Health, Social Change and the Food Movement

Yesterday I started writing about health and social change and I alluded to the promises of the food movement and its implications for social transformation. Let me be completely clear – I am not currently affiliated with any formally organized aspect of the food movement. However, as I think about the type of social change that will truly make a difference, the change that keeps people like my father physically healthy while also augmenting our collective experience of freedom, it seems to me that the food movement has a lot to offer.

Industrialized food and the commercialization of edible goods that have no benefit for our bodies is one of the key reasons why Americans are falling ill, poor communities and people of color bear the burden of this problem.  Building movement around food allows us to do a number of things:

1. It exposes a dark side of capitalism – the conversation around industrialized food is directly connected to the question of disproportionate corporate power over our well being.
2. It invites a conversation about the environment — Industrialized food is wasteful of energy and water resources.
3. It invites us to build community – a sustainable response to industrialized food demands that we “go local”
4. It allows us to become embodied – the conversation moves us away from a purely cognitive approach and invites us to consider our very bodies and very selves, it has the potential to shift movement away from abstraction.
5. It invites personal responsibility – the conversation highlights the reality of structural oppression while also demanding that each one of us consider how we are individually part of this system with the most important decision we make – what we eat.

It is my belief that an inclusive food movement for exposing serious deficiencies in our current socio-political and economic arrangements while providing a powerful platform for imagining the world we want to build.

Where do I sign up?