Every Bite Counts: Exploring Food Justice in the Classroom

[guest_blogger]

Today’s featured blogger is Holly Bauer, author of Food Matters: A Bedford Spotlight Reader.

Food is an essential part of society. Food sustains us. It provides our bodies with the nutrients and energy it needs to stay alive and healthy. Food unites us. Whether it’s a late-night tub of ice cream with a friend or a holiday gathering, food allows us to connect with our family, friends, and even community. Food distinguishes us. Our diets portray our cultural background, identity, and racial history. And most shockingly, food divides us. Although food is integral to our livelihood, millions of people across the United States and world do not have equitable access to healthy food. That said, how do we motivate students to care about it? The fourth edition of Food Matters offers several ways to connect students’ lived experiences to the larger social, cultural, political, and ethical realities that affect food consumption and production. Here are some potential ways to make food justice relevant to students:

We can make it personal.

I find that students enjoy writing about food choices when they can relate their personal experiences to the broader academic questions posed by the readings. This edition features readings from Jill McCorkle and Lily Wong who take a closer look at how their food choices reflect their identity and values. Using these readings as model texts, you can ask students to explore why they eat what they eat, how it reinforces their sense of self, and how they would be impacted if they did not have access to these foods. 

We can make it local.

Connecting issues raised by the readings to local food issues can help students understand the larger debates and complexities around food justice initiatives. You can ask students to examine campus resources, such as a basic needs hub, campus dining options, and food-based clubs or organizations. They can also research food-related organizations or projects in the neighboring communities, such as food banks, community gardens, indigenous food projects, or community groups focused on shared food values. Using Kathlyn Yee’s piece about black food co-ops in Ohio as a model, students can highlight the work these organizations do and analyze why they are needed.

We can make it political, economic, historical, cultural.

While eating is a shared human experience, many people give little thought to the broader implications of their food choices or the political and socioeconomic systems shaping those choices. Food choices are inevitably connected to nutritional science, agriculture, and cultural practices. They also say something about our values and the principles we live by. The readings in Food Matters suggest that we have a range of moral obligations and responsibilities related to food. Examining political, economic, historical, and cultural aspects of food production and consumption helps us understand our moral obligations to other people and communities. Various writers, such as Bennet Goldstein, Ligaya Mishan, Katherine Wu, and S.E Smith offer ways to help students use a food justice lens to analyze our food system. Is access to enough healthy, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food a human right? How is food justice connected to other social issues, such as racial justice, environmental justice, and sustainability movements?

We can make it global.

While everyone has a relationship with food and a vested interest in the current and future food supply, writing about food can also help students explore global questions and problems. How do we justify food waste and overconsumption in certain places when other parts of the world have food shortages and malnutrition? If we have the capacity to feed everyone, are we obligated to feed the world? Reading articles by Chad Frischmann and Mamta Mehra, Chidinma Iwu, and Lela Nargi, can provide students with a framework on how to analyze our food infrastructure and understand its global reach. 

The fourth edition of Food Matters is filled with readings about food justice that can be used to promote meaningful discourse about how our food infrastructure disenfranchises marginalized communities. Connecting students to food justice initiatives not only creates awareness, but it can also foster agency to make better food choices and/or advocate for better access. We all play a role in our food infrastructure and if we want to see a change, we must acknowledge that every bite counts.