Professor, filmmaker travel across B.C., Alberta to explore the healing power of food

For Tammara Soma, growing up, food was "a source of fear."

"I had an eating disorder when I was young," Soma said in an interview with Gloria Macarenko on CBC's The Early Edition on Thursday.

It wasn't until she started working in developing sustainable and equitable food systems did she begin to view food as a source of healing. 

"Food is healing in so many ways. It heals one's body. It heals one's spirit. It also strengthens one's cultural identity.

"But most importantly, it brings people together," Soma says in her documentary, Food is my Teacher, which she co-wrote and co-directed with award-winning Canadian filmmaker Brandy Yanchyk.

In an effort to learn more about how food could be a source of love and healing, Soma, an assistant professor and the research director and co-founder of the Food Systems Lab at Simon Fraser University, travelled across B.C. and Alberta for the documentary, meeting with various communities to discover the cultural relationships they have with food.

Here's an excerpt of her conversation with Macarenko, where she talks about Food is my Teacher — streaming on CBC Gem as part of the Absolutely Canadian series.

This file has been edited for length and clarity.

What about the title of this doc, Food is my Teacher — why is that? 

I'm a professor at SFU, so I am a teacher. But I realize food is one of the greatest teachers.

It can teach us about the planet,and other people in other cultures. But most importantly, from my journey in doing this documentary with Brandy Yanchyk, food can teach us about love.

And that's the message that I hope to spread through this documentary.

How do you go about that? 

In this documentary I travel across Alberta and British Columbia and I meet with these amazing leaders from Indigenous community leaders to Sikh leaders, Muslim, Chinese, Filipino, Polish. And they all share a little bit about how they use food to heal communities, to learn and preserve their language and their identity, and basically to break stigma.

There's a lot of hate. There's a lot of tension out there. But we are promoting unity.

I know this is a labour of love for you because you study food and food security for a living. As you're visiting these various communities, as you're talking to these people, what stands out for you? 

I think what stands out for me is a lot of these communities on the ground, they're doing so much with very little resources. 

With communities like the Filipino organization in the Rocky Mountains ... this particular association of Filipino workers were laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even with all their challenges, they were out there supporting their communities, creating hamper bags of culturally appropriate food. And it's just kind of amazing to see how there is so much love and so much resiliency amidst everything.

What was that experience like for you, hearing all these different perspectives?

I cried a lot. 

I was so touched. I learned so much from all of the amazing leaders and most importantly, in the case of Vancouver, learning from Indigenous experts Cease Wyss and Senaqwila Wyss.

I just learned more about the impact of residential schools, but also about the beautiful Harmony Garden, where they are working hard to reconnect their own community of Squamish First Nation and with their traditional ecological knowledge and food practices. 

Where did this all start for you, in terms of your relationship with food as you were growing up?

Growing up I was bullied a lot. Especially when it came to food, it was not a source of healing at that moment. Food was actually a source of fear. I had an eating disorder when I was young. 

In doing this work, becoming a food systems professor and connecting to food from a spiritual side, I actually healed my own challenge with food. And so I also want to show through this documentary it is possible to heal. It is possible to mend our broken relationship with food.

A lot of people right now are struggling just to put basic grocery items on the table. So where do you think the message of your film fits within that context?

I think this film is timely, because one thing this documentary shows is food is not just a commodity. Food is more than that. 

It's spirituality, it's identity, but it's also a source of bringing people together. And I think that our government, our leaders, should know that we need to invest in food.

We need to invest in people, especially these wonderful community organizations that are addressing issues like hunger and poverty and community building. So we need more support.