Eating culture of the Navajo Nation

The eating culture of the Navajo Nation is heavily influenced by the history of its people. The Navajo are a Native American people located in the southwestern United States whose location was a major influence in the development of their culture. As such, New World foods such as corn, boiled mutton, goat meat, acorns, potatoes, and grapes were used widely by the Navajo people prior to and during European colonization of the Americas.

Since then, the Navajo diet has become more homogenized with American cuisine but still retains distinct features of pre-colonized Navajo culture.

Following European expansion, the Navajo Nation was formed and today remains a large but impoverished entity within the United States. Like many Native American peoples, the Navajo Nation faces many problems related to poverty. The region of the United States occupied by the Navajo Nation is considered to be a food desert and a significantly disproportionate number of Navajo people face food insecurity relative to the average American.