Don’t Let The System Tell You What’s For Dinner

By Kristin McMahon, communications and development supervisor

Top 6 Foods for the Revolution

In a free country, invisible forces still largely control what’s on (or not on) our plates. To shift the power, we pulled together a list of ways you can stand up for what’s right as you sit down to eat. Here ya go: 

+ Homegrown Food. Nothing says Resist like growing something yourself and rejecting the exploited farm work, greenhouse emissions, factory farming, racist policy, and food waste characteristic of our backwards food system. 

Read more about the trouble with our food system here, here, and here and search out community gardens near you if you don’t have your own growing space.

+ Food of your people. The American diet is whitewashed. Preparing the authentic, culturally specific foods of your people is a great way to buck centuries of forced assimilation. 

Learn more about the beauty of eating like your ancestors here, here, and here. 

+ Food that makes you happy. Diet culture has prescribed a moral value to every food in history. What’s a ‘good’ food one day is ‘bad’ the next and vice versa. What should be a joyful, life-giving experience is now riddled with shame and guilt and a spectrum of eating disorders. Eat that deep fried Twinkie or plain bowl of lettuce. Don’t fret your food choices.

Read more about how diet culture is making us crazy here and here. 

+ Free Food. Capitalism has made it so food is a commodity for some people to profit from while an unforgivable number of people go hungry. Food insecurity is a policy choice but we continue to treat it instead as a necessary evil. Let’s fight for a day when everyone has access to good food regardless of how much money we have and until then, come to Bloom Community Food Center where we have all sorts of delicious, free food (the best tasting food of all IMHO). 

*The Black Panthers pioneered universal free breakfast for their community and everyone benefits from following suit. 

+ Food at The Polls. We get to decide who is making the decisions that affect our food. However, rampant voter disenfranchisement is depriving people of their right to vote. It’s no accident these people are the ones who struggle most with poverty and hunger and are disproportionately BIPOC folks. These are people who often have to work while people with privilege dominate voter turnout. The team at World Central Kitchen and their partners are trying to level this imbalance with good food by dishing up meals for folks in line during elections. 

Head to the polls and grab a bite to eat. Relish your right to choose our leaders in hopes that someday our Food System will feed everyone well and equally.  

Register to vote here and learn more about how we can work towards free and fair elections here and here. 

+ Food with Friends. It’s hard to start a revolution by yourself. The Power is powerful and it requires strength in numbers to overturn. Eat with other people. Make sure all kinds of voices are represented at your table, especially those who have been historically talked over like Black and Brown voices, Indigenous voices, Immigrant Voices, LGBTQIAA+ voices, voices with disabilities, Low-Income voices, Non-Binary voices, Female voices. Eating a good meal with a bunch of likeminded rebels is sure to lead to positive change. It’s also more fun to eat with others and nice to have someone there to tell you if you have food in your teeth. 

Join The Hunger Coalition to summon our strength from the ground up and create a healthier, more equitable harvest for the masses. Email us at [email protected] or call 208-788-0121 talk more. 

*Disclaimer: the author is very White and heavily influenced by the wisdom of renegades in the field like Vu Lee, the Community-Centric Fundraising Team (like really cool writer, Nina Yarbrough) and all the people who’ve informed their work, the folks over at Civil Eats, Black activists like Killer Mike and Stacey Abrams. MLK’s radical fight for economic justice. Our friends in Canada who inspired Bloom Community Food Center. Drop a line to [email protected] to weigh in.