Soy and Greens Are Like People

Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, a critique and analysis of our global food system, spoke to a standing room crowd at the CUNY Graduate Center on Friday January 28th of this year. The topic: "What are the Barriers to Food Sovereignty?" The crowd: a curious mix of students, activists and concerned citizens. The talk was a two-hour meandering affair ranging from the current worry of global food prices to what Patel called "a lack of imagination of how deep the problem goes".

Food, argues Patel goes is more than basic nourishment although, yes it does nourish us. It is, after all, what we need to live but unlike air or water (marketers aside), it's more than simply functional - it's cultural and social.

This is likely why the food movement, like the environmental movement, has developed a distinctly elitist and paternalistic edge. For many, especially in the United States which lacks a cohesive food culture, the current food movement is a way of not just getting people to eat in ways that are better for their bodies and for the earth, but also a way in which one can impart values and culture. It's not merely healthier to eat sustainably sourced meat it's the ethical thing to do. Despite being an increasingly secular society, we've imbued food choices with morality. Never mind the fact that meat, for millions of the world's population is completely out of their price range and for many within the United States purchasing sustainably grown meat would snap an already stretched food budget.

The purveyors of this pure food movement gloss over the very real socio-economic pressures that forces too many of us to eat unhealthily. They also, points our Patel, ignore the pernicious power of marketing. For every dollar spent on health food marketing, $500 is spent schilling junk food, much of it branded as pseudo health food. The problem goes even deeper - too many of us literally have no idea what to eat, what is good for us to eat. We're told fat is bad, so we load up on sugar laden non-fat half-n-half. We're told sugar is bad so we load up on artificial sweeteners which may or may not have questionable health effects. We've forgotten, as nation how to eat.

In its stead is a kind of finger wagging, with those who stubbornly purchase locally grown, sustainably raised food in one corner. In the other? Everyone else. That this process is another form of othering, a way of sowing dissent so that people fail to come together on issues of common ground is lost amidst feelings of smug superiority.

In focusing so much attention on what Americans are eating we ignore the systemic issues of why we are eating this way that goes beyond farm bill legislation, to a larger socio-economic system that casts a handful of individuals in the leading role and shoves the rest of us as silent extras. This is clearly seen in the case of migrant farmers who, even within the food system, are at best cast as silent, sad actors, at worst wholly ignored. But how many people are told every day that they don't matter? From Supermarket clerks, to restaurant waiter's, nurses aids, home attendants, customer service representatives. In other words it's a system within which the people are treated as much as commodities as the food that they produce and consume.

Yet while we in the United States struggle to recognize the connections between food and this larger socio-economic system, our brethren around the world are not so slow. From the so-called food riots in Algeria and Tunisia to the current unrest in Egypt, food serves not as the cause of the protests but rather the spark which alights ancient tinder dried by systems that failed to serve the needs of its people.

It's a lesson from which we could all take a page.

Photo Credit:Alameda County Community Food Bank