Faculty of Environment
SFU’s Tammara Soma explores the healing power of food in new documentary
How food connects with our identity and culture and facilitates healing is at the heart of a new documentary—Food is my Teacher—featuring Simon Fraser University food systems expert Tammara Soma.
Soma is the research director and co-founder of the Food Systems Lab and an assistant professor at the School of Resource and Environmental Management at SFU. She also co-wrote and co-directed her first documentary, Food is My Teacher, with award-winning filmmaker Brandy Yanchyk, which will air on CBC later this month.
In Food is My Teacher, the filmmakers travel across BC and Alberta on a journey to learn how food is healing within different communities.
“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,” says Soma.
In Alberta, Soma visits the Baitun Nur Mosque in Calgary to explore how her Muslim identity has helped her heal her own relationship with food; and travels to the Bow Valley where she met up with volunteers of the Bow Valley Food Alliance and the Filipino Organization in the Rocky Mountains.
One of the spaces highlighted in the film is the Community Kitchen at SFU a space where students often come together to cook and enjoy a plant-based meal. Many of the recipes and student events integrate fresh organic produce grown at the Embark Sustainability Learning Garden.
“When I think about the healing power of food, I think about how our food systems have a lot of unmet potential,” she explains. “We have a food crisis where people are hungry and food insecure and, at the same time, in this current industrial food system we have a lot of food waste.”
She notes that food holds the power to heal the body, spirit and also the planet. As a mother of three, teacher and lifelong learner, she has dedicated her life and heart to developing a more equitable and sustainable food system in Canada and beyond.
Food is My Teacher starts streaming on CBC Gem on Friday, August 25th and premieres on CBC TV in Alberta and BC on Saturday, August 28th, at 7 p.m. local time.