Food Is Power
When I was in college, a very dear friend lived in a poor are of Sacramento. The nearest large supermarket was only accessible by car or public transportation, which wasn’t always reliable. Closer were two liquor stores with a paltry selection of “fresh” produce. I took for granted the privilege of walking to a supermarket or farmer’s market with fresh and organic produce easily available. Not once did it cross my mind that there were people who had to rely on small grocers and liquor stores as their primary source of food. In my sheltered world, everyone – at least in the United States – had access to good, healthy food. How sad it is I didn’t know any better until college, when I walked into that liquor store and watched in sad fascination as my friend bought “food”, which comprised mainly of meat, dairy and heavily processed food products.
The disparity of food access between higher and lower income areas isn’t novel, but it’s an issue I think vegan advocates must take heed. We tell people that anyone can be vegan (and mostly, this is true), that there aren’t valid excuses for continuing a diet that contributes enormously to poor health, animal suffering and environmental degradation. There is an expectation that all of us have access to the fresh, organic fruits and vegetables that should comprise the bulk of a healthy diet.
The reality for lower income people is different. I think Adam Drewnoski,director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington in Seattle, said it well, “Obesity (and diabetes & heart disease) is a low-income problem, yet we offer middle class solutions.” We expect people to eat well and to easily go vegan, while blindly ignoring the system of oppression that allows higher income people to have Whole Foods and community gardens while leaving lower income people with liquor stores and days-old produce. The Food Empowerment Project, a non-profit striving for justice through food choices, released a study highlighting the problems with food access for lower income people.
Higher income areas had twice as many large supermarkets than lower income areas. Lower income people were twice as likely NOT to have access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and even less likely to have access to organic produce. In many liquor and convenience stores, there were no price tags on produce, leaving it up to the cashier to decide the value of the product. The quality of produce differed drastically depending in location. Higher income areas offered fresh produce (and probably wasted a lot of day-old dumpstered produce) while the quality of produce in liquor/convenience stores was generally poor. Fast food restaurants were far more common in lower income areas. Meat and dairy alternatives were practically nonexistent in lower income areas. In many lower income areas, the population is comprised of people of color. Lactose intolerance is prevalent in African American and Latino communities, yet there is no access to dairy alternatives in lower income areas.
Overall, privileged people are given access to a larger range of fresh and organic products than those living in lower income areas, who are also generally people of color. It’s a form of environmental racism that disenfranchises and disheartens those affected. And it is something that can be forgotten by vegan advocacy organizations and individuals. Addressing the lack of access to healthy food, which is primarily vegan in scope, addresses animal cruelty issues as well. When given the choice and knowledge, people are far more likely to choose kinder, healthier options than not. That can only happen when the system is drastically changed to give people those choices.
The Food Empowerment Project will continue with a follow-up study and, more importantly, seek input from community leaders on how to rectify these disparities. Everyone must have equal access to fresh, organic produce. Every one of us has the right to have access to healthy foods – our lives depend on it.
What do you think can be done to eliminate this disparity? More importantly, how can vegan advocacy organizations and individuals, address our own complicity or ignorance on this issue?
Stephanie Ernst
Marji
Kelly G.
Deb
Mary Martin
Hi Marji
Thanks for highlighting this. It’s very easy for us to forget that eating healthily has, due to the rapid increase in global fast food chains, become more expensive than eating unhealthily. Eating a meat-based diet used to be an expensive way of life; families on lower incomes would not often have it on their dinner table. But now it’s too often far cheaper than a plant-based one – if you have a fast food outlet along your low-income road which is where, as you pointed out, these global chains cleverly place them. I spend a bit of time in underdeveloped countries and there the situation is even more frightening: poverty to the extreme yet bright, shiny fast food outlets abound. And all possible because of factory farming. This is particularly sad to see in many Asian countries that historically had a low meat-consumption diet.
And finally there is the (spreading) developed-world epidemic of obesity, with the enormous costs to lives and health budgets. Yet the global food industry is so powerful that reversing the cause gets only minor funding from Treasuries. Instead, in a wealthy country like Australia, the government pays for a fix at the wrong end – anti-obesity surgery (usually laparoscopic banding).
So, what can us activists do? Remember the health card and use it. There is too much disconnect between what goes on one’s table and the suffering that was caused to put it there. But poor health is acutely felt by the individual. And (my dream anyway), as people become better educated about diet and health, they’ll quietly become better educated about the suffering that exists because others haven’t changed their diet like they have.
(Apologies for the long comment – an issue I’m passionate about.)
Because of stuff like this, I think it’s important to remember the definition of vegan:
“Veganism is a way of living that seeks to exclude, as far as possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing and any other purpose.”
The founders of veganism knew that everyone’s situation was different and had the wisdom to include the words “as far as possible and practicable” — so that everyone can be a vegan, even if they are forced by their circumstances to do otherwise non-vegan things. And I think that’s very applicable in the situations you described where people really don’t have a lot of choice. Certainly when there are practicable choices, we should make them vegan ones, but I don’t fault anyone for not making choices they don’t have. Moreover, those of us with choices should do what we can to give others good choices.
Thanks Marji.
I (also) never had an inkling about this until I moved to Philadelphia. I was blown away when the area we were originally going to move to, around Alex’s campus, had no grocery stores other than corner bodegas, stocked with donuts and water ice and hot dogs and not much else. We were lucky enough to have the option to move farther away, closer to a discount grocery store, but for the thousands of people who live in northern Philadelphia, there’s no real options. It boggles my mind that fresh, cheap produce is plentiful in the working class white areas of the city, but non-existent in the mostly POC areas. While you can access places like the Italian Market on public transportation, it’s extremely tedious and time consuming and expensive to do so. Other modes of transportation, like bikes and cars, cost money and it still takes a lot of time.
So what do we do? I think it’s important to start kids out having access to and enjoying healthy food – so make sure that ALL school lunch programs offer fresh fruits and veggies and limit crappy processed foods. We try to convince co-op programs to open in areas that don’t currently have access to a good selection of fresh, healthy food. And we educate the crap out of people, and I’m not just talking about the people who are mostly eating the poor diets. There’s another set of people who need educating – the upper and middle classes, who control the food resources. Educate us, let them know about the disparity, ask us to fight to give everyone access to the same food items we take for granted.
This is very interesting to me, as I’m from the UK and things are slightly different over here. I guess because everything is concentrated into a smaller area, there seem to be many more supermarkets, etc within poorer areas. For example when I lived in a poor area of London, there was a huge variety of shops on the high street where I lived, including fast food places but also including supermarkets, grocers shops selling cheap fruit and veg (good quality too), multicultural shops selling cheap spices and staples such as lentils and rice, and health food shops selling vegan ingredients. It was all within (short) walking distance of where I lived, or I could very easily get a bus. Now I live in a different city where things are a little more spread out but it’s basically the same deal. Obviously this may not be the case for other areas, I can only speak about where I’ve lived.
The problem as I see it, in the UK at least, isn’t *just* that fruit and veg can be expensive or hard to come by. It’s partly a cultural thing whereby meat/dairy is still seen as a status symbol and many people on a low income are reluctant to give it up because it’s a source of pride that they can afford it (historically, many poorer people couldn’t). My grandmother (who lived on a council estate, not sure what the US equivalent is) often said that she might be poor but she always had meat on the table.
Supermarkets of course capitalise on this by providing cheap meat and dairy products, which they push relentlessly through advertising and promotion, money off deals etc. Vegan staples such as pulses etc are hardly ever advertised or promoted in-store and I think people genuinely aren’t aware a) how cheap they are and b) how to cook with them. Hence many people (not just lower income people to be fair) claim that they can only afford the meat and dairy products the supermarket pushes so effectively. When in fact the same supermarkets stock all the cheap pulses and grains that they could base a vegan diet on.
Growing vegetables in allotments is also a great tradition of the working classes which has fallen by the wayside a bit over recent years (although there are many allotments in the city where I live, and the waiting list is still long, so that would suggest a high demand!). The growing of veg has got a bit of a ‘middle class’ reputation these days which I think is a real shame.
I agree with the conclusion of your article – everyone should have access to vegan food, and we often shouldn’t be so quick to judge people who have little access to vegan ingredients. Part of it is a failure of education, though, and I often wonder whether many people have greater access to a vegan diet than they think they do. I’ve recently started a blog about vegan food which hopefully will highlight the affordability and simplicity of it, and inform readers in the UK about where to get ingredients and how to make vegan meals cheaply. There’s also some info about growing veg, too. http://veganofthenorth.wordpress.com/
My community has a Food Alliance that does many laudable things including distributing fresh fruits and vegetables to nonprofits and sites that feed “the hungry”; making a truck available for use by nonprofits to distribute “recovered” food (including fruits and veggies); and offering cooking and nutrition classes (and trainings so they can be offered at local churches). The truck is especially useful, as access is a big part of the problem in many communities.
The focus on “hunger” doesn’t sit well with me, as it appears to be a function of money rather than access, and it’s not just “the hungry” who are hungry or aren’t eating nutritious meals. These programs perhaps do have a place, but I wonder if creating nonprofits to fill a need (access to nutritious food), is skirting the issue.
I agree with the offering nutritional cooking classes.
Perhaps if you live near a poorer community, you could make it a thing where at least every two weeks you offer a vegan cooking class on how to eat healthily(and vegan ;]) on a tight tight budget.
Dried beans are generally dirt cheap, so I’m sure teaching people how to prepare dried beans would be a good thing to do. Also, it would be a good idea to make it so they are quick recipes and such because if you are working your bum off, the last thing you wanna do when you get home for the night is spend a few hours cooking. :/
Just a suggestion…
And this person here made it their “duty” to make a blog on how to be a vegan on just a dollar a meal! http://dollamenu.wordpress.com/
But they live near a whole foods, but what’s to say we can’t all find a way to utilize this resource of a blog to help those whom we know who are of poorer incomes, eat better? :)