Food is a map. Meals are a bridge, a tool, that connects those most impacted by criminalization, underemployment, governmental surveillance and poverty. By Amber Butts I didn’t receive my grandmother’s salmon croquette recipe until the end of her life. We have the same hands, our middle fingers curving right and left at the last knuckle....
Category: Food Is Political
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African Cuisine Is Still Largely Ignored On The Global Stage
When many people think of African cuisine, they associate it with images of starving children, and how on earth could such a hungry continent create anything of substance? By Danai Nesta Kupemba The greatest magic trick ever performed was colonialism, and the performance is still going on. Much of the world continues to be willing...
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Prison Food, Abolitionist Geographies, and Food Sovereignty: Food as a Tool of Resistance
Eating in prison is deeply political. Carceral institutions weaponize and transform the role of food provision into a tool of control, dehumanization, and state-sanctioned violence. By Kanav Kathuria and Jamesha Caldwell Food conditions in prisons across the United States have drawn increased media attention in recent months. Incidents such as white supremacist Jacob Chansley—also known...
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Cops Actively Prevent Marginalized Communities From Accessing Food and Safety
The existence of cops is integral to keeping poor people from having their basic needs met, whether it is through criminalization or guarding dumpsters full of food. CW: poverty, mentions of police violence On Tuesday, February 16, images of a dozen cops guarding dumpsters went viral on Twitter. People were rightfully horrified—and unsurprised—that cops were...
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How Food Insecurity and Eating Disorders Are Connected
Blaming individuals experiencing food insecurity for their food choices and body size puts them at even higher risk for disordered eating behaviors and developing Eating Disorders. CW: discussions of disordered eating behaviors and eating disorders By Patrilie Hernandez An estimated 50.4 million people currently experience food insecurity in the United States, and those numbers are...
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Let’s Reject Diet Culture This New Year
Every New Year, we are flooded with diet culture marketing, imploring us to shrink our bodies in the name of “healthy” living. Let’s begin rejecting the diet culture mentality. By Dalia Kinsey Diet culture: a toxic belief system that exclusively links thinness to desirability, worthiness, healthiness and morality. Every year the U.S. diet industry uses...
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Food Insecurity, Anti-Blackness, and Fatphobia: What Food Access Advocates Need To Understand
We can’t talk about the politics of food insecurity in the United States without talking about systemic racism, anti-Blackness, and fatphobia. By Patrilie Hernandez, MS It was almost one in the morning when I ended my shift as the hostess of an upscale Latin American restaurant in downtown St. Louis city when I got a...
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Eating Disorders In The Trans Community Are Often An Attempt To Cope With Cisheteropatriarchy
Rampant eating disorders in the trans community and a lack of healthcare access creates a devastating public health issue that needs to be addressed immediately. CW: eating disorders, transphobia By Connie Tran A few months into my eating disorder recovery, I remember having the somber realization halfway into a meal that a relapse was imminent...
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I Wish I Could Put My Caribbean Culture On A Plate And Eat It Before It Disappears
My mother tells a story of coming to a foreign country as a child, feeling isolated and unmoored from the Caribbean culture that shaped her, but finding an anchor in food. My grandfather taught my mother to cook. He imparted his understanding of and love and respect for food. She talks about it often. Standing...
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Lizzo’s Body Is Not A Political Battlefront
White women crying in “disappointment” about Lizzo is nothing short of their belief that fat Black women should always tend to their wounds coming to the surface. CW: diet talk By Rasheed Ajamu “Body Positivity” icon Lizzo recently decided to partake in a “JJ Smith’s 10-day smoothie detox” and gave her social media following a...