Jessica B. Harris spent over 40 years doing something most of America was not paying attention to. She traced the food of the African diaspora - from West Africa through the Middle Passage to the American South to the modern kitchen table. Twelve books. A James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award. A Netflix series called High on the Hog that finally made visible what food historians had been documenting for decades: Black Americans did not just cook American food. They built it. The culinary traditions of the American South are inseparable from the knowledge, labor and culture of enslaved Africans and their descendants. That is a legitimate and important historical claim. What matters for this conversation is what her work also reveals about the diet those traditions replaced.

The traditional West African diet - the one that existed before the transatlantic slave trade disrupted everything - was built on whole grains, leafy greens, legumes, fresh fish and substantial fiber. It fed the microbiome. It kept the gut healthy. It was, by modern nutritional standards, close to optimal. Then came centuries of forced dislocation, sharecropping poverty, urban segregation and what activists now call food apartheid - the systematic concentration of low-quality, high-processed food options in neighborhoods where Black Americans live at disproportionate rates. The dietary shift that followed was real. The health consequences of that shift are documented and serious. That part of the argument is correct. The part that follows is where I part company with the narrative.

The Numbers Are Not in Dispute

Black Americans are roughly 20 percent more likely to be diagnosed with colorectal cancer than white Americans and about 40 percent more likely to die from it. Ultra-processed food consumption has been linked to a 45 percent higher risk of precancerous polyps. And the most striking comparison in this entire conversation: colon cancer rates among African Americans run around 60 per 100,000. Among native Africans eating traditional diets the rate is below 1 per 100,000. Same genetic heritage. Drastically different outcomes. As the research consistently shows, this is not genetics. It is diet. It is environment. It is what goes in the body over decades.

Those numbers should stop anyone. They are not political talking points. They are documented mortality data with a clear dietary signal attached. The traditional diet protected against this disease. The modern American diet - particularly the ultra-processed, low-fiber, high-sodium version that dominates food deserts and lower-income communities - does the opposite. If you are Black and you care about your health, the food question is not abstract. It is survival arithmetic.

Where the Narrative Goes Wrong

Here is where I am going to push back on a reflex that runs through much of this conversation. The food desert argument is real as far as it goes - lower-income neighborhoods do have fewer full-service grocery stores and more fast food concentration. That is documented. But the conclusion that many activists draw from it - that Black Americans are essentially trapped, that the system has made healthy eating impossible, that the disparity is entirely a product of forces beyond any individual's control - is where the analysis breaks down and starts doing active harm.

There is a recurring pattern in parts of Black American political culture that frames every disparity as evidence of white advantage and Black helplessness. Whites have better grocery stores. Whites have better access. Whites have better health outcomes. The implicit conclusion is that nothing can change until the system changes first. That framing may feel righteous. It is not empowering. It is paralysis dressed as analysis. And the people who adopt it - who sit back waiting for a system to solve a problem they can influence today - pay for it with their health.

Agency Is Not a Denial of History

Acknowledging personal agency is not the same as denying that structural barriers exist. Both things are true and you have to hold them together to think clearly about this. Yes, food deserts are real. Yes, the concentration of processed food in lower-income neighborhoods is a genuine public health problem. Yes, the historical disruption of traditional African diets through slavery and its aftermath has had lasting consequences. None of that is in dispute. What is also true is that within whatever circumstances a person currently occupies, choices remain. What goes in the cart at the grocery store is still a decision. How much processed food versus how much produce ends up on the table is still a decision. Whether to cook beans and rice or stop at a drive-through is still a decision. These are not equally easy decisions for everyone. But they are decisions.

The research on diet and colorectal cancer is not ambiguous. Fiber protects. Ultra-processed food harms. Traditional African diets - heavy in legumes, greens and whole grains - were doing something right that the modern diet is not. That knowledge is available. It is not expensive to act on. Dried beans, lentils, brown rice, frozen vegetables, canned fish - these are not luxury items. They are cheaper than the processed alternatives in most cases and dramatically better for the gut. A person does not need to escape a food desert to make meaningfully better choices within their current access. They need to decide to.

The Prescription Is Right Even When the Politics Are Wrong

Here is what I will concede to the original framing: the conclusion is correct. Food is medicine. Diet is strategy. What you eat is one of the most powerful determinants of whether you develop colorectal cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes or any number of chronic conditions that are killing Black Americans at disproportionate rates. Personal control over diet is real and significant. Waiting for the healthcare system to save you from chronic disease that food choices could have prevented is not a plan. It is an abdication.

Where I depart is from the political scaffolding that surrounds that correct conclusion. When the message becomes "you are a victim of food apartheid and the system must change before you can be healthy," it undermines the very agency it claims to be protecting. It tells people their situation is beyond their influence. It gives them a political explanation for a problem that also has a personal solution available right now. The system should improve. Grocery access should be equitable. Those are legitimate policy goals. But people cannot wait for policy to decide to eat more fiber. The cancer does not wait for policy either.

My Bottom Line

Jessica Harris did serious work that deserves serious engagement. The dietary history she documented matters. The health disparity data is real and demands attention. The connection between the destruction of traditional African foodways and modern chronic disease rates in Black communities is well-supported and worth taking seriously. All of that is true.

What is also true is that the disparity between 60 per 100,000 and less than 1 per 100,000 is not a fixed destiny. It is a dietary gap. Gaps can be closed. Not by waiting for a political movement to redesign the food system - though that work matters too - but by making different choices today with what is already available. Hard work and sustained effort change circumstances. They always have. The people who act on that truth are not betraying a political cause. They are protecting their lives.

Healing does not start with a prescription and it does not start with a protest. It starts with a plate. That was true in West Africa before anyone had ever heard of a food desert. It is still true now.