the published version of this piece can be accessed here.
by genevieve vahl
A couple of years back, I claimed the insurance money from the guy that t-boned me running a red light, totaling my car to afford a new-to-me beater Subaru Outback. I was excited to put stickers on it, like the Wisconsin ‘W’ to show Badger spirit, a configuration of the great lakes as the proud Midwesterner I am. Brands too like Backcountry and REI to show my affection for the outdoors. An indirect way to represent myself, but definitive of my values nonetheless, to the strangers I only catch at a glimpse passing me in the other lane.
One time when I was driving westbound from Milwaukee to Madison, I was honked at as a driver passed me in the left lane. I thought, I am already going over the speed limit, sir. Until he passed in his red Buick Regal holding up a ‘W’ with two hands in Badger camaraderie. A bond we formed from a sticker driving 75 down the interstate.
One sticker in particular I remember purchasing, feeling exceptionally excited, for it represented a set of beliefs I held at my core; meaning I believed in deeply. Or so I thought…
I found this sticker in one those sweet small businesses along State Street in Madison, with the artisanal Wisconsin paraphernalia: the hand illustrated ‘Wisconsin favorites’ tea towels or the Midwest living t-shirts or the third coast stickers – each store with their own flare of tourist goodies. Even though I had lived in Madison for two years at that point, you become a tourist in your own city when your mom comes for a visit on a beautiful July afternoon. We stopped in shops along the mile long stretch that my college budget otherwise could not afford to even be tempted by. Because we all know those bright yellow cat-eye sunglasses will always find a reason to weasel themselves into your ‘budget.’
In one store in particular, a multilevel stand held an assortment of bumper stickers with lefty sayings and witty retorts like ‘COEXIST’ with letters in the various religious denominational symbols. Or ‘Eat Real Food’ in black sans serif font mounted on a plain white background. Yes! That’s it! That’s the one. As in proper Madisonian fashion, the eat local, eat whole foods rhetoric had influenced my personal relationship with food. No longer was I naive to the ploy of processed, packaged foods that disguised chemicals and preservatives as deliciously addictive flavors.
Eating whole is one of my top priorities. I bought my fresh foods from the farmers markets on Saturdays. I religiously made my meals in the anything but ideal kitchens of the freshman dorms; I supported the campus Slow Food chapter every week, all while trying to minimize single use plastic as much as possible. So yes, ‘Eat Real Food’ rang so true to myself I thought it worthy enough to paste on my car.
This same dedication to food also led me to pick up the book “In Defense of Food: an Eater’s Manifesto,” by Michael Pollan. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” he opens the book with in his introduction. Honestly, that was exactly the type of concise, digestible piece of advice I was looking for out of this book. Yes, I want to read a manifesto to better my habits with food. Yet, when I got into the read, the direction was different.
Pollan spends the entirety of the book talking about how the industrialized food system we have here in the US and the resulting western diet are the demise of health for the American people. He talks about how we need to make sure we refuse the processed, refined foods the groceries are marketing to us, rather we need to eat better, more sustainable food that is not mass produced and doesn’t have all of the added preservatives and chemicals.
But what he does not acknowledge to a proportional scale in all of this food system discussion is how this exact industrialization of our food system, that steps away from fresh whole foods into a more expedient system of profiteering, has disproportionately affected low income, often communities of color. I do not believe you can have a conversation about the food system without talking about the inequalities it reigns on those forcibly victim to it – spending the entire book making an incomplete argument.
There is one single line in the entire book, on page 184, speaking to this qualm: “There’s no escaping the fact that better food—whether measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond)—costs more, usually because it has been grown with more care and less intensively. Not everyone can afford to eat high-quality food in America, and that is shameful; however, those of us who can, should. Doing so…” blah blah blah. He goes on and on. But for that point, “Not everyone can afford to eat high-quality food in America, and that is shameful,” is all he’s got on that. Yes, everyone should eat from the farm, everyone should try to grow some of their own food. Sure. But what about those who do not live in areas where that is an accessible expectation? What about those people who do not have access to fresh food because of economic or geographical barriers?
Most often low income communities of color are forced into food deserts: areas defined by the US Department of Agriculture as a “low-income area where access to a full-service grocery store is 1 mile away. But Vanessa Koster, a city planning manager, pointed out half a mile is a more reasonable distance to measure, since many residents don’t have access to vehicles.” This leaves people with processed, refined foods as their only option. Not to mention how much more expensive fresh foods are in comparison to processed foods, adding another barrier to accessibility.
The US has no respect for wages in a time when we must acknowledge now more than ever during the Covid-19 pandemic that essential workers are the backbone of our nation. When wages cannot match the cost of living, fresh foods become luxury, turning to cheap convenience and quantity just to put food on families’ plates.
Food insecurity in Wisconsin affects a quarter of a million households, making that 12.4% of all people and 20.4% of children. In Dane County specifically, 11.8% of all people, and 17.5% of all children are food insecure. The rate of food insecurity exceeds one in three for some of the most vulnerable groups, including households that contain a disabled person (37.7%), Hispanic households (34.5%), African-American households (34.6%), single mothers (34.9%) and households below 100% of the federal poverty level (37.3%) across Wisconsin. By comparison, white people in Wisconsin have lower rates of food insecurity than the national average, whereas Hispanic and African-American households have significantly higher rates of food insecurity than their national counterparts. Hispanics nationally reach 23.8% whereas in Wisconsin, it is up to 34.5%. For Black folks, nationally, it is 25.5% whereas in Wisconsin it is up to 34.6%. These gaping statistics exhibit obvious disparities for those who can least afford another obstacle, especially in our own state.
This all consequently results in this poorer health trend that Pollan mentions. When people rely on the processed refined foods our industrialized food system is selling to us, our health is compromised for a slew of reasons he goes much further into than the sociological effects it has on communities. He mentions how the health of the American people is jeopardized because of this western diet that is failing to provide anything besides monetary gains for corporate giants. But Pollan does not mention the communities who are disproportionately facing these health consequences as a result. In the US, African Americans are 51% more likely to be obese compared to non-Hispanic Whites. In fact, African Americans have the highest rates of obesity than any other racial and ethnic group. So these low-income communities, food deserts, often communities of color who face systemic barriers to equal wages and opportunity are forced to eat the junk that is killing them at higher rates than anywhere else in the world. They have no other option but to buy into a system that cares more about profit than their people.
And now with COVID-19, these communities that are already at higher risk of disease are being killed at disproportionate rates because of the poorer health out of the gate facing a lethal pandemic ravaging the globe. In a COVID e-newsletter from my Madison Representative Dem. Chris Taylor, she gives the stats of this glaring problem.
“Another reminder of the racial inequities that plague our state and nation are the disparities communities of color are experiencing when it comes to the infection and death rate of COVID-19 patients. Black people make up only 6 percent of our state’s population, yet represent 19 percent of the total COVID cases, and 25 percent of the state’s deaths. These disparities show that racism is a public health crisis.”
Another systemic obstacle communities of color face everyday. Of course the people who do not have access to good, clean, fair food that Pollan adamantly preaches are going to have poorer health than those who do, where they are then subject to even more obstacles to a healthy, equal life.
So now “Eat Real Food” is pasted on the back of my car and I am embarrassed. A white girl driving her Subaru Outback says to eat real food as if everyone needs to eat their kale and salmon everyday. It is making a command to do something that many people cannot. A sticker of privilege and access. I bought the sticker thinking, We all need to be eating better and refusing processed foods because it is bad for our health and the environment. But like Pollan, I was failing to look beyond just the health lens. To recognize the social barriers systemically upheld against communities. How eating real food has become a luxury in the United States.
SOURCES:
https://www.wpr.org/access-fresh-food-remains-barrier-many-milwaukee
genevieve vahl 
[…] It’s important to acknowledge the industrial scale, low cost system gives access to food as a human right. Everyone deserves that access. Yet it’s the cheap, fast food that is killing Americans, specifically people of color, at high… […]
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