Eating our heritage
Heirloom Seeds and Heritage
First OH MY GOSH Moment while listening to Dr Prabhakar Rao on the recent Zoom Heritage Beku Heirloom Seeds and Heritage - Sunday at 5pm. This is part of the ongoing #HeritageBeku #SundaysAt5 series.
Learning that my Great Grand Mother Clara Krumbiegel probably had bananas in her larder which lasted up to 6 months. Now I understand why my Grandmother Hilda would only ever eat seasonally, in this current time we are all seduced by the matching perfect size vegetables from across the world presented in perfect shrink-wrapped plastic on shelves in our supermarkets.
One of the top benefits of eating seasonally is that you are consistently eating fresher tasting produce. Foods that are in-season are generally grown closer to your home. When your food does not have to travel across an ocean to get to you, the freshness is preserved, along with the nutritional content, of course now this makes perfect sense, why we are only offered maybe 4 or 5 types of any produce variety, our heirloom varieties have been lost to my generation and absolutely lost to my daughter and grandchildren generations.
The truth is, when you walk into most supermarket’s you’re only seeing a teeny tiny fraction of the foods available to us. For instance, while there are more than 2000 different varieties of apples, most supermarkets will showcase no more than the usual 5. Or out of the thousands of potatoes, we see maybe 3 in the bin to choose from. The reality of an ancestral approach to food is taking in the true variety available to our ancestors: heirloom-varieties of food that is also organic (to ensure the produce is free of pesticides), and locally, or even wild-harvested and foraged, have been proven to have richer nutrients and diversity for our genes to benefit from. There are so many ways the plant kingdom can nourish us if we’re willing to engage in what’s available in a deeper, richer way.
Thankfully we have The Seedkeeper Dr Rao and some organic farmers that are finding heirloom seeds and resurrecting our heirloom varieties'
I suddenly realised that when I was very sick in 2019 I came out of hospital and had this incredible urge to eat certain foods and as Dr Rao explained if we listen to our bodies cravings are a sign that your body is lacking certain nutrients even more interesting is that our ancestors have played a part in this too.
So as we are emerging out of the post pandemic world let's remember to protect our Heritage and now eat our Heritage.
Photo of Great Grandmother Katie Clara Krumbiegel at The Superintendents Bungalow Lalbagh Their family home. Check those pots out behind her, she was an excellent cook
Alyia Krumbiegel
GHK Foundation London
Great Grand Daughter Of Gustav Herman Krumbiegel
Here is a link to the talk :