Oooh this one hit hard. Part of my PhD research was developing a model that predicted a person's engagement/behaviours around local food and the antecedent that has most predictive power was... morality. In my formative research the participants (who unsurprisingly were majority white) mentioned all of the values you gave above, as though they were facts. This was around the time of peak Pollen time when Farmers' Markets were public health nutrition's answer to everything. It's really interesting to look at this through the lens of anti-racism work and noodling over how to reconcile our food values with histories of violence, oppression and white supremacy.
I am really enjoying your substack. I'm a white woman who's worked in small scale organic agriculture, and public education, and I know some of what you are writing about here. Do you follow Chris Newman's work of Sylvanaqua farms? His writing on farming, food and race is brilliant. https://sylvanaqua.medium.com/ The Atlantic actually had a cover story a few years back about the land taken from black farmers. Sarah Mock has a book called, FARM (and other F Words) where she writes too about this white myth of the small family farm, which you see play out at every farmers market in white social progressive town. Not to mention that so many of our foods and farming techniques were shared/stolen from black and indigenous peoples.
Thank you so much for sharing! Your article has provided great insight that I want to consider for myself, for my fellow RDs in my company, and for nutrition counseling sessions when talking with patients about their food choices, preferences, etc.
This newsletter made me do some self-reflection today about how I convey my values. Thank you.
So inspiring! Thank you for this
Oooh this one hit hard. Part of my PhD research was developing a model that predicted a person's engagement/behaviours around local food and the antecedent that has most predictive power was... morality. In my formative research the participants (who unsurprisingly were majority white) mentioned all of the values you gave above, as though they were facts. This was around the time of peak Pollen time when Farmers' Markets were public health nutrition's answer to everything. It's really interesting to look at this through the lens of anti-racism work and noodling over how to reconcile our food values with histories of violence, oppression and white supremacy.
Thank you, Anjali!
I am really enjoying your substack. I'm a white woman who's worked in small scale organic agriculture, and public education, and I know some of what you are writing about here. Do you follow Chris Newman's work of Sylvanaqua farms? His writing on farming, food and race is brilliant. https://sylvanaqua.medium.com/ The Atlantic actually had a cover story a few years back about the land taken from black farmers. Sarah Mock has a book called, FARM (and other F Words) where she writes too about this white myth of the small family farm, which you see play out at every farmers market in white social progressive town. Not to mention that so many of our foods and farming techniques were shared/stolen from black and indigenous peoples.
Thank you so much for sharing! Your article has provided great insight that I want to consider for myself, for my fellow RDs in my company, and for nutrition counseling sessions when talking with patients about their food choices, preferences, etc.