Episode 7 transcript

The Secret Life of Language

Episode 7: Multicultural values and social inclusion through traditional food transcript

Episode Intro Grabs:

Nahrain stirs taste buds and serves up tradition. She’s part of a unique sisterhood. Refugees from all over Syria, divided through conflict, but united in cuisine. We can’t wait for everybody here to try all these foods she says

Episode Intro Grabs:

It’s an idea that combines our hunger for food. With our thirst, for understanding.

Episode Intro Grabs:

People were afraid to ask questions that they thought were inappropriate or offensive and when individuals usually come to those dinners, we say, ask us any burning questions that you may have.

Episode Intro Grabs:

The hope is to foster community and intercultural understanding over Syrian pastries and Somalian stews.

Episode Intro Grabs:

The best thing we can do is introduce people to these cultures just by eating. We know that if someone shares a plate, that’s a great way of understanding.

Lara Anderson:

Hi, I’m Lara Anderson, and this is The Secret Life of Language, a podcast from the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. In this episode, we’ll be exploring how food can be a vehicle for social inclusion and cultural acceptance, and the growing role of the culinary and empowering refugees and recent migrants seeking to make a new life in the West. From food trucks serving ethnic cuisine and cooking classes to catering businesses and refugee food challenges. These activities put recent migrants or refugees into direct contact with the broader community. They also foster entrepreneurship with the aim of making refugees and migrants more economically independent and employable. And because food is intrinsically linked to health, it makes for an ideal way to support migrants and refugees. Our guests for this episode are Daniel Bolotin, cofounder of the Melbourne based social enterprises, Free to Feed and Now to Launch, Helen Beekmans a food enterprise and tourism officer from the city of greater Dandenong and Dr Alyce Wilson, a lecturer in indigenous health and nutrition here at the University of Melbourne.

Sounds from the Dandenong Market

Atmosphere from the market

Lara Anderson:

Located in Melbourne’s southeast, the city of greater Dandenong is home to people from 163 countries, and with a palate of cuisines to match. The local council there is running a number of food related ventures to showcase that diversity while supporting migrants and refugees. Helen, can you tell us about these ventures.

Helen Beekmans:

We’re very fortunate at the city of greater Dandenong that we’ve been also recognised officially, that I have to say, as number one multicultural diverse community in Australia, and we’ve held that title for two years. But a very long time ago, we did realise at council that we have a lot to offer and we actually respect and recognise our community, and we thought, how best can we showcase this to our own community, but also our wider community here in Melbourne. And one of the biggest things that we realise is that no matter what nationality you are, food brings us together. We sit around a table, we share a meal and when we’re sharing a meal, what do we do? We share stories. The best dinner parties are the ones that you have great stories, great company. So we’ve had a great suite of food and cultural tours that we’ve introduced. And these have just grown organically and progressively over the last 10 years, because we do recognise and respect that over food you get to share a tradition of that culture. And not only do you get to hear about the celebration of those cultures, you get an insight as to why that culture does what it does. Why do they celebrate that? Why do they have that food at that particular time? And there’s nothing better than having a beautiful nationality walking into their restaurant and they treat you as if you’re in their lounge room in their home, and they’re so hospitable and you get to sit there and you share that mail and you hear that story and you walk out and you’re a better person for it. You walk out and you’ve got the smile inside. Not only are you in a bit of a food coma because of the beautiful food, and we’re really proud to be able to showcase and have that platform.

Lara Anderson:

Well, that’s an inspiration. So it’s great it’s really unifying.

Helen Beekmans:

Absolutely.

Lara Anderson:

Back in 2015 community worker Loretta Bolotin and her husband Daniel, founded Free to Feed, a social enterprise in which refugees and asylum seekers teach Australians how to cook dishes from their homelands. These cooking classes offer work opportunities and also the chance to share stories about their cultures. Daniel, what was your motivation for setting up Free to Feed?

Daniel Bolotin:

Firstly, thank you very much for having me here. Our intention was to try and work out how we can improve wellbeing of people who are newly arrived and food happened to be the vehicle that we chanced upon.

Lara Anderson:

Do you see evidence that sharing stories breaks down barriers?

Daniel Bolotin:

So sharing stories is a, is a big part of our project, and, I’ll be very honest with you that it’s, it is and has always been, uh, a double edged sword in a way. We find a big part of our work is to closely work with our, our cooks in the way that they share their stories and that they know that they don’t need to share when they don’t feel like it. They don’t need to share things that they don’t want to share. Because as you, as I’m sure, you know, when you express yourself amongst a group of people, it can either be, leave you feeling quite vulnerable or, um, it can be a beautiful cathartic sense of connection.

Lara Anderson:

Yeah and It’s very individual.

Daniel Bolotin:

It’s very individual and not only individual it changes. We run many classes and events throughout the week. Um, and you know, I’m privileged in my role to work closely with our participants, and that’s always at the forefront of my mind that it, you know, someone can tell their story about how they got to Australia or some of the challenges in their home country, and it can be, as I said, very empowering for them, but it’s not necessarily so. So we have to be cognisant that it can be traumatic or difficult to relive one’s past, particularly on call in a, and that’s where you brought up the issue of employment. Um, and, and also I think problematises that because you don’t want to make a commodity or a product out of your story, because then you have to keep dishing it out or delivering it. So for us, there are sort of many facets to what happens in a class or event. And we, we sort of make sure that we don’t lean too heavily on the story of the participant, but we do create that opportunity for them.

Lara Anderson:

We know that asylum seekers and refugees are particularly exposed to food insecurity because their familiar foods may be unavailable and Western foods dominate. And there is a critical need to understand the eating patterns of diverse cultural groups and how they change when they arrive to a new country. So, Alyce, could you talk a bit about your research and what happens to migrants traditional food ways when they first arrive to Australia?

Alyce Wilson:

Yeah, of course. So it’s, um, it’s great to hear from Daniel and Helen talking about how, when migrants are coming to Melbourne and sharing their traditional diets through cooking and sharing meals, but also what happens when migrants come to, um, a country, particularly from low and middle income countries and they come to a high income country like Australia, they’re exposed to a new food environment. And often this new food environment is a Western environment like in Australia. So you have readily abundant and available cheap processed foods available all times of the day. And so there’s this nutrition transition. And so this term nutrition transition can occur when migrants come from a country where particularly food habits, maybe, maybe based on subsistence farming, so lean to navigate this new food system with the marketing that we have constantly in our faces, um, through social media or the TV, radio and newspapers. And so this new food environment can lead to negative health consequences.

Lara Anderson:

What are some of the main reasons that parents go for not being able to cook or get their children to eat traditional food?

Alyce Wilson:

So from some of the research that we did in, in Melbourne with refugees from the horn of Africa, these families were from Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia. And we talked to parents about this change in the food environment and how it impacted on what their children were eating and what they wanted to eat. And so, um, as the migrant children growing up in, in Australia and going to school here, they were filling a real desire to fit in with their peers. And so that was one struggle that parents mentioned about the kids wanting to eat the local or the Australian foods, um, particularly often processed foods or fast foods. And so sometimes rebelling against traditional family foods and wanting to eat more with their friends and with their families. So that was one major issue. Also the differences in the emphasis on certain meals. So, um, particularly these families, we talked to mentioned that back home in their home countries, that actually the lunch meal was a more important meal. And so people would come home from work and school and, and share a hot meal together. But in Australia we tend to emphasise the evening meal. And so they miss that opportunity where their children and their partners and the family would come home for lunch and had to sort of change their cooking habits to focus more on the evening meal. And that would, that could affect the children, eating traditional foods as well. You know, a lot of the horn of Africa families, they talked about that the meals that they ate often need to be heated up, using microwaves and things like that. And so they found that it was difficult for their children to take these foods to school for lunches, because there might not be microwaves available. They were just some of the simple barriers that they found to their kids eating traditional foods.

Lara Anderson:

That could be overcome if schools introduce microwaves or even got kids, to eat meals together at the school. And shared a cooked meal.

Alyce Wilson:

Yeah. And promoting that inclusiveness of eating too. So sharing meals together and rather than kind of singling out that certain cultural foods are different, but more just embracing that diversity and using it as a learning opportunity for students to learn more about different cultures and the foods they eat and those sorts of things,

Lara Anderson:

Daniel, Now to Launch, nurtures food related business ideas. What sort of support do people need to start up and succeed in the food industry?

Daniel Bolotin:

It’s a really, uh, I think a beautiful mix cause they bring a lot of expertise and then they’re learning a lot about how to engage with, you know, the discerning Melbourne crowd in terms of food. Um, and....

Lara Anderson:

What Melbournian’s want.

Daniel Bolotin:

Yes, so there’s a, there’s a nice interplay between, you know, we’re, we’re very focused on them being authentic and being able to represent their authentic culture and cuisine and over and around that we’re always challenging them and testing them in terms of the experience of engaging with the, yeah, with the Melbournian market.

Lara Anderson:

Helen who’s involved in the design of your events?

Helen Beekmans:

We get the businesses very well involved. We actually take their lead. We approach a business ah for example, we’ve got a new business it’s just opened this year in February. So we’ve approached them and we highlight that we put on a suite of food and cultural tours and we would like you to be part of that. And what does this look like for you and your business? So we highlight what that will look for them, but we also ask them the crucial questions of when you’ve got people that come in and they don’t know your food, they don’t know your culture, they’ve just thought, okay, let’s try it. What would you recommend? What would you like to see them experience to get the real taste of Cambodia? To get the real taste of Vietnam? So we take their input very seriously and we take their lead obviously. So they’re delivering menus to the community that are authentic to their traditions and their nationality and people can walk away. And we’ve had people attending our tours and they walk away and they go, I actually had that in Cambodia and I can’t fault it. That’s the same as what I had when I visited Cambodia. And we love to hear that. And we give that feedback to the business owners because that’s really important because they stand there very proudly going that’s right, they do. Because we didn’t dumb the food down. We didn’t, westernise it. We didn’t make it so that this is what we think you should eat, and we’re going to call it Cambodian food. And I’m using Cambodia as an example, we’ve got many, many nationalities, but it is about that true, authentic traditional flavours. We market and promote the food and cultural tours as being authentic, and they are. The only thing they might bring down a bit is the heat, the chilies, because they are hot in some countries and we can’t always eat the right level of heat.

Lara Anderson:

The Chilli has to be modified a bit?

Helen Beekmans:

Oh yeah.

Lara Anderson:

Alyce, could you talk about this idea of agency in relation to health?

Alyce Wilson:

So reciprocal approach? Yes, I think, um, so I, wouldn’t just sort of classify migrants as having poor health literacy. I think we probably all do. A lot of Australians actually do. From, um, we look at national data, we know that probably 60% of Australians have quite poor health literacy and taking a step back and saying, well, what is health literacy? And that’s really the ability to obtain, process and understand health information so that you can make informed health decisions. And so if you don’t have very good health literacy, then you’re not able to make decisions and the health system becomes very difficult to navigate. And so we know that there’s a link between poor health literacy and nutrition and food choices, and equally there’s a term called nutrition literacy as well, which sort of encompasses all of those factors. And so in terms of health literacy and food, you know, we have these sort of terms healthy, unhealthy, or the health claims that are spread across food labels and the marketing campaigns that may promote that their food is, you know, high in iron or high in calcium or something and trying to want to sell these different messages that we’re getting presented with. And often, you know, we know from the food industry research that food can be presented with like a health halo. So it can be use words like organic or have pictures of farms or cows, or these really wholesome kind of images when they actually may be highly processed full of fat, sugar, salt, and low fibre foods. So as a migrant, trying to understand this food environment, make those three choices, poor health literacy compounds, those issues.

Lara Anderson:

And then maybe at a policy level, I guess a question to all of you, what we can do to support people, all of us, I guess, moving back to a more traditional diet. When you think that Michael Pollan and the defence of food says that we shouldn’t eat anything, our great grandmother wouldn’t recognise or anything that isn’t capable of rotting. And that would be a way of putting migrants in the position of agency and that they could teach us here in the Western world more about their traditional food ways.

Alyce Wilson:

So I’m a big promoter of whole foods and traditional foods. And so when we teach medical students about nutrition, we talk about these molecular biochemical processes and sources of vitamins and minerals. You actually need to, need to talk about food and talk about whole food and not just in terms of fruit and vegetables and lean meat and multi-grain breads and cereals, but actually talking about how we eat food and taking time to share food together. We know that when families eat together, they actually have lower risks of overweight and obesity because they’re taking time to talk and they’re taking, they’re slowing down their eating and they’re chatting about their day. And we also know that there can be mental health benefits and emotional health benefits too, because you’re actually engaging with each other and not just sitting mindlessly at a computer or in front of a TV. There’s a study that was done in the Mediterranean called the Predimed study. It’s a major study, um, was really a game changer in showing the role of a traditional diet in reducing chronic disease risk. And it basically compared a Mediterranean diet compared to a low fat sort of diet and found huge benefits in terms of diabetes, risk reduction, a reduction in number of cardiovascular events, like heart attacks, a decrease in overweight and obesity and waist circumference. And, and so we have plenty of evidence to promote the benefits of, of traditional diets. We, we know from research from the Japanese communities about their longevity in terms of following nutritional diets. So in terms of a policy, I think that we need to recognise the value nutritional diets and when working with all communities, migrant communities, including our indigenous communities as well, that we need to really recognise the value of traditional diets and do what we can to support that.

Daniel Bolotin:

Good news is that it’s with the diversity of produce that we have in Melbourne. It very much is possible to continue those traditional cooking practices and the food.

Lara Anderson:

Adrian, what do you think?

Adrian Hearn:

Well on this topic of policy, it’s something that touches what each of you have been talking about. One of the more interesting policies I’ve come across recently is in Dandenong where the public parks or some of the public parks have been involved in a local government project to replace ornamental plants with food crops and involving the local very diverse community in that process. Now I understand there are some aesthetic concerns here as well, because, you know, replacing a rosebush with sweet potatoes, may not please everyone that wants to walk their dog or take their kids to the park. But, um, I thought Helen, this might be a, an interesting question to put to you because I know you’ve been involved in this project.

Helen Beekmans:

Yeah. Look, it’s really interesting because you can walk around the city of greater Dandenong and you’ve got beautiful floral arrangements and flowers growing and hedges growing, and then there’s spinach and then there’s rhubarb and then there’s Rosemary and herb’s and vegetables.

Adrian Hearn:

And this is in public parks?

Helen Beekmans:

And this is in the outside the Dandenong Plaza down the road from the Dandenong market across the road from the council offices. So we’re very fortunate to be involved in this program. And it’s about engaging with the community and also showing the community that this is where a food comes from. And this is how we saw some of our food, obviously not all of it. And the community is encouraged very proactively to go along and pick and help themselves to the produce. And what our gardeners also do once the harvest is over, they’ll make sure various different community groups have access to the crops and the harvest, but it’s also very rewarding to see the community walking past and taking part in it and acknowledging that this is what we do back home. And this is what the council here in the city of greater Dandenong are also trying to achieve. On a aesthetic note, I’m a Polish girl and I grew up with a vegetable garden. I can honestly say I don’t have a vegetable garden, but to walk around the city where I work and see vegetables growing, I take a smile at that and I skip in my walk because that’s my roots and I’m born in New Zealand to Polish parents. So, and I think that resonates with a lot of people as well. It’s not just refugees. It’s about the indigenous people of Australia as well. We’re all being exposed to our parents growing vegetables or the way the food gets to the table. And I think that’s lost a lot and to see what we’re doing because of the different cultures and the different circumstances that are coming into play in our own areas. It’s bringing all the old traditions back to the table. And I love to see that.

Adrian Hearn:

So what’s been some of the feedback you’ve had from the public about this?

Helen Beekmans:

Very excited, I’d say along the lines of, they relate to being able to see that vegetable garden. They relate to the actual program. They get explained to why we’re doing this to teach people to. Also the different communities that are involved, they’re guiding us and telling us what to plant in what season. And it might not be a vegetable that we grew up with, but it’s a vegetable or a plant that they grew up with that is very vital in an ingredient to their cooking. So we’re able to grow vegetables from different countries. We give them back to the community and in some instances, in some social enterprise areas of our council they’re cooking food and delivering the food to different community groups and making an event out of it, by sitting down with producers food, this is what was, um, part of the process and we’re now sharing the meal and the story that goes with that meal.

Adrian Hearn:

And this has required some investment from local government to make this happen. I mean, most local governments have not done this because, well, it costs something to provide the equipment, to provide experts on gardeners who can go and look after the, the land, et cetera. So has that been a difficult process to convince local councillors to, to adopt this, this food in public parks?

Helen Beekmans

No.Well, I say no for us, because we’re very fortunate with our councillors and our council, because they are very, very aware of our environment. They are very aware of our community. So it’s about working with what you have and we’re privileged to have a very diverse community. And so we’re very aware of what we’re able to deliver back to that community and making sure that community, it’s about that resettlement. It’s about, Daniel, you touched on you’ve got cooks, who, uh, producing food from their countries and they’re telling their stories. And some of those stories might not be comfortable. This is another process that is a welcoming environment. It’s that happy place. And it’s letting the community know that this is a safe place and you can be who you are and it’s okay to be who you are. So this is just another way.

Lara Anderson:

So I think what would be really interesting is to think about how to move, what happens in those community gardens or the Dandenong market, um, and with your food vendors and food tours into maybe a school setting?

Daniel Bolotin:

Uh, we, we already work with schools. It’s a great add on to any sort of education around displacements, uh, refugee issues. Um, teachers greet us with relief because we come with someone with lived experience. And again, the disarming nature of, of doing a cooking class together and getting messy as it turns out a great way of learning about one another.

Lara Anderson:

Alyce what generational differences have you noticed in approaches to traditional food?

Alyce Wilson:

From the research we were talking about before with the refugee families, from the horn of Africa, we found differences between the parents and their children. So the children that were involved where they were youth sort of teenagers, and there was differences in terms of the parents really wanting to maintain family eating times together, maintain traditional diets. Whereas children were wanting to check out the new Australian products to try different foods, to more eat socially with friends and maybe not eat together. And so we found some of those differences. One really interesting thing that came out of this research was the mothers expressing a loss of identity when their children rejected traditional food and eating as a family together. So I think it was an unexpected finding that the mothers in particular saw their role in terms of providing for the family. And one part of that was cooking and their family sharing the meal together. They were finding as they had moved to Australia, that there was less of the family eating together and maybe their children were eating other foods, that they experienced this profound loss of identity, and that coupled with self esteem as well.

Daniel Bolotin:

And we certainly say that in our classes and events that, you know, recreation of identity in this new place, but even better, like with a group of strangers from the community, um, embracing the creation of that identity through the food is it’s quite powerful.

Alyce Wilson:

Food is so much more than just sustenance. It provides all those different platforms for social cohesion coming together. I mean, it just, yeah, it Speaks to all of it.

Helen Beekmans:

I find that really resonates with our business owners is that pride. They’re so proud to share their culture, to share not just their food, but the culture, the tradition, and we eat this because, and we eat this at this time of the year because. And I love seeing that pride. And I have business owners telling me that we’re very fortunate to have come to Australia. I’m very fortunate. They never say lucky. They say I’m fortunate because these are hardworking people. And they admit that they’re very fortunate to come to a country, start a new life and they’re sharing their traditions, they’re sharing these stories and their food. And I just love seeing that, and it’s great to see other people who don’t know that culture walk in experience the food and walk out and have that aha moment. I love seeing that.

Adrian Hearn:

Beyond the really small kind of market stalls, can you think of any cases where this has scaled up to the next level?

Alyce Wilson:

Just at an individual level when visiting supermarkets you’ll see, particularly in suburbs, which are probably more culturally diverse that they, the supermarkets there in terms of the two main chains do have more diversity, I think in terms of multicultural products. But one thing that I’d be really encouraging from a health perspective is having more diversity in terms of the fruit and vegetables available as well. So not really the processed product packaged food, but actually in terms of all the different dark green leafy veggies that we know come from here. Southeast Asia has some great examples. And so supermarkets really encouraging, um, having that availability of those different fruit and vegetables would be excellent I think.

Helen Beekmans:

We’re fortunate because we’ve got not supermarkets as we call them of the two big ones that we have and know of, but we’ve got in our city of greater Dandenong Afghany supermarkets, we’ve got Indian supermarkets, we’ve got these markets that you can go in and you can buy anything it takes to create something in that cultural food recipe. The spices that you can buy, you can cook any meal from any country and you can source the spices from the Dandenong market, as well as the supermarkets we’ve got in greater Dandenong. It’s pretty unique. It’s very unique and really special. And this is what our refugees have brought to the table for us. And I don’t think we acknowledge that enough.

Lara Anderson:

Thank you to our guests, Dr Alyce Wilson, from the University of Melbourne, Daniel Bolotin from Free to Feed and Now to Launch and Helen Beekmans from the city of greater Dandenong. Be sure to keep up with every episode of The Secret Life of Language podcast, by following us on the Apple podcast app, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Secret Life of Language is a podcast from the University of Melbourne’s School of Languages and Linguistics, and is licensed under creative commons, copyright 2020, the University of Melbourne. Thanks for listening and buen provecho!