Native Americans gave us tobacco. Apparently, we returned the favor with fry bread.

I wasn’t up on the whole fry bread phenomenon till I heard a story on NPR’s All Things Considered a few weeks back. Now a fixture of Native American cuisine, it turns out that the deep fried dough isn’t indigenous to Native Americans at all; it became popular only when the Federal government began to issue commodities such as white flour and lard to native tribes at the turn of the century.

The traditional tribal diet looks a lot like the healthy diet we aspire to now, with its emphasis on beans, grains, vegetables and berries. An article in last week’s NY Times, “Native Foods Nourish Again,” (subscription only) cites encouraging signs of a comeback for traditional Native American cuisine. An economic development company called Lakota Express hopes to market a line of healthier fast foods under the name Native American Natural Foods.

It won’t be a minute too soon, given that the number of Native Americans with type 2 diabetes is more than double the national average. Rick Nichols finds it sadly ironic that the café at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC offers “one of the most ambitious and culturally attuned menus you’re likely to find in a modern museum” when it was the loss of this culinary heritage that caused “the grotesque supersizing of an entire generation of Native Americans.”

Lard and white flour: the white man’s revenge?

Image credit: American Indians; one man and two women, seated on ground, pot on campfire; buffalo headdress, peace pipe – 1899 -Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.