Show Notes
Why Traditional Mexican Food Is Healthy — and How America Got It Wrong Every time someone says Mexican food is unhealthy, I know exactly what they’re picturing. They aren’t picturing Mexico. They’re picturing an American taco: a hard shell or a fluffy white flour tortilla, fatty hamburger, sour cream, a thin smear of salsa that contributes almost nothing except salt, and a yellow substance legally allowed to be called cheese. After eating that, they naturally conclude Mexican food is the problem. That conclusion doesn’t come from biology. It comes from branding. Traditional Mexican food looks nothing like that. More importantly, it behaves nothing like that once it hits your body. So let’s slow down, take a breath, and do what we always do here—follow the evidence, not the vibes. First, Let’s Talk About the Taco America Put on Trial The American taco stacks the deck against itself. It leads with saturated fat, piles on refined carbohydrates, and adds dairy on top of dairy. Meanwhile, it offers almost no fermentable fiber. The gut gets nothing to work with. Blood sugar spikes. Inflammation follows. That taco doesn’t help anyone. But here’s the key point: it isn’t Mexican food. It’s ultra-processed American convenience food wearing cultural drag.
Now Let’s Look at a Real Taco By contrast, a traditional taco starts very differently. It starts with a corn tortilla, not refined flour. Then it adds beans. After that, it layers vegetables, real salsa, and often cabbage. Finally, it finishes with avocado. Sometimes it includes fish. Sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, the structure holds. And structure matters. Because when you look at how that meal behaves biologically, it stops looking indulgent and starts looking smart.
Corn Tortillas Aren’t the Villain — They’re the Foundation First of all, traditional corn tortillas come from nixtamalized corn. That process treats corn with lime, and no, that isn’t trivia. Instead, nixtamalization improves mineral absorption, improves protein quality, and preserves resistant starch. As a result, resistant starch passes through the small intestine untouched. Then it reaches the colon, where gut bacteria ferment it. Consequently, those bacteria produce short-chain fatty acids, especially butyrate. And here’s the important part: butyrate fuels the cells lining your colon. In addition it strengthens the gut barrier. It reduces inflammation. Finally, it improves metabolic signaling. So no, this isn’t a carb disaster. On the contrary, it’s colon nutrition.
Beans Do the Heavy Lifting — And They Always Have Next, add beans. At that point, the conversation usually derails, so let’s keep it grounded. A serving of beans delivers roughly ten grams of fiber. Not one kind — several kinds. Soluble fiber. Insoluble fiber. Resistant starch. Plus protein. Because of that, beans slow digestion. They flatten glucose curves. They improve satiety. Most importantly, they feed gut bacteria that matter. Specifically, bean fiber supports Akkermansia, a gut bacterium associated with better insulin sensitivity and a stronger gut barrier. In other words, beans don’t fill space. Instead, they build infrastructure. And yes, when you pair beans with rice, you get a complete amino acid profile. Humans figured that out centuries ago, long before protein powders and “ancestral” snack companies tried to monetize it.
Now Let’s Deal With Refried Beans — Because This Is Where People Panic At this point, someone inevitably says, “But what about refried beans?” So let’s clear that up. First, frijoles refritos does not mean “fried twice.” It means well-fried or thoroughly cooked. Traditionally, people cooked beans, then lightly cooked them again, often mashing them for texture. So yes — refried beans are traditional. Very traditional. Moreover, mashing beans does not remove fiber. Cooking beans does not turn them into sugar. Beans remain beans. So where did refried beans go wrong? Fat choice. Historically, many refried beans used lard.
More from Fork U with Dr. Terry Simpson
With all the spices we have access to, it is amazing how bland recipes have become. I have many cookbooks, some from great chefs, television personalities, and friends. What I am always surprised by is how bland the food has become. People seem to think a bit of salt, pepper, maybe onions, and garlic provide the spices one needs. Perhaps it is because some associate spice with heat. Mostly because many have never experimented with some of those great warm spices available. A pinch of coriander, some freshly ground cumin, a little cardamom, or a touch of cinnamon can turn an ordinary dish into something remarkable. And the most astonishing part is that these spices financed voyages around the world, built cities, created fortunes, and caused people to kill one another. Without the spice trade, it is safe to say that the United States, as we know it, would be vastly different from what it is now. The money loaned to the United States, when we were a fledgling country, came from the wealthy spice merchants from what was considered one of the great hyperempires of the world, based in Amsterdam. But before we go to the birth of the United States, let me take you to the meatball.
Tea: The Drink That Built an Empire—and Helped Break One China had the tea. Britain had the appetite. John Hancock had a business to protect.
MesoAmerica and Chocolate In our series looking at foods that built civilizations, today we are going to stay in the Americas with chocolate. Chocolate has been used as currency, consumed by kings, incorporated into religious ceremonies, and prescribed as medicine. Today, it is a multibillion-dollar industry that wants you to believe that eating chocolate is an act of preventive cardiology. I mean, why not? They convinced us to give chocolate to people we love, eat it when we are happy, when we are sad, when only the dog understands us. Don’t feed chocolate to your dog. And we have done all this with a bitter seed that most of us would probably spit out if we tasted it straight from the tree.
I’ve been doing a series about foods that built civilizations. In this episode, we are talking about the potato. It is difficult to imagine that thousands of years ago, people constructed large buildings, managed rivers, built monuments, and created art. We have glimpses of these civilizations through stories, archaeology, and the structures they left behind, but much of their history has been lost. Imagine, we don’t even know where Cleopatra or Alexander the Great are buried, yet we know their stories. As European powers conquered Indigenous peoples, their languages, cultures, and oral traditions were suppressed. When a language disappears, so are the stories preserved within it. Our clues come from archaeology when we uncover a monument, a building, or an ancient settlement. In the Andes, the potatoes they cultivated were not the Russets, Yukon Golds, or fingerlings you find in the store today. Different colors, shapes, and textures. Adapted to survive the elevations, temperatures, and growing conditions. Biodiversity protected their food supply against frost, disease, and changing environmental conditions. If one variety failed, another might survive. The ancient wisdom of diversity that Andean farmers developed over thousands of years was lost when the potato eventually reached Ireland.
In our series about foods that built civilization, we talked a lot about grains, from wheat to corn to rice. Today, we are taking you to the ocean, with the civilizations that salmon built. From California to the interior of Alaska, salmon, a staple, allowed people to settle into villages, develop complex social networks, art, and trade routes. Those trade routes are as large as the ones in the Mediterranean. Some tribes built communal homes and developed complex art and language. Some were Seafaring tribes with canoes up to 60 feet long that traveled across oceans. All because there was a fish that would return in large numbers to streams and rivers, reliably, predictably. So predictable, the people could build their lives around salmon runs. So much so that some built a calendar not only with lunar cycles, but also with the return of the salmon. Civilizations have always gathered around food and water. The Mediterranean connected people who grew wheat and olives, giving people time to make wine, mine copper, build ships, trade with their neighbors, and occasionally go to war with them. Asia had rice and grain near the great river systems. The reliable calories from rice and grains allowed villages to become cities and to travel by water to trade. Today we are going to my home, from the Ventura River in California to my home state of Alaska.