Sean Sherman, better known as Chef Sean from The Sioux Chef, has witnessed firsthand the impact that lack of accessibility to nutritious food can have on a population. “I grew up with commodity foods,” says Sherman, who is Oglala Lakota. These foods come from the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), a USDA program meant to offer healthy options to Indigenous communities. Unfortunately, the options are often high in saturated fats and rarely fresh.
“I didn’t realize how awful a lot of those foods were. That was just a part of my daily life for a long time, and for a lot of people, it hasn’t changed. It’s still a part of their daily lives,” Sherman says. “It makes sense why we’re battling epidemics like type 2 diabetes in our tribal communities when our food access is literally the commodity food program or gas station food.”
He says he has cousins his age (he is 49) who have passed away due to complications from diabetes. And he knows it doesn’t have to be this way.
