Icon or hazard? The great debate over fry bread

Overall diet blamed
Fry bread didn’t get Maldonado, 53, in this situation by itself, of course. She struggles to give up junk food and doesn’t exercise. But she has switched from cooking fry bread in lard to dipping it in oil.

“It isn’t the culprit that has made Indian people heavy,” said Tammy L. Brown, nutrition consultant with Indian Health Service’s diabetes division. “It’s the fast foods, the sugary drinks. It’s the overall diet.”

But, if fry bread gets Indians talking about health, then that’s fine by Brown and Harjo.

“Just because it was food that was forced on us doesn’t mean we have to keep embracing it,” Harjo said.

For a long time, Indians have made fun of commodities and even refer to an overweight person as having a “commod bod.” Jokes are tossed around that fry bread has killed more Indians than the federal government.

Confronting the problem
But artist Steven Deo, a Creek and Euchee Indian, said laughing is a way Indians have dealt with obesity and diabetes.

“At some point, we have to confront that,” he said. “We have to prepare the next generation to come out of that poverty, to strive for bigger and better things.”

Deo created a series of public service announcement posters, and debuted his first one — a picture of a big, tan piece of fry bread with the words: “Frybread Kills” — at a show in New Mexico last year.

“It has stirred some controversy,” Deo said. “But at least we’re talking about it now.”

It’s mid-day at the Health O’odham Promotion Program, or the HOPP, and the step class is in full, sweaty swing. Health lessons are postered around the gym, reminding Indians to get their five fruits and vegetables a day and that white bread and rice convert quickly to sugar. Music is blaring, the treadmills are filling up and Mashone Antone, 36, is on her second trip to the community gym today.

Lifestyle changes
Last October she took a hard look at her life: She was overweight and so were two of her three children. They stayed in the house a lot, ate fast food, indulged in fry bread and barely thought about health.

Laura Rauch / AP Melvina Garcia participates in an aerobics class at the workout facility on the Tohono O'odham reservation in Sells, Ariz. in this photo taken last June.

But Antone, a juvenile probation officer, wanted to change that, for her children and for herself.

Now she’s up every day at 5 a.m. for a two-mile walk, then hits the HOPP before work and again after work. She’s shed 30 pounds and wants to lose 50 more. Her daughter often joins her at the gym, and now the family takes walks and plays basketball.

Soda is out, fruits and vegetables are in, and fry bread is now only a rare treat.

“When I think about it, that was my downfall,” Antone said. “I don’t miss it.”

Harjo would be proud.

Facing resistance
But getting someone with Antone’s enthusiasm is a challenge for the gym’s staff. Nutritionists estimate 80 percent of the Tohono O’odham people are obese. They hold a weight loss challenge, fun runs, offer nutrition counseling, even teach people how to shop for healthy food and host a camp for children at risk for obesity and diabetes.

“I do get a lot of resistance from people who say they want to change their eating habits, but don’t want to change the way they cook,” said dietitian Dolores Galaz.

Another attitude Galaz encounters: Indians not wanting to be thin, for fear they will be the odd one out in their overweight families.

In her column, Harjo had some parting advice: “The next time you find yourself swallowing some leftover news du jour or get that suicidal urge for fry bread, just slather lard all over the magazine or television listing and apply it directly to your midriff and backside. That way, you can have the consequence of the rotten stuff, without having to actually digest it.”

The gym staff isn’t as harsh; they’re just hoping to change eating habits little by little. All the better if the fry bread controversy jump-starts that.

“People want to change because they see what’s happening to their elders and their parents. I just think they haven’t known how to go about changing,” Galaz said.

That means losing the lard and white flour in fry bread and trying wheat flour and canola oil, something tribal Chairwoman Vivian Juan-Saunders has started doing.

“I like to eat fry bread, but instead of eating the whole pie, I eat half,” she said.

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