Teresa Corção, slow food ecochef, and founder of Instituto Maniva, shares with Laureline Simon how loving food and cooking can expand our understanding of what conscious food systems are. This dialogue is part of a storytelling project in partnership with Climate Illustrated, for the Conscious Food Systems Alliance convened by the United Nations Development Programme.
Laureline Simon: I am very grateful for the opportunity to listen to you today, Teresa. We met through the Conscious Food Systems Alliance, and this exchange is part of our exploration of consciousness and food. So I am curious, what does a ‘conscious food system’ mean to you?
Teresa Corção: For me, your question has to do with my experience, my personal story, and maybe I should go back to the beginning. I’m the youngest daughter of an old couple. My father was a well-known writer in Brazil and my mother was the woman of the house. At the time, I was born in ‘55, we still had maids living in the house with their families. After slavery these people lived in my house but weren’t really connected with us. Yet, it was a connection between two different worlds. And we always had a cook. My mother was a good cook, but at that time women in Brazil didn’t go to the kitchen often – they gave orders and there was someone to cook for them. The cooks’ part of the house was full of happiness, full of fun, full of music. I remember being very young and quite fascinated with the magic that happened in the kitchen. One of the ways I found my way to happiness was through eating, and later, cooking. I remember making these little pies that we have in Brazil. We still killed chickens in the back of the kitchen. It was a very old fashioned type of cooking. I remember this inaugural scene of my cooking path as this woman with the scarf around her head would put the radio on and sing a beautiful song. She would give me tasks and I would assist her. I could say that she was my first chef!
Cooking for me became a way to connect to happiness and to life – my first conscious exercise. You have to eat to be alive, and if you cook, you can give yourself the things you and other people love. Being very connected to the core of life is what cooking and eating means for me.
However, at that time in Brazil, there was no such profession as a chef because it was connected to slavery. We have a heavy pattern of colonization dividing people into two groups : poor or rich, worthy or not. I am upper middle class, and cooking was something that people in my class weren’t supposed to do. But it was still a woman’s task and no woman could think about getting married or having children if she didn’t know how to cook. My mother was very keen on letting me learn these little tips. She was a very particular woman, not from her time. She would be a feminist today, maybe bisexual. She wanted me to have my adventures in the kitchen and to learn about things. As I was learning to cook, I was also very good at writing and art, leading to art school and design. Throughout this period, I was always cooking for my friends, which wasn’t fashionable like it is today. People would leave to do all these very adventurous things that I didn’t like and I would stay at home cooking. When we went camping, I was always the cook. I was kind of shy, so for me it was very comfortable to be backstage creating.
When I was 19, I went to Saint-Martin School of Arts for design in London and stayed for a couple of years. In London, I had my first a-ha moment: I was fascinated by how different cultures had different cooking habits, and the tastes and flavors could be a pattern of their culture. I lived near Portobello and went to the Indians, to the Pakistanis, to the Japanese, to the Chinese, to everyone. Here I started to broaden not only my palate, but my view of food culture. When I came back to Brazil, I still had to graduate and went to work in a design office but found it a very lonely activity and wanted to be creative. My sister had just opened a restaurant and asked me to join her in a partnership to take care of the kitchen and the menu.
When I started in ‘81, I had eight people in the kitchen who were migrants from the northeast of Brazil and mostly illiterate. How could I expect them to cook something they didn’t know about or relate to? At that time, it was fashionable in Brazil to make Italian, French and Portuguese food because of our colonization. I wasn’t happy with that and started to get the old family recipes to make our own menu based on old habits. Everything was about becoming conscious of the role of food, and how becoming connected to topics like geography, history, and culture allows you to enjoy it more.
That was the beginning of the path that took me, 20 years later, to the slow food movement. For 20 years, I was doing family food in a huge, thriving restaurant downtown. People loved to go there – it was like an oasis. The other restaurants were trying to make very fancy food, and I wasn’t. Also for my cooks in the kitchen, it was a language that they could more or less understand. It wasn’t the kind of food they ate in their own land and old house but it wasn’t sauce béarnaise, for instance. I remember one day I got to the kitchen and they were eating black beans and rice, which is very typical in Brazil, with sauce béarnaise on top. It didn’t look good!
So 20 years later when I joined the slow food movement, a friend took me to Portugal to see the first prize they gave for preserving food culture in various countries. Seeing Vandana Shiva with the seed movement opened my mind to understand why connection to food and biodiversity was so important to people.
For me, the consciousness in the food system has everything to do with knowing where you are, who you are, who you are with, who came before you, as well as biodiversity and geography.
It’s realizing that you are not anywhere, you are somewhere, and you are in this place. By being in this place, you have privileges and difficulties linked to eating. Today, when so many people are displaced, consciousness is also about being aware of your space, and aware of your potential, and the potential of that space. It’s a mix of humanity, nature, the environment, and their potential. It’s not only what happened before, but also what can happen in the future.
Laureline Simon: And if we connect to this idea that it’s not just about the past, and knowing where you are, but it’s about the potential and the creativity that you mentioned several times, how do you weave the two together? Or how does that connection between past and future manifest in the work you do, in relation to the food you cook, or where you are today?
Teresa Corção: It is about respect for what came before. For instance, I love tea, and the tea ceremony in Japan is something that teaches people that to repeat is not being uncreative or less. To repeat is to learn, and to learn you need time to do it again and again and again. I think this respect for what came before is very, very weak nowadays. Maybe it’s because of our consumer system of having to buy and consume more – the core of capitalism is to consume and lose and gain and lose. You feel this strongly when you get to know Indigenous people. I had this wonderful experience of being deep in the Amazon for a week with some People that had this fishing knowledge and are learning almost every day, all the time, from nature and from ancestrality.
Consciousness also has to do with letting go of this achievement mode and being able to enjoy the learning mode, which feeds you so much, and then you can be creative.
With the tea ceremony in Japan, I remember learning that you have to do the same thing for 20 years, and then you can create. Oh my God, they are so wise! They are so humble. And being humble also has to do with consciousness because we are not going to learn everything in this lifetime. Our lifetimes are short. Maybe we should be conscious that we have to leave things behind for other people to be creative. This would be a change towards better habits and practices.
Laureline Simon: Can I ask you where your inspiration comes from when cooking?
Teresa Corção: I think the inspiration in cooking is a process. In Instituto Maniva, the NGO I founded, we say that food is ‘culture, affection, and memory’ or heritage, because “memory” in Portuguese means “heritage.” So it’s culture, affection or love, .. and memory or heritage. For me, inspiration comes in two ways. One of them is very technical – like a computer that has marks of taste. If you taste something once it doesn’t make a real mark, it’s new, so you don’t know where to put it in your memory. But if you taste it again and again, it’s like learning a new language and then you say okay, I got it, I know what this taste wants to tell me. It can be sour, it can be sweet, it can be spicy. Then you can create this palate, this kaleidoscope of points of flavor, and combine them. And if you do this for a long time, you can do it very mindfully, make the dish in your mind, and just confirm what you had thought when you actually make it.
It’s also a Proustian thing, it comes from memories. If I put this typical Brazilian Macaron in my mouth, I remember my mother instantly because she would do that very often. So it’s memory, practice, and being open-minded.
I’ll eat anything. The weirdest thing I’ve eaten was a worm that grows inside the trunk of a tree in the Amazon.
The People I was with think it’s a delicacy, and they make a ceviche out of it. And it looks really horrible, it’s a moving worm. But when you put it in your mouth, you understand why people love it, because it’s kind of nice, it’s not bad. Another thing I ate which was really weird was when I was doing this program in the Amazon about sustainable fishing. They have the largest freshwater fish in the Amazon, called Pirarucu, and they clean all the offals, all the insides, and make a dish of it. And you have to eat it because it’s kind of an initiation. And this dish has a very strong taste, and it has blood in it. But again, if you do it in an open minded way, and don’t resist, and don’t eat a lot in the first place, then you realize that it’s interesting. So because palate is something that you train, maybe if you eat it again you can start to enjoy it.
Laureline Simon: It is also quite fascinating to think about all the different dimensions of your work: you’ve worked as a chef, you’ve worked with education in favelas, you run an NGO, you are part of an eco-chef movement, and you are currently studying design. Can you tell us how those different dimensions feed into each other?
Teresa Corção: It all comes together in my obsession with something that I call the path of food. All those complementary elements relate together because the food path is a system. I think of it as a road where things are left and can be found back and forth. And those things are at different stages on this path. Not only the stages like planting, or taking care of the Earth, but planting, processing, transporting, commercialization, cooking, eating, and discarding. A few years ago, I started to see a lot of theories about this path, this food system, and I realized that many, many people underestimate the role of people in this system. For me today it’s a combination of things and people. It’s seeds and the farmer; processing and the person that does that, sometimes the rural woman; transporting, and the person that has the truck; commercialization, and the trade person; food used in recipes, for cooks or chefs; the consumer, the people or the animals; and waste. For me, everything is linked. It’s not disconnected. I can see this complementarity, and that’s why I came back to design, because design uses systems thinking. It’s about how things can be complementary, and how life can be better if you are conscious of this complementarity. Collaboration can work as a way for the path of food to be harmonized.
I had the restaurant for 40 years, and it was very successful. I started doing not only my family’s food, but also looking for what I call Brazilian identity food. I spoke to the cooks in the kitchen and they told me about manioc flour. It started to become my obsession because I realized it was the staple food of Brazil before colonization and remains a staple food for Indigenous Peoples. They took a poisonous root and transformed it into the base of feeding all their Peoples.
Manioc root is all over Brazil, and it’s keeping everyone alive. In food sustainability, food safety, it’s kind of an icon.
When I started in 2000, people didn’t realize and said, “No, this is poor people’s food.” Even the nutritionists said, “Oh, it hasn’t got enough protein, it hasn’t got enough vitamins.” They didn’t realize that Indigenous Peoples put it together with fruit, with fish. It’s kind of a perfect diet. People talk a lot about the Mediterranean diet because we are so colonized that still today, Europe is our goal of happiness. But in the Amazon, they have a very, very good diet because they eat things from manioc. They sometimes hunt but it’s kind of difficult, so fish and fruits make up the majority of their everyday diet. They don’t have many vegetables, but they have nuts, like the Brazil nut. Nutritionally speaking, it’s a really interesting diet.
So, ultimately, I came back to design because I wanted to deepen my understanding of the path of food, this road, this interconnection, and why it doesn’t work sometimes. Currently in my master’s degree I’m researching people who realized this before me. I’m very interested in understanding how you can identify the knots and places in this path where it doesn’t work – things that could end up being bad for your body, or for economics, or for the environment. Maybe we could use it to show people, to teach kids, to have public policies that can be conscious of this. It’s kind of a thermometer that could help determine where the problem is in the path. Design is good for this kind of diagnosis and systems vision.
Laureline Simon: So you have connected with people living in the Amazon and to people, as you said, working in the kitchen who still had some knowledge about identity food in Brazil. But as you did this work where you learned more about different foods and different food ways, did it create any kind of a-ha moments or moments where you realized something bigger about the food system in Brazil or about the way you were working with food? You’ve already shared a lot, but if there is something unexpected that happened in this work with Indigenous foods, I’d love to hear it.
Teresa Corção: One of the things I realized when I met this Indigenous group was how they relate to each other and to us. Those people, and others that I met, have a very good listening capacity. They sat with me when I started to talk to them. I go to a Tibetan Buddhist meditation place in Rio, and the nun had given me some Buddhist items to put in the forest. It was one year before the pandemic, but there was already so much damage from Bolsonaro letting the forests burn. But I wasn’t sure if I should put those items in the forest, you know? We already have so much interference in Indigenous culture, I wasn’t sure if that was OK. I asked the man who was the connection between our group of chefs and the Indigenous people, and he said, “Let’s ask the chief.” The nun had also made a little film because I told her I wouldn’t be able to say what she wanted to say to them. I showed them the video of this Tibetan nun, and they were looking with so much respect. I could imagine that these people were saying: “If this person sends us a gift to take care of the forest, we have to pay attention to it”. So they paid deep attention. And I was very cautious, I felt a little bit awkward, and I said, listen, if you don’t feel good about this, I won’t be offended in any way – they accepted it immediately. They were so respectful about someone else from another culture, another place, wanting to give them something. For them, I realized there was no problem with being different. They took it with great care and respect, they extended their thanks, and they said they were going to put it in the trees. And funny enough, those people didn’t catch COVID throughout the whole pandemic.
I realized that, for the first time, humanity is listening to Indigenous Peoples. In Canada and the United States, they are becoming political people and coming to the political scene. We didn’t see that 10 years ago, so I think it is a big change in the world. Because they are bringing different types of relationships to problems. Maybe we are becoming more complementary ourselves in the world. I think we were very invested in the idea that a good life could only come from certain types of habits, so not only consumption, but also classical knowledge. I think this is changing so much. I learned that from Indigenous people. They have so much to teach us.
A very good example is with sustainable fishing. In the 80s, this huge fish that’s two meters long and weighs 200 kilos was going extinct. There was an NGO that wanted to sustainably manage the fish, so they got scientists from many parts of the world to sit together with the Indigenous people. They knew that they needed their knowledge. They started to establish rules and got into the management technique where they needed to count the fish. One of the scientists said, “Listen, this is impossible. How can we count the fish underwater?” An Indigenous man said, “Listen, whitie, we know how to count the fish.” The scientist said, “How come?” The Indigenous man said, “Yeah, we count them to fish them all.” And the scientist said, “But how can you count them?” And the Indigenous man taught the scientist that this kind of fish needs to come up to the surface to breathe, because there’s not enough oxygen in the water. Every time the fish comes up, it makes a little noise. And the Indigenous people pay attention, they listen. They can recognize the different noises between a male and a female, between a young fish and an old fish. They know all the different sounds. Interestingly, rivers in the Amazon go up and down about 15 meters between one season and the next. They go up, so the trees look like bushes, and then they go down and you can see the huge trees. When the waters go down, it forms little ponds, and the fish are caught there. It’s nature’s way to fish. The Indigenous men went to this pond, got very quiet and started to count the fish. They said “it’s 114,” and after they fished, they sent the numbers to the office in Brasilia, and it was about a one percent error. It was amazing and unforgettable. Now, there’s a surplus of production, so they are leaving more fish in the river than they have to. Simultaneously, the fishermen, who are the Indigenous and the other people that live by the river, are getting more money. It’s a very, very clever management technique that helped the fish and the people and gave us a new fish to taste. We had never tasted that fish before in Rio, it was a new thing.
Laureline Simon: It’s amazing how we might have thought we have this great technical difficulty of counting fish underwater, just because we had never imagined that we could listen to fish breathing.
Teresa Corção: Listening is such an old fashioned practice, and when we meditate, we are listening to our interior, our breathing, and our anguishes or joys.
I think it’s very important to become aware of how we should improve our listening.
Indigenous people listen more than us because they know that they depend on the environment all the time. If they don’t listen, then they don’t hear the tiger coming, or the crocodile. I would imagine that being deaf for an Indigenous person would be very, very threatening, much more than for us. In our society, everything is about understanding by eyesight.
Laureline Simon: I have read recently that having power offers you the opportunity to stop learning. Since power enables you to control your environment, you do not have to learn from it continuously. I can imagine that in societies where one is not trying to have power over nature, there must be a constant learning process through listening and attuning to the environment, which would then become a value. Whereas, I sometimes have the impression I am living in a society where we do all we can to have and keep power so that we don’t have to learn anymore. Yet, if we become open to learning continuously, we may realize that we do not need to hold on to power anymore. This could also bring a sense of relief, because learning continuously is much more sustainable than trying to always dominate.
Teresa Corção: Power has to do with the future. It has to do with what you can have in the future, what you can dominate in the future. Listening is now, listening is learning in this moment – we are learning here, talking to each other. But we do need to move forward… I think we have to become more aware of how not knowing can be good.
You have to put yourself in a position where you are very hungry for all kinds of knowledge.
You also have to think about why you need power. I think sometimes you do need power – you have to drive, and you need power to drive. But we’ve become so alienated from the now that we think only the future matters. We are always on the run, on the run, on the run, as if ‘now’ doesn’t matter. Tomorrow matters. It’s very connected to the unsustainability of the world because it’s connected to greed. Greed is believing that tomorrow is better than today – but today is so good. If you enjoy today, if you are thankful for today, and if you connect with people today, this is life. Tomorrow is a plan, but life happens now– it doesn’t happen tomorrow.
Laureline Simon: My last question was going to be about the future. But we can also stop there and stay present with the now.
Teresa Corção: It’s funny because many practices about the future, like superstitions, and some Indigenous rituals and practices, are done today. If you do a ritual, it will take care of the future. We copy this in the capitalist world by making money. If we make money today, tomorrow will be OK. But other people know, like the farmers, if they plant well today, tomorrow they will be OK.
Going back to food, I think food connects us with the deepest of our pleasure. It’s kind of a hook that keeps us up. And when it links you to pleasure and health, it’s perfect. You don’t always need to eat healthy, you can give yourself a moment of indulgence to have deep pleasure. For instance yesterday, I had my third vaccine, and Bolsonaro said people shouldn’t get the vaccine because they could transform into an alligator. Then there were all sorts of memes and jokes on the internet about becoming an alligator, and yesterday, after taking my third vaccine, I said “I think I’m turning into an alligator,” because I made this beautiful, huge steak, with a sauce that my mother used to make. I was so happy. I think that’s it, food makes miracles. On another day I went into a shelter for a campaign we did connecting farmers to people that need good food. When I got to this shelter, I gave the cook a very special rice from Rio, and I said, this is very good for making sweet rice, like rice pudding. I looked at all those very, very old people sitting there and I said, My God, this is such a special part of life. Maybe because I’m a daughter of an old, old father, I worship old age. I’m fascinated with it because my father wasn’t a new guy, but he was very alive, writing until the last day of his life. So can you imagine those people, the old guys, a little bit forgotten and lonely, getting a rice pudding that’s really been done with care and love?
Food is really magical to connect you to life, it’s as simple as that.
I’m also connected to a young neuroscientist at Harvard who’s researched the microbiome and its connection to neurological illness. They’re now realizing that your microbiome is adapted to the environment. So when you move populations like refugees, for instance, they have lots of diseases because their immune system goes down. They get diseases they never had before because the food for the microbiome comes from the food of the environment. It’s a big reason to protect what you eat, and connect what you eat with nature. We always talk about local food as an economic issue, but not as a health issue. It’s not only a question of culturally or psychologically, but physically adapted food.
Laureline Simon: I am also very curious about the fact that our own microbiome affects our mental health, and that some microbes and inflammation can trigger depression for instance. Thinking that some mental health challenges can be addressed by better food is really heartening to me.
Teresa Corção: Yes. During the pandemic, I was by myself for a long time and doing lots of Zooms. I realized that in the middle of the day I had to get up and go to the kitchen and cook something, and it was kind of a necessity. I needed to do something with my hands and to create something. That’s why I proposed to host a workshop about cooking with the members of the Conscious Food Systems Alliance, because it’s not only about cooking. There are lots of workshops about cooking today that teach how to do this or that recipe, but they don’t pay attention to the broader sense of cooking. What matters is that you’re doing something completely different from the other things you do. It is so strong and connects you so much with the present. The other day I saw this Ottolenghi masterclass. And he said something that I loved, he said,
“First of all, you love to eat. Then you love to cook. And then you love to cook for other people.”
I love that. It’s such a simple and wise thing to think, and it’s exactly what happened to me. I started to love to eat when I was little, and then I started to cook. And then I realized that cooking for other people, giving pleasure to other people, was also so good. In fact, my father, who didn’t like to eat, the first thing he ate that I did, he said, “Wow, this is really good, you really know how to do that?” I said, “yes.”
