Soul Sessions Podcast: Sade Meeks | Growing Resilience in the South (GRITS)

On today's show, we're talking with Sade Meeks, a registered dietitian and founder of Growing Resilience in the South—GRITS—an organization fighting for food justice here in Mississippi.

She's making a documentary called "Food as Resistance" that challenges everything we think we know about Southern foods, and she's proving that catfish and greens aren't just comfort food—they're weapons against food inequality.

Sade Meeks
Meeks

Sade talks with host and Managing Editor Paul Wolf in today's episode.

IN THIS EPISODE:

Stirring the Pot: Sade Meeks on Food Resistance | Sade Meeks on Instagram

Transcript

Note: Soul Sessions is produced as a podcast first and designed to be listened to. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes the emotion and inflection meant to be conveyed by human voice. Our transcripts are created using AI and human transcribers, but may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting.

PAUL:

What if the foods you've been told are unhealthy are actually the key to both nourishment and resistance? Hey, it's Paul Wolf with a front row seat to conversations on culture from Jackson, Mississippi. We call our podcast Soul Sessions. It's the people, places and events that make the City With Soul shine. On today's show, we're talking with Sade Meeks, a registered dietician and founder of Growing Resilience in the South, or GRITS, an organization fighting for food justice here in Mississippi. She's making a documentary called Food as Resistance that challenges everything we think we know about Southern foods. And she's proving that catfish and greens aren't just comfort food, they're weapons against food inequality.

When you talk about food justice and food resistance, how do you explain that to people? I mean, I can imagine you probably get some pretty quizzical looks when you explain what it is that you're passionate about.

SADE:

Yeah. So the easiest way to explain it is advocating the fact that food is not a privilege. I think in so many ways that people think about healthy eating or even like access to certain grocery stores. And if they don't have it, like it can be looked at as a disadvantage or only these things are reserved for certain tax bracket or something. And that shouldn't be the case. so food justice is advocating that everyone have equal access to food, to the knowledge of food, to farmers markets, to all those things connected to how we eat, even like transportation, because sometimes transportation plays a role in someone's food access. If they don't have private transportation and public transportation isn't easily accessible, that can definitely play a role in someone's food security. So it's not just about the food itself, it's about all those interconnected pieces as well.

PAUL:

Yeah. If the grocery store is three miles away, but you don't have transportation, it doesn't really do you a lot of good, does it?

SADE:

No. And I talk a lot in my documentary, Food as Resistance, about systemic issues that Jackson has seen, such as grocery store redlining that's still happening today. And grocery store redlining is basically when main grocery stores are disinclined to being in low income minority areas and they get pushed out. And then these areas become saturated with like fast foods and things like that. And that's part of food justice, bringing awareness to things like grocery store redlining and talking about solutions to navigate it.

PAUL:

I want to talk more about your documentary that I know is coming out this fall. but first I want to go back a little bit and talk about your inspiration for the work you do. You've told us before that sitting at your grandmother's table, literally over a bowl of grits and hearing her stories was where the seed for your organization grits really got planted. So what was it about those moments that made you think, you know, I've, just got to do something with this. Yeah. I've, you know, sat and had grits so long with my grandmother, but I think that moment was a huge, sharp contrast for me because I had just finished grad school studying nutritional science.

And a lot of my studying involved learning about Eurocentric diets and things like the Mediterranean diet and how that could be beneficial for our health. And when I did get to learn about cultural foods or even Southern foods, it was sometimes talked about in a negative way. And so that was my perspective from an academic level, but that was also something I saw in the mainstream. And so when I was sitting at my grandmother's table in that moment, it just hit differently because it was like a stark contrast to what I had been recently learning about and experiencing. And what I noticed about my grandmother who is now 103, she's been eating all these Southern foods and she's healthy, she's resilient, she's all these things and her story was empowering to see. And it really just kind of sparked this motivation or this passion in me to really empower other people's with those types of narratives as opposed to the narratives we have been hearing in the mainstream media.

PAUL:

You've mentioned your upcoming documentary, Food as Resistance and how it kind of turns the tables on how we think about food. It's not just nourishment, but it's culture and even resilience. As we've heard you say, what's the most joyful or surprising thing that you've discovered while making this film?

SADE:

That's a great question. I think the most joyful thing that I discovered is how similar food and words are. I'm a writer and I love to write because I love to tell stories. But I learned that food is also a vehicle for storytelling as well. And it's just been a joy to combine like two of my passions together to really connect people. And the thing about storytelling, it is gonna be a connector. So using food, using words to connect people has been like the most exciting thing and being able to do it in a creative way and a non-traditional way as a dietitian. I first thought I was going to be like just in a private practice or in a hospital doing like these traditional roles, but it's been so much fun to do more creative things, but still advocate for healthy food and healthier communities.

PAUL:

That's such a Mississippi thing too, isn't it? To, to find a way to tell stories with whatever it is you're passionate about in your case, it's food. And you mentioned a moment ago how your grandmother at 103 eating all these Southern foods, she's still resilient, vibrant, healthy. How do you help people see the beauty and benefits of the foods they grew up with? mean, have you seen any kind of aha moments for folks where it just clicked when you told them about this?

SADE:

I see it during like screenings at the documentaries, but I also see when I'm working with clients, I do see a few clients a week. And most of my clients right now are actually from the Mississippi Delta, they're from the South. It never gets old. It never gets old seeing how they feel empowered just by knowing, I can eat catfish and just pair it with some greens. Greens are full of fiber. And so even foods that they currently eat, they don't even realize like how beneficial they are to their diets. To me, it never gets old seeing how someone can still can be so connected to a food. can be so part of their diet, but they still not know the full scope of it. So I love helping people learn that these foods, they're not just tasty, but they can also be healthy for you. Yeah. I love how you blend storytelling and food together.

PAUL:

Storytelling is passion of mine and I love good food. I love the stories around food too. And you do an incredible job of that. Do you have a favorite story from someone you've met that really captures why the work you're doing really matters?

SADE:

Yes, I actually got to meet one of my sheroes, Dr. Jessica B. Harris. She's written Hot on the Hog and is also a Netflix series. And my favorite story was literally sitting at the table with her while filming our documentary. And I just kept telling her thank you for the work she's done because she inspired me to talk about resistance. In her book, she talked about how enslaved African Americans resisted foods on the slave ship. And that was like literally the first act of resistance because they didn't have control over anything else, but they had control over whether they ate or not. And so that's what some enslaved Africans did to resist. And that kind of sparked the interest to explore other ways people are resisting some of these systemic issues that we see today, whether it is redlining. And so sitting with her, I was like just expressing my gratitude, but for her to express the gratitude back to me was really amazing because sometimes you're in these spaces and you don't know if it's making a difference or if it's hitting home. But to have her like really affirm that was just a very special moment for me.

PAUL:

I think we as Mississippi creative sometimes often look down upon ourselves and it takes someone from the outside coming in to show us that what we're doing really makes a difference.

SADE:

Yes. And she was so happy to be in Mississippi. I didn't realize she has so many connections in Mississippi. So to also hear an outsider or someone not from here speak so positively about Mississippi and be happy to be a part of this Mississippi project was also just a very rewarding and affirming thing as well.

PAUL:

What are you eating these days? What's good to you this time of year? I love the farmers market this time of the year. So I like to just dilly-dally and see what they have in the farmers market. My recent figs are plums, and so I like to find fruit because I'm actually growing kombucha these days. And so I like to see what kind of fruits are there. I also want to get into just fermenting things and like fermenting, pickling okra and things like that. I really want to start transforming some of these fruits and vegetables through fermentation that I get from the farmers market, especially like those Mississippi grown fruits and vegetables.

PAUL:

Sade, I think you've built something really unique with grits and something no one is doing and that's blending history and health and heritage as well. So when you think about what's next, what are you most excited to try to expand upon or explore in your next chapter of your nonprofit?

SADE:

I do want to continue the storytelling. Hopefully it has some type of big event where we screen the docu-series as mentioned. We will be done this fall, but wanna be able to tour and travel, not to just local Mississippi cities, but people outside of Mississippi, because I think there's so many misconceptions about what the South is. So being able to take Mississippi to other parts of the world, I think is a beautiful thing. And I also would love to write about it. So storytelling through a book. It's something I see, but from a community level, I want to get back to those interactive community programming where we can do some food demos, where we can even do some kombucha fermenting and things like that. Getting people hands-on with food is what I see, just connecting back to the community. Grids have seasons. I have seasons where I'm in the background editing, and then I have seasons when I'm out on the ground in community. Since we're getting towards the end of the docu-series, think I'll definitely be more visible with the different community programming and things like that.

PAUL:

Our thanks to Sade Meeks, who is showing us that foods we grew up with aren't just delicious, they're powerful. Through her work with GRITS and her upcoming documentary Food as Resistance, she's helping people reclaim the narrative around Southern cuisine while fighting the very real issue of food apartheid in communities like Jackson. Her grandmother's table wasn't just a place for meals. It was a classroom. That's the kind of storytelling that changes minds and transforms communities. One conversation and one meal at a time. Look for links to Sade's work and future screenings of her documentary in our show notes at visitjackson.com/soulsessions. This podcast is produced by visit Jackson, the destination organization for Mississippi's capital city. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettus and Dr. Ricky Thigpen, and I'm our managing editor. There's so much good happening in our state capital of Jackson, Mississippi, and I want you to learn more about it when you go to visitjackson.com.

I'm Paul Wolf, and you've been listening to Soul Sessions.

Paul Wolf

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Paul Wolf