Why’s everyone talking about food all of a sudden?
I have been asking myself that recently, and I don’t know the answer. But I’ll address why we are.
So we left off last time with good food. With Michael’s Pollan’s seductive bestsellers and Will Allen being named among Time’s most influential people of the year, we gotta admit that food’s become pervasive part of public discourse. It’s a loaded word; it’s a political word. And for us here, food’s the thing most of us spend our days losing so (so!) much sweat over. Sounds simple, but it ain’t. Why not?
Let’s take, for instance, our volunteers as an illumination of food complexity. Currently we have 50 volunteers, all college students from around the country, self-organized, super inspired and hard-working. The goal of the summer is Food Justice; both the workshops and the work are oriented around making that a reality for this community. But the volunteers, who are in charge of their own shopping, inevitably fill the kitchen with high fructose corn syrup laden peanut butter and white pasta: not good food. And they get it. The initial reaction is, how ironic. Food Justice Summer, and we’re eating, for the most part, pretty terrible food. But then they see that no, it’s not ironic; it’s totally appropriate. Yes, we’re eating terrible food because terrible food is what’s available here, when you’re on any sort of reasonably realistic budget. Your options are 1) walking 6 or so blocks to the closest corner store, Magnolia, which offers about 5 fruits and vegetable options and 125 alcohol ones; 2) driving 10 min away from the levee down to Wal-Mart; 3) driving even further to Winn Dixie or; 4) driving towards the levee and hazard crossing the canal, which might entail a 25 minute wait at the bridge and then, quite frankly, I don’t even know where the nearest real grocery store is.
So, no, good food is not simple. Food in the lower ninth is not accessible, it’s not nutritious, it’s not local, it’s not diverse. And that’s just the food as a thing itself. That’s not even looking at the whole food system, which brings to light more layers of injustice: the depopulation and exploitation of farmers, the insane average distance your food travels and all the money that passes through all the hands who carry the food to you which in turn makes it more expensive once it gets there, Monsanto’s monopoly, and on and on. Those are just the factors that happened to come to mind right now.
Our food is no good. It’s not good for people and it’s not good for the earth. There are many Americans today who are able to ignore that reality, who are able to access enough good food to keep believing that our food is good. But this “good food” is as much a part of the bad US food system as the bad food is, because it’s enabling the growing gap between good nutritious, expensive and, well, what’s the opposite? – bad, empty, cheap food. That good food exists for some people alongside so much bad food for most people means we have a system of food injustice.
That’s my perfunctory 1 am analysis.
So absolutely we need to grow some more better food. I’m remembering again the Biblical words that I have heard in so many contexts, but that seem especially applicable here, imagining it as, (farmers) “go forth, be fruitful and multiply.”
Now you tell me – why’s everyone talking about food all of a sudden? And what of it is good food talk? And what will it take to make it more than just the talk?
June 16th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
I fully understand the systemic analysis of our food economy and it’s influence on the quality of food we are offered. However, isn’t it too convenient, and unrealistic, to place 100% of the responsibility for the food choices offered to consumers on the ‘system’? For example, isn’t the depopulatoin of our farm land partly due to the economic choices farmers make (seeking more economic security from getting a wage job than farming)? Doesn’t consumer demand play at all into the equation that determines what food is on the shelves at the WalMart in Saint Bernard’s parish? Does Cargill decide which people will grow a garden which will not? I don’t disagree that corporate agricultural interests (indeed, even foreign policy) play a dominating role in the quality of our food supply, but a closer, more detailed analysis might show that there are factors which are not entirely controlled by these interests – by the ‘system’. This is important, because it is here where change can take place – these are the achilles heel of the food industry. For this reason, food coops have survived, even thrived in some places, as an alternative outlet for healthier foods. Direct from farm purchasing by stores, restaurants and consumers is growing. These represent small chinks in the system’s armor, but they have influenced policy. For example, US govt. labelling (i.e. sanctioning) of organic foods was a major step forward to support the market for organic foods. This was only possible because consumers made choices, retailers (like food coops and then major natural food retailers) listened, as did restaurants. This created significant demand for higher quality food, which changed national policy. There are other opportunities where there are weaknesses in the corporate system that can be exploited for a better outcome. You know this, because you’re working in one of those opportunities, trying to figure out where the right combination is that will bring good food to people who don’t have it now.