Brenda Sanders interviews Dr. Lakshman “Lucky” Mulpuri (Instagram: luckyeatzmd), who graduated from the University of Michigan and Wayne State University School of Medicine. Dr. Mulpuri has served as managing director for the 501c3 non-profit organization Auntie Na’s Village (Twitter: @ANV_Detroit) in Detroit. He is a former president of the Plant-Based Nutrition Group (PBNG) and the chief executive of PlantsNourish. He has been intimately involved in policy initiatives spanning the local, state and federal levels, particularly focused on communities of color. He also developed and implemented the first ever mandatory plant-based medical curriculum for all 300 first-year medical students at Wayne State. Dr Mulpuri’s work has been featured in Veg News, Forks Over Knives and numerous newspapers and television stations. As a community activist and a doctor he is a strong proponent of the benefits of whole food plant-based nutrition for the community and the patients he serves.
Some key moments in this podcast:
[ 2:20… ] Discussion about Dr. Mulpuri’s phrase “lunch room to hospital pipeline” and how people are set up to fail. “...the school to prison pipeline is something that we're very
familiar with, but we oftentimes discount the effect that the environment can have on the health of many of the people that we serve…”
[ 11:23… ] They discuss racial oppression through dietary restrictions: “...it's very fascinating to me to see how the food system has been designed in this almost perfectly optimal way to ensure that individuals are constantly inundated with unhealthy messaging (and) a lack of healthy options, and more importantly an inability to actually discern healthier choices that stem from their actual cultural roots…”
[ 16:47… ] Great discussion about how “decision fatigue” impacts low income people and causes them to make poor choices in their diets. “...there are so many different things in an individual's life, particularly when financial means aren't as easy to access, transportation services may be more difficult, and all these various stresses throughout a period of time…”
[ 43:52… ] Discussion about how the dairy industry uses public policy and advertising. Dr. Mulpuri discusses how public policy is skewed to push dairy and how we need to end subsidies to animal ag companies: “...the dairy industry's impact on the average American's health goes beyond that of profits. It goes beyond that of good old American “got milk” ads. This is an issue of racial insensitivity and oftentimes severe malignance towards certain groups of non-eurocentric backgrounds and the language may sound strong, but all you have to do is look at the prevalence of lactose intolerance among communities of color and ranging from African Americans to Hispanics to Asians, the percent of lactose intolerance tends from 75% to all the way up to 95% of these populations are lactose intolerant…”
ABOUT BRENDA SANDERS
Brenda Sanders is a vegan food justice activist who co-founded Thrive Baltimore, a community resource center that offers free classes, workshops, cooking demos and other programming that supports people in living a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle. She’s also executive director of Afro-Vegan Society, a nonprofit organization that provides resources to people in marginalized communities to assist them in transitioning to veganism, co-creator of Vegan SoulFest, an annual festival that celebrates culture and all aspects of vegan living and co-owner of The Greener Kitchen, a vegan deli and food distributor that produces plant-based foods that are both affordable and accessible. Brenda is also the host of Food & Justice, a weekly online video series and podcast that tackles issues of food access, environmental justice, health disparities, dietary racism, and other topics related to food and justice.
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ABOUT THE SHOW
Food & Justice w/ Brenda Sanders is a weekly online video series and podcast that tackles issues of food access, environmental justice, health disparities, dietary racism, and other topics related to food and justice.
