and no foul there. She was excited about sharing a part of her culture with us. Mhmm. And so one of the things I do when I go someplace and someone's serving something like sausage immediately, I'll say, is it turkey? And also, is the casing turkey? And, of course, she said it wasn't. And I said, oh, yeah. We I I can't eat that. So the one other person in our group who could eat who did eat pork and does eat pork said, yeah. I'll go ahead and try it.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:32:22]:
And they did, and they and we said we were all waiting to hear, and they were like, it tastes like kielbasa. So there are a lot of things going on in that scenario. And I and I have since had a conversation with my girlfriend and and allergies because we started laughing about it. And and I she was very hurt because this was this was something she was planning for us, and and she did it, out of out of the kindness and and out of being a friend. And so there's that sort of scenario, right, where I'm doing this as a kind gesture. But, again, because people eat different things, you have to ask what for so that you can avoid these kinds of uncomfortable situations because it would have been very different if we weren't all really good friends.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:33:10]:
Right. Right. Well yeah. Exactly. Because what if it was a business meetings, right, or a new client? Yeah.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:33:18]:
A new client and Yeah. You've ordered something, and they're like, well, I'm a vegetarian and I'm a vegan or I don't eat this. I don't eat tuna. I don't eat, you know, turkey or or what have you. So in in those kinds of scenarios, what I tend to do, because I work in an academic setting and we have a lot of different events. And and right now, I'm working with a leadership group, and so we have events once a month. And so I say to the person who does all of our food planning, we need an array. We need things with bread, without bread.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:33:54]:
We need vegetarian. If it's vegan, get a couple of those options, or just get lots of vegetables. That's another way you can do it. And that way you can avoid people saying I didn't have anything to eat because you just don't know. Right. So you you offer an array of of options that people can take advantage of.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:34:17]:
It reminds me of a conversation I had with a local charity here in New Bern, and they did weekly boxes for people to come home, kind of like a CSA box, but it was a I'm gonna say if they they provide food daily or weekly, and they were realizing that some people in the community who don't eat pork were throwing that away. So they were getting that box automatically, and they were just putting everything in that they got. And then they were realizing that a lot of that food was being thrown away or wasted because they weren't thinking about the cultural relate and and how those people leave. So they were looking at how they could actually allow them to customize that box for themselves.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:34:58]:
Yeah. That's pretty typical, especially a food distribution site.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:35:02]:
Mhmm.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:35:02]:
But you'll have a cadre of folks. If we were to have this conversation on Twitter right now, you'd have a cadre of people who are like, oh, you're poor. Eat what you can get or Mhmm. Or what have you. And and that's just socially, mentally, emotionally not not sound Mhmm. Quite frankly. We had the same experience here at the campus food pantry at the University of Maryland where they found that a lot of the food was being discarded because it just wasn't culturally relevant. But here's the thing that people have to remember.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:35:36]:
Again, food is not just what you see. Part of the reason that people discard is not because they're being ungrateful. They don't know how to cook it. True. They don't know how to prepare it. If you are not from a pasta eating culture, right, and you don't know how to cook it, even though you read the directions, you could overcook it. It could be mushy. It could be out too al dente.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:36:00]:
If you're not from a rice eating culture, your rice can come out mushy or it can come out undercooked and crunchy. Right? And so no matter how people's circumstances are in life, people still have dignity. Right? And we should not be subjecting people to situations or shaming people in situations where they don't know what to do. Very few people know how to cook or eat an artichoke. Right.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:36:30]:
I love them can but I only get them canned.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:36:33]:
Can't get them. Right? Or jarred or what have you. Very few people know how to prepare. A lot of people are afraid of of avocado and don't even realize there are different types of avocado. Is avocado, a butter pear, or is it and so I I I think we put entirely too many restrictions on people's lives. And that's why I say it's always interesting to me who makes these big decisions. Right. Everything from our everything from and I'm gonna say, everything from our reproductive health to our mental health to our food health.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:37:11]:
People should be given the opportunity to to to and the right to make these kinds of decisions for themselves. Again, I might go back to when you change your environment, whether it's a work environment, a worship environment, a school environment, to a real regional state country environment. Mhmm. So much a part of your acclimation and and sitting in and belonging and sense of comfort is tied to what you consume. Mhmm.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:37:44]:
Guy I interviewed from to Toronto area, and he was we were talking about the refugees that were coming into into the area, and he created an environment. And I know there was a bunch of stories about the grandmothers the grandmother figure of the refugees coming across, and they connected through the food. Because that's the they couldn't speak the language, but they could share their dishes with you.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:38:11]:
Sure.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:38:11]:
They could brought community together.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:38:14]:
Absolutely. Cultural food waste con cultural continuity is often transmitted through food. Mhmm. It is transmitted. Yeah. Along with that. I don't care if that's a tea ritual, a coffee ritual, a rice making, or if you're eating injera injera or whatever you're eating. I don't it doesn't really matter.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:38:37]:
The thing that ties you to your sense of home, and I'm not talking about the warm and fuzzies, the thing that ties you to who you are oftentimes is food. Early in my, work career, I would I worked with a young woman. We were both interns in the government. And I noticed that whenever we had lunch, she would immediately take half her food and put it in a storage container, or she would wrap it in saran wrap. Years catering, as I started studying food in earnest well, I was studying food then, but I I noticed it but didn't really understand. I just thought, oh my gosh, here she is again. She's just always wrapping up her food. But over time as we chatted, I realized she comes from a background of being hungry.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:39:32]:
Okay. And so it was imperative for her. She was used to saving a portion of her food. Now a person who does not have that experience with hunger or lack will just see that as an annoying ritual for her. And so they don't necessarily get it and will make all kinds of snarky comments and judgments about about that. And so and and not everybody is gonna say, well, I'm saving this because, I mean, I have anything to eat later. Right.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:40:08]:
Yeah.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:40:09]:
Why would they? Right. So I I just think we have to be a lot more attentive to what we say and how we think about people and and the decisions that they make around food because they tend to be intensely personal.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:40:26]:
Oh, a a %. And I like James Beard's comment that food is universal. It's our, common ground. Right?

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:40:35]:
Mhmm.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:40:35]:
But but we come from a variety of different perspectives of that. And I I think I I ask a question almost in every single one of my presentations is, like, and needs what does food mean to you? And what and then what is food? I'm like, food is a job. It's Mhmm. Religious. It's scarcity. It's, fear. It's a verb.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:40:56]:
It's abundance. Right. I tell this story in in in meetings while black about the ways in which folks are shamed for their overconsumption of of foods and unhealthy eating and so forth. But I can tell you cannot tell you the number of times I've gone to various functions and people are drinking good fine wine to excess Mhmm. And they're eating lots of expensive meats and or or or processed cold cuts or or what have you. But because it's a different meetings, and caviar has a very different or prosciutto has a very different class assigned to it than does baloney and Kool Aid. Those things get parsed out very differently. Mhmm.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:41:48]:
Yeah. And I think we have to be careful again. And you could say, well, one is on a regular basis and the other one is occasionally. Well, do we know that for a fact? Because the way people eat out, sometimes it's also the way they eat at home. Because otherwise, you're not gonna go out and eat something completely new and spend your money unless you have access to means to be able to say, I don't like this. Give me something else. Right. So food is all of those things.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:42:15]:
It's a marker of class. It's a marker of time. Recipes change over time events though the core of the recipe stays the same. I just had this conversation with a reporter earlier this week about mac and cheese. And I'm like, folks are all up in arms about the proper way to make mac and disease, and I'm like, the ingredients may be the same. But the taste may change because Mhmm. Our ingredient tastes change over time. Mhmm.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:42:42]:
Right? Sharp cheddar cheese today is not the sharp cheddar cheese I had growing up as a kid. And I was explaining to her. I said, we used to get our sharp cheddar cheese off a cheese wheel. And she was like, what is that? I mean, so just the fact that you're talking generational differences. Right? Mhmm. That's like a cheese wheel? No. I think a cheese wheel. You know what that is? So but, you know, so again, we we we do a lot, and we take a lot for granted when it comes to food.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:43:10]:
Right? In ways that we have to, and we should be very mindful and we should be very careful because why offend people in our everyday lives? Right?

Tracy Stuckrath [00:43:20]:
Right. Alright. So I wanna go to there was a post in a Facebook group a couple needs ago about a planner who was very, very upset about the number of dietary needs that she had gotten and that she and the chef were just over it. Chef wanted to quit and it was at a hotel. How do we. We need to be asking the question and that we can make sure. And one of my meetings is that make sure that everybody has a seat at the halal. Right.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:43:47]:
With something that's not gonna kill or offend them. Mhmm. Right. I'm like, if, if you don't like mayonnaise, if you're whatever. But how do we change that narrative? I mean, I told her I was I was upset or angry. I put the angry emoji on my comment.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:44:05]:
Mhmm.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:44:07]:
By the way that she was reacting to it, But like, you're inviting these people to your table, to your event. You want them to be there. Why can we not look at it from a holistic perspective? I mean, why is that so hard for all of us? And I'm not saying it's her and that chef in in in particular, but as a whole. And I think you've one of the questions that you asked somewhere in one of the books is, what is it about black people that makes people nervous about what their food is? But plus all cultures, I think food. Is that

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:44:40]:
not right? Yeah. I mean, I think that when you're planning an event and you're inviting people, you you take a particular ownership over it. Right? You want the table to be just so you want the seating to be just right. Right? Let's think in terms of a wedding or a big meeting. Yeah. Mhmm. For a lot of folks, it's tedious to have to reckon with all of these various issues. Right.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:45:11]:
I don't want to have to do a buffet because I want it to be a plate at dinner. Okay. Fair enough. Fine enough. Right? And you're inviting other people. So you're inviting people in. So that means as a host, your graciousness should probably be on display the most.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:45:32]:
Right? Mhmm.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:45:33]:
And so that might mean that you offer options in a way that empower your guests to feel like they are welcome. And so let me give and example. I've gone to weddings and other events where the it's a it's a sit down catered event, and the waiter will come and say, do you want a beef, a chicken, a fish? And so you have that option. Now everyone can afford that option, which is fine. But when it comes to things like sauces and condiments, it's okay to just maybe have a spindle on the table so that people can can can season their food as they would. For some people, they can't even engage conversation if the food is not palatable. I cannot tell you the number of events I have attended where immediately I can just look at it and say, I'm gonna need some salt, some pepper, and maybe some hot pepper, something. I I already know.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:46:34]:
Because otherwise, I I can't because I'm so distracted by the fact that I am not gonna be able to eat this food. And then some folks will say, well, now you're being you're being a bad guest because you're seasoning your food. Why wouldn't you want me to enjoy it? Right. It's not an offense to the chef. The chef is cooking for masses of people, but I should be able to tailor it to to my liking. I literally had a colleague say to me one time, don't embarrass us by asking for salt and pepper. You gotta be kidding me. I don't care who food I don't care if James Beard himself cooked it.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:47:09]:
That's nuts. You want me to be a part of this conversation and for us to have a great time. Well, my great time may involve a douse of Scotch bonnet or jalapeno or whatever the case may be, and yours may not. And so but there's this real need along with food to control people's food dynamics. And I think when we get into the matter of controlling other people's palate and taste and food choices, that's when we really should examine what what's going on with us as an individual. Again, if we look back at the cafeteria situation, it's not possible to appeal to every single child. Your goal is to feed them and move them through, and that's why most of the time school lunches tend to be things that are easily accessible, easily digestible, and just get them out of there. And you get that.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:48:03]:
And so in those cases, food tends to become function, but it's still a part of the larger conversation that we're having. I'll tell this very quick dietary, and I may mention this in the book, but my daughter has told me repeatedly about a time in the cafeteria when she was coming through the school line. She was behind a little girl, and she got the little girl got to the register, and she she didn't have any money on her food card. And rather than the the person who was ringing it up just sort of say, okay. You can go through. They really begin to sort of where you gotta take that back and go get cheese and blah blah. Yeah. Food I mean, no events, no anything.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:48:42]:
And I mean, sometimes there's this intention to inflict harm, sadly, on children. And so my daughter, that morning, her dad had given her a $20 bill, so she just gave the 20 to the to the to the woman. And I feel like there was either the issue of the woman didn't wanna take it or said something like, you're lucky she paid for you or something. Why are we why are we doing this to children? Yeah. But inside of all of us is a little child. Right? I don't wanna be embarrassed in the grocery store because my debit card fails and more than that child wanted to be embarrassed any more than the person who's using their EBT card wants to be embarrassed by the folks at the cash register saying, yeah. You can't buy this. You know that catering to the EBT guideline.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:49:28]:
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe this is my first time using it. Right. Yeah. So it really does come down to, I think, a matter food of who we are as human meetings, quite frankly, Tracy. How do we move about this world? Is our goal to inflict harm? It's the do no harm should not only be for physicians. It should also be for beverage one of us walking through this life. And events something as mundane and beverage as food, which we all engage in, that should be a place of examination where we ask, am I am I being a good person here? Or not even a good person? Am I being a decent human being in the ways in which I'm interacting with other people around something that sust sustains them or even satiates them or just makes them happy?

Tracy Stuckrath [00:50:15]:
Mhmm. Well, so there's this I attended an event last year

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:50:21]:
Mhmm.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:50:22]:
And Temple Grandin was the guest.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:50:25]:
Oh, okay.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:50:26]:
And she was sharing our different, the different psychological the different types of people that there are. There's people that are very focused on the the minute details. There's people who are creative, etcetera. And because of her autism, she eats gluten free. And they had placed on the on the table menu, they said it was different types of pork, which you would not have been able to eat, and biscuits. And you can make your own biscuit. And at the bottom of it, it says gluten free biscuit upon the available upon request.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:51:00]:
And what they did, because I'm

Tracy Stuckrath [00:51:03]:
also gluten free. They gave us was a pathetic looking piece of brown gluten free toast. And on her, during her keynote speech, she's like, this is where the different brains people need to be working together. Because if you're going to say that a gluten free biscuit is available upon request, then you need to be giving me a gluten free biscuit.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:51:28]:
Right. Right.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:51:29]:
Right. And and it's just it's thinking through that and paying attention to those minute details that can make a huge impact.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:51:39]:
Correct. Yeah. No. Absolutely. Years ago, we didn't have these differences in in in the ways in which our bodies receive food or to the same extent as we have now. Mhmm. But our food supply has changed. Our our soils are different.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:51:58]:
Our air is different. Our catering, for all the reasons, we already know. Right? Mhmm. So we do have people for whom literal putting things in their mouth could be a matter of life and death. It should not be that difficult for us to accommodate the array of of people. So this goes back to how we started the conversation about food being complicated. Mhmm. In the mind of whoever was creating that event, if they don't eat what I'm preparing, then they don't eat they did then they go hungry.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:52:34]:
Okay. But is that the message we want to convey as a chef? Is that the message we wanna convey as an event planner? Is that the message we want to convey as a human? Right? I saw something on Twitter a while back, and I remember screenshotting it where a person was at the grocery service, and they held up a bag. They were at Walmart, I think, and they held up a bag of pre boiled eggs, and the eggs were pre boiled in this bag. And someone made the comment, this is just lazy. Why do why are we selling boiled eggs? And so another person responded, tell me that you are not disabled by telling me you're not disabled. Have we thought about the fact that peel it just something as simple as peeling a boiled egg can be challenging for someone who maybe doesn't have the same type of use of their and. In in a anthology that I edited many years ago, Taking Food Public, there was an article in there about a woman who was struck with a severe disability and is now confined to a wheelchair. And she talked about the ways in which she eats before she goes out in public to eat because she does not want to be subjected to the stares that people would give her because of the way in which she may have to eat and the way that her disability limits her dexterity or her ability to eat or use silverware even.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:54:06]:
Right? But because, again, we live in such a a single focus society where everyone's concerned about me, me, me, we forget that there are people in the world who are neurodivergent. There are people who are not able to eat and digest foods the same way. People with allergies. I read the sad story about a young African American woman who was this Disney advocate. Right? Who events influencer. Yeah. So yeah. She was and influencer and, for Disney, and she she ate something that sent her into anaphylactic shock and died.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:54:43]:
That is horrific. How did that happen? If you're inviting a group of influencers somewhere, you have to know their food needs and preferences because it could be a matter of life and death. So this is why I think we have to understand and be careful about food shaming. And and and especially in our workplaces where there are so many already, so many power dynamics at play. Mhmm. Yep. I'll say this in catering, perhaps there's an art great novel by an Asian American author, but there are many others like this where a a young woman talks about being in corporate America. And every day, she's Asian American woman.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:55:26]:
Every day, when her colleagues go out, she goes out with them, and they order these salads and so forth. Mhmm. Excuse me. And so she would do the same thing. She'd get a salad and fiddle with it. And as soon as they go back to the office, she would slip off to McDonald's and go get something to eat because the salad just did not do it for her. She needed something more hard, something with rice and whatnot. But the stories are countless, right, of these kinds of, situations, particularly in work environments where, as my niece, has often shared, she will go to the family she'll go to the work event and stay for an hour and get some kind of a clear drink and fiddle with it just to make people think that she's drinking and being social.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:56:12]:
If she doesn't, then they say you're an angry black woman or you're an angry woman or you're antisocial. And all of those things can affect our bottom line and whether or not we can pay our electric bill. Lexus. Right? Because people are reading you in a hey. They're trying to figure out, are you a team player and that kind of thing. And so and then on the opposite end, you've got those people who may go and insist upon partying with everyone, end up dancing on the halal. And and they're they're just talked about for a minute, but they keep on moving. So we have to be, I think, aware, I I believe, when we're in these decision making positions around food that there are a variety of issues that should be considered.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:56:57]:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Can I ask you one final question that I ask everybody? What does a safe, sustainable, and inclusive experience mean to you? And I think you just kind of wrapped it up a little bit in that, but Mhmm. I don't know if you can if you have any other Sure. To put that into.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:57:15]:
If you're saying psyche, how do you how do you create this kind of environment for all people? Well, I think it starts at at its very core, Tracy, with asking questions. Mhmm. What works for you? If I don't know the guests who I'm meetings, at the very minimum, we get these things all the time. Are there any dietary restrictions?

Tracy Stuckrath [00:57:38]:
Mhmm.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:57:39]:
You know, what can I do to make your experience your food experience a lot better? This is my budget in my mind. This is my budget. What's gonna be the least of not even offensive, the least way in which I can exclude people? Well, we fruit, vegetables, bread, cheese, at the very basic. Somebody should be able to find something Mhmm. There. Right? And just starting starting there so that you have an array of options for people, I think goes a long way toward creating just goodwill and is being a good human.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:58:17]:
Yeah. I agree with you. Thank you. Joan just piped in. Thank you. Very insightful. Thank you, Joan. And thank you, Tracy.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:58:27]:
You're welcome. I so much so appreciate you. And everybody you can connect with

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:58:32]:
Psyche. Psyche. Thank you.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:58:33]:
I was gonna say doctor William Food Williams Forsen.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:58:37]:
Thank you.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:58:38]:
Here's her website, and I put the link to I'll put this in the chat as well, but I put the link to the book in the chat so you can Thank you. Hear the book and and listen or read it. Mhmm. I find it fascinating, so thank you.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:58:52]:
Thank you. Thank you. And I hope everyone has a safe and fun and yummy holiday season.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:58:58]:
Right. Exactly.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:58:59]:
Because that's gonna be one of the most tense times, holiday one of the most tense times. But, you know, when in doubt, just maybe ask some questions, I think.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:59:07]:
Right. And allow people to bring their own food if they need to.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:59:10]:
That's right. That's right. Yeah. Not Yeah. That. That's right.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:59:14]:
Right. Yes. Exactly. And don't

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:59:15]:
leave us all with tofu. That's impossible. That's right. Thank you very much, Tracy.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:59:21]:
You're welcome. Everybody's have a happy holidays. Happy New Year. I will talk to you actually, we're gonna do a special one on Thursday, January 2, talking about kicking off dry January.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson [00:59:33]:
Great.

Tracy Stuckrath [00:59:33]:
And and vegan. So until then, stay safe and eat well. Thanks for listening to the Catering at a Meeting podcast where every meal matters. I'm Tracy Stuckrat, your food and beverage inclusion expert. Call me, and let's get started right now on creating safe and inclusive food and beverage experiences for your customers, your employees, and your communities. Share the podcast with your friends and colleagues at our Catering at a Meeting Facebook page and on all podcast platforms. To learn more about me and receive valuable information, go to tracystuckrath.com. And if you'd like more information on how to feed engagement, nourish inclusion, and bolster your bottom line, then visit eating@ameeting.com.