How Our Communities Can Get Healthy at Last: Eric Adams on PYP 432

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Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams returns to the podcast to talk about his new book, Healthy at Last. Part family memoir, part political mission statement, part science review, part self-help book, and part cookbook, this is a celebration of the possibilities of health for the American people in general, and the Black community in particular.

We talk about the title – from Etta James, and not Martin Luther King, Jr's “I have a dream” speech, as I first assumed – and the fact that, in Adams' words, “slavery never ended,” and remains entrenched in the slave foods that are still harming Black people to this day.

And we explore some of the policy initiatives BP Adams has launched to bring the practice of plant-based health to Brooklyn, New York City, and the world.

We talked about the link between the incredible creativity of Black cooks who turned the unpalatable slop served to slaves into delicious soul food – and how that creativity, in the hands and minds of the new generation of chefs and cookbook authors, can empower folks to have both deliciousness and health.

How families share not just bloodlines, but druglines. And how self-emancipation from the addiction to poisonous foods is but a part of the larger conversation about health disparities in America.

Big thanks to Rachel Atcheson for making this conversation happen!

Links

Healthy at Last, by Eric Adams

The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell

BP Adams' first appearance on Plant Yourself

Etta James' “At Last”