On January 1, Netflix dropped a docuseries called You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment to help us be more mindful about our diet. It’s Dry January and Veganuary, and everyone is in their “new year, new me” era of trying to make healthier choices, we get it.
What surprised us about the experiment were the inspiring cameos from Detroit farms and other local food businesses who are championing food access in the city.
You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment followed four pairs of twins participating in a nutrition study through Stanford University, where one twin was put on a vegan diet and the other an omnivore diet for eight weeks. At the end, they compared things like weight loss, muscle, and levels of visceral fat. The premise of the show is to show how different diets paired with exercise affect people with the same genetics to see which is, in theory, healthier.
It takes a critical look at the Standard American Diet, which is downright sad and saturated with fast food, fried foods, and red meat. It also drops some stomach-turning facts like how it’s legal for up to 25% of chicken you buy in the grocery store to hit shelves with pathogens on them.
Detroit shines in episode three, where New York natives John and Jevon Whittington stop by urban farming staple Keep Growing Detroit (KGD). Here, at the Eastern Market farm, KGD Development and Engagement Coordinator Danielle Daguio walks them through fields of dino kale and poblano peppers grown on-site. The twins sit down to dinner at the farm with members of Detroit’s urban agriculture community.
But the real gems of this episode are dropped by Nezaa Bandele, community health educator and chef of Paradise Natural Foods, and Shakara Tyler from Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN). We also get quick cameos from Taste the Diaspora chefs Ederique Goudia, Jermond Booze, and Neighborhood Grocery purveyor Rafael Wright. There’s even a quick B-roll shot of Eastern Market.
Tyler talks about how divestment left Detroit, a majority-Black city, without affordable access to nutrient-dense foods and how groups like DBCFSN are providing community-based alternatives. Yes, we all know we should eat more fruits and vegetables, but what do you do when those things aren’t readily available to you?
Since Detroit has a lot of vacant land, many Detroiters started using that land to grow food out of necessity.
“It’s a transformation of something that is minimal into something that is maximum and abundant,” Tyler says in the series.
Much of Bandele’s work with Paradise Natural Foods is reclaiming cultural foods by incorporating them into meals in a healthier way. Their entirely plant-based soul food platters are a great example of this. According to the show, African Americans are the fastest growing demographic of plant-based eaters even though marginalized communities experience the worst health outcomes due to lack of access to fresh foods.
Tyler echoes this work, mentioning how D-Town Farms in Rouge Park “unapologetically focuses on culturally relevant crops” like okra, collard greens, watermelon, and callaloo.
Tyler tells us that land reclamation is alchemy. Taking it a step further, I like to think of Detroiters as alchemists, dripping magic through our fingertips even when we are left without resources and people are counting on us to fail.
I won’t spoil the whole outcome of the study in case you want to watch the show (and you should), but the women on the vegan diet had over a 300% increase in sexual arousal by the end. As a fellow vegan woman, I can confirm this to be true.
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