Originally published September 8 2005
Indian fry bread, a cultural favorite, may be hazardous to your health
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Although fry bread is a traditional food in American Indian culture, it is loaded with calories and fat, and one American Indian woman decided to give it up and urge others to do so too when she grew tired of losing her family members to diabetes.
When you first see it, plopped down on a paper plate in all its caloric bliss, the round, doughy treat is so appealing, so alluring, it's hard to believe this wondrous sight can cause anything but delight.
But fry bread, that fluffy concoction American Indian women lovingly make in their kitchens and people line up for at powwows and Western fairs, has come under attack as a hazard to health.
She just was exhausted with yet another one of her relatives dying of diabetes.
She zoned in on fry bread as a culprit and whipped out a January column for Indian Country Today declaring it junk food that leads to fat Indians.
What started as a woman's disdain for the yummy delicacy suddenly became the great fry bread debate.
Harjo "It's like giving up turkey at Thanksgiving," said Gayle Weigle, an Anishinabe Indian who runs a Web site celebrating fry bread stories and recipes.
Indian women such as Margarita Gonzalez on the Tohono O'odham reservation here rise before dawn to start making fry bread.
"It's like a craving you get for it, the aroma of it.
It's scrumptious, sweet, and puts a crazy spell on anyone who craves it.
But it's loaded with pesky calories - at least 700 for one paper-plate size piece - plus a whopping 27 grams of fat, according to a nutritional analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
advertisement "Those things are awesome," tribal police officer Mario Saraficio said, getting excited at the thought.
If the doctor told me I had to give it up, I'd say probably not."
Fry bread - sometimes with red chile and beans, or with powdered sugar or honey on top - is so embedded in the culture many Indians can't imagine going without.
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