Food & Cooking

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on August 7, 2017.

Maca root, chia seeds, spirulina, and cacao—you may know these highly dense nutrients, indigenous to Latin America, as “superfoods.” In recent years, these Mesoamerican ingredients have gained prominence in the United States, readily available in health food stores and popularized in “foodie” culture.

However, the desire for these ingredients, among health-conscious millennials like myself, is not to be conflated with this commercialized trend. Instead, it is rooted in a need to reclaim ancestral food knowledge and embrace alternatives to Western medicine. In other words, maca