food

food

Real Food Comes from Plants

Submitted by Ida on Tue, 09/29/2009 - 06:30

The sight of slabs of flesh should horrify and disgust any sensitive person if they exercised their inborn compassion. Habit has dimmed their native kindliness. Their palates have become abnormally corrupted and conditioned by taste for dead food, its flavoring and odors. People who eat slaughtered creatures everyday find it hard to imagine what to substitute for meat, not realizing that meat is the substitute for vegetables. – Helen Nearing, Simple Food for the Good Life

October 1st is World Vegetarian Day, and one thing I think would bring about a great deal of positive change is for us to do away with the obsolete idea that plant-based foods are somehow a "replacement" or "substitute" for animal-derived pseudo-foods. I cringe nearly every time I read these terms in cookbooks and other dietary literature written from a vegetarian perspective.

The idea that the products of other animals' bodies can be food for us is a sham perpetuated by dietary speciesism. We misguidedly perpetuate this oppressive framework when we promote plant foods as "substitutes" or "replacements" for other animals' flesh, eggs or milk. This falsely frames plants as an artificial food source while furthering the pretense that products derived from other animals' bodies are somehow a genuine source of food. Read more...

The Garden: A Model for Change

Submitted by Ida on Tue, 09/15/2009 - 06:30

I highly recommend watching Scott Hamilton Kennedy's documentary The Garden. This film brilliantly illustrates the following concrete realities as they are experienced by oppressed communities within the United States:

It shows how the existing power structure is poorly suited to serving the interests of oppressed peoples.
It shows how the existing power structure works extremely well at serving the interests of the owning-class.
It shows how the existing power structure is bolstered throughout by White supremacy.

Pollan Favors Upscale Food Retailer Over Universal Healthcare

Submitted by Ida on Mon, 08/31/2009 - 18:29

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Whole Foods Boycott In spite of the national boycott against the high-priced chain of supermarkets, best-selling food author Michael Pollan insists he's going to keep on shopping at Whole Foods Market. The corporate "natural foods" retailer is currently being boycotted by consumers, healthcare advocates and labor because its co-founder and CEO John Mackey is lobbying against universal healthcare.

Pollan claims he's concerned about healthcare, but says the "hypothetical consequences" of a successful boycott against Whole Foods Market could mean "the cause of improving Americans' health by building an alternative food system, based on more fresh food, pastured and humanely raised meats and sustainable agriculture, would suffer." Oh, and why does Pollan say he's concerned about healthcare reform? It has nothing directly to do with creating equitable access to healthcare for the millions of uninsured and under-insured people in the U.S. Rather, as Pollan says, "Because if health insurers can no longer pick and choose their clients, and throw sick people out, they will develop a much stronger interest in prevention, which is to say, in changing the way America feeds itself."

'Pay More': The High Cost of Class Bias in Food Politics

Submitted by Ida on Sat, 08/29/2009 - 15:15

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As a poor person who has experienced food insecurity, I find many mainstream writings on food politics hard to accept as creditable. At times I find the professional middle class norms and assumptions agonizing to read. While sometimes writers make trivializing and token references to differences of class, race, sex and citizen status, these superficial acknowledgments are patronizing and tend to marginalize and perpetuate the ways the food system affects the lives of the poor and working class, people of color, women and im/migrants. The fact that these commentators ignore the experience of those of us most oppressed by our food system is too infrequently questioned.

A class-conscious look at the writings of best-selling author Michael Pollen can help illustrate the practical harms that class-biased food advocacy can have on poor and hungry people. Pollan's writings on food politics are rooted in his own privileged position as a professional upper-middle class White man. Much of Pollan's class and race bias is hidden under a voice that depicts his own privileged experience as normal and universal. He thus specifically writes for other class-privileged Whites and it is not much of a surprise that many of his affluent White readers don't question what is oftentimes their own experience as well.

School Lunch and Univeral Access to Food

Submitted by Ida on Wed, 08/19/2009 - 19:59

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Not only does Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey oppose universal access to healthcare, he also explicitly opposed universal access to food and shelter. As he said last week in his anti-universal healthcare op-ed:

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges.

Yes, how can we say people should have universal access to healthcare and not also food and shelter? Millions of people in the U.S. are hungry or otherwise food insecure and/or homeless or living in substandard housing. So obviously people's needs are not "best provided" by "market exchanges." In fact, far from being "beneficial" the marketplace is inherently oppressive since by design it denies people equitable access to meeting their basic needs.

Support Univeral Healthcare, Boycott Whole Foods Market

Submitted by Ida on Fri, 08/14/2009 - 10:21

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On the heels of my post earlier this week on supporting universal access to food and health care, comes this report from today's Democracy Now!:

Single-Payer Advocates Call for Boycott of Whole Foods

Advocates for universal healthcare are calling for a boycott of the grocery chain Whole Foods over the views of its CEO, John Mackey. This week Mackey wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal criticizing President Obama's plan to create a government-funded public healthcare option and dismissing the single-payer healthcare system of countries such as Canada and Britain. Mackey said he doesn't believe in "an intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter," which he said are best provided through "market exchanges." On Thursday, the group Single Payer Action released a letter calling for a boycott of Whole Foods.

Is Vegetarianism an Affordable Health Plan?

Submitted by Ida on Wed, 08/12/2009 - 11:34

I recently read a bumper sticker that boasted: "Vegetarianism is an Affordable Health Plan." Wouldn't that be nice? Well, while I can certainly empathize with the desire to communicate the connection between a plant-based dietary system and well-being, I think this particular bumper sticker communicates a more disturbing message about class, health and privatization.

First, there is the question of affordability. In this respect the sticker ignores the existence of food insecurity and hunger. If people in poverty could afford food then they wouldn't go hungry or otherwise be food insecure. That is, for people who are targets of food insecurity or hunger, any food is by definition unaffordable. Alas, this means for too many people healthful, plant-based, whole foods are in fact beyond what they can afford, which in turn has adverse health effects.

Bryant Terry's Vegan Soul Kitchen

Submitted by Ida on Tue, 12/16/2008 - 17:18

food

Oakland-based eco chef, food justice activist, and author, Bryant Terry works to move the intersections between poverty, structural racism, and food insecurity from the margins to the center of food justice activism to build a more just and sustainable food system.

Mocking Oppression

Submitted by Ida on Mon, 12/08/2008 - 18:39

The baker of the so-called "stuffed turkey loaf" received numerous comments of praise. There was only one comment that questioned what was so funny about mocking a dead bird, particularly when "millions of turkeys are being killed in order to be eaten." I, too, think it's a little hard to find the humor in all this. And until I read the PPK thread on the "stuffed turkey loaf" I hadn't realized to what extent "mock meats" actually ridicule, not just imitate and mimic, the oppression of other animals, which makes "mock" a surprisingly apt term.

Dietary Speciesism: Putting Oppression on the Menu

Submitted by Ida on Fri, 11/21/2008 - 20:57

The exploitation of other animals for the human diet works to structure a human-supremacist society that is bolstered by dietary speciesism. Since other animals are exploited in large part by humans for diet, dietary speciesism plays a central role in promoting human supremacy in general. That is, as long as we're eating other animals we're benefiting materially and psychologically from their exploitation. As a result of these material and psychological gains we're less likely to challenge the system of human supremacy.