I feel that there is a fair amount of rhetoric in food-centered debates about trying to seamlessly incorporate healthy, fair, sustainable foods into people’s everyday lives so that they don’t even realize they’re there. In the way that you trick a toddler into taking a nap or kids into eating vegetables, we seem to be trying to slip better food into people’s hands without them even realizing it.

Why?

Why bother trying to create “healthy” fast food? Just like the diet industry with their low-calorie high-chemical food and beverages, I am convinced that by taking this deceit-based approach to improving our food system we are only creating different issues, not solving the initial problem (e.g. “organic” coming to mean different pesticides, not no pesticides). We need to change the way we look at food altogether instead of trying to work within the drive-thru, microwavable-meal framework. Our current mindset does not work so why do we think that making small substitutions within the larger framework will have any more long-term success?

Food should be distinct. Not to de-legitimize the very real offences of other industries (e.g. textiles, technology, etc.) but food is more important. Food sustains life. Food fuels us. It shouldn’t be subjected to the same pressures as other industries. Food needs to have a special place and not be lumped into the same category as commodities.

In his article “Why Hunger is Still With Us”, Raj Patel aptly illustrates the current situation: “the fate of food prices is becoming tethered to the moods of the broader world of commodities. The question of what, if anything, sits in the bowls of the poorest people has less to do with the availability of food than with the price of oil.” This is a huge problem. How can we leave the health of people’s bodies up to the whims of the free market? That may be fine and good for the nail polish industry, a luxury good product, but the food industry fulfills a vastly different role. The health of human bodies is more important than the corruption and superficialities that the food system is plagued with today.

We need to set about changing people’s attitudes towards food. We need to get people connected with their food, bodies, and minds and help them realize the interconnectivity. Like Sophie Esser-Calvi pointed out in our last videoconference, this change comes from a place of love. A place where health is prioritized and exempt from the fluctuations of capitalism.