Holistic Soul Food in Charleston, SC

O Magazine Review

Back in my hotel room that afternoon, I leafed through a book called Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America, by Frederick Douglass Opie, a professor of history at Marist College. I learned that for thousands of years, the traditional West African diet was predominantly vegetarian, centered on things like millet, rice, field peas, okra, hot peppers, and yams. Meat was used sparingly, as a seasoning.

This was news to me, but not to Alluette Jones-Smalls, owner of Alluette's Holistic Soul Café in Charleston, South Carolina, the next stop on my tour. She's spent the past 12 years working to shift her people's diet back toward its plant-based roots. "The sad thing about African-Americans is we don't know our bodies," she told me. "We need small portions of meat and huge amounts of vegetables."

Tall and fit, Alluette, 58, stood and touched her toes to show me the benefits of conscious eating. She said, "Young people think, 'My mom had diabetes, and it's genetic, so I'm going to have it.' That's not true. If they're going to have it, it's because they eat like their mama did. Look how food transforms your body, how it disfigures you if you're not conscious. 'You are what you eat' means that if you eat garbage, you're going to look and feel like garbage."

To read the full article in O Magazine please click here.