I'm Elise Hugh and you're listening to TED Talks Daily.

In today's talk, journalist and researcher, a parniphalavi helps us reframe what we put on our plates.

She explains how a more Western-centric definition of what's delicious food creates shame around indigenous foods and how that can damage our health, ecology, and cultural identities.

Let's fix this problem.

Aparna shares how.

Take a listen to this talk from TEDx Cape Town Women, 2018.

Last year, I was living with this indigenous family in India.

One afternoon, the young son was eating, and at the sight of me, he quickly hid his curry behind his back.

It took a lot of persuasion to get him to show me what he was eating.

It turned out to be moth larvae, a traditional delicacy with the Madiah indigenous people.

I cried, oh my God, you're eating these.

I hope there's a little left for me.

I saw disbelief in the boy's eyes.

You eat these? I love these. I replied. I could see he did not trust me one bit.

How could an urban educated woman like the same food as him?

Later, I broached this subject with his father, and it turned out to be a mighty touchy affair.

He said things like, oh, only this son of mine likes to eat it. We tell him, give it up, it's bad. He doesn't listen, you see. We gave up eating all this ages back. Why? I asked, this is your traditional food. It is available in your environment. It is nutritious,

and I can vouch for it, delicious. Why is it wrong to eat it? The man felt silent. I asked, have you been told that your food is bad, that to eat it is backward, not civilized?

He nodded silently. This was one of the many, many times in my work with indigenous people in India that I witnessed shame around food.

Shame that the food you love to eat, the food that has been eaten for generations, is somehow inferior, even subhuman.

And this shame is not limited to out of the way icky foods like insects or rats may be,

but extends to regular foods, wild vegetables, mushrooms, flowers,

...