Discover Top Posts Tagged with #politicsoffood

A few days after the General Election, we held an event at City Hall, one of London’s most iconic & political buildings, on the politics of food. A diverse panel of women covered a big range of topics including food poverty, slave-free food, food waste, gender politics in professional kitchens, Brexit, sustainability and more.

Here's a recap of some of the areas discussed at our Women In The Food Industry - The Politics of Food Debate.

#womeninthefoodindustry #politicsoffood

Politics and food. Period.

I wrote a post on my Facebook account saying that I would only post this one political post and then I’m signing out on that. I’m actually thinking of getting of FB for a while any way. Sometimes, and you know what I’m talking about, it gets stupid and now we’re in probably the most insulting election year ever. That can only mean one thing: more eye rolling than my sockets can handle. People are amazing.

I wrote the post. And because my friends are my friends I got a lot of likes, a record number of shares and one guy who I don’t know who apparently didn’t agree with me. That’s okay. I unfriended him because in this year with all the mean comments he was not so bad but I’m thin skinned.

I’m bringing up politics because even though more people think about or claim they think about food than ever before, there is still little talk about the politics of food.

The politics of food doesn’t always fall under climate change though that’s part of it. It doesn’t always fall under farms, though thats part of it as well. The politics of food reaches in every direction. Hunger, health, environment, work ethics, monetary. There are more.

No one talks about food. Not in the real grown up way we should be. I love Michelle Obama and her food and fitness mission but not one word on hunger and the horrible stuff we’re fed and how sick we’re becoming.

This isn’t a “gluten intolerance argument or no carb/no fat/it’s sugar that’s the devil no it’s not it’s lard” type of argument. It’s a serious “let’s challenge the status quo that IS NOT WORKING” type of argument.

It’s an argument based on corporations and big pharma and industrial farms and food deserts and the affordability of fresh produce AND the system that doesn’t give us enough time to cook for ourselves. We can’t even afford to work a regular work day and go home and cook real food for our families. Wonder why we’re sick and uneducated about that? Wonder why we eat fast food and suffer from inflammation and make people feel like crap for not being thin and rich?

Yes, it’s also about kids not knowing that vegetables grow in the ground and all the other things Jamie Oliver brought to light. Thank you, Britain. It’s about jobs and humane behavior toward the animals we eat and the respect for the land. It’s about money and poor people.

And it ends up being about people not nourishing each other. Not living in a cohesive, intelligent way.

You know what happens when people aren’t given the support to take care of themselves? They become distressed. They hit bottom because they can’t take care of their families. They can’t afford health care for the diseases that have become them. There is no more preventative medicine once we become more American as our bloodlines are here longer. In other countries they take naps and cook AND do business. In a world where the dysfunctional rules and supports other countries, we all lose.

And thus we live in fear and we make irrational decisions.

So yes, all of politics is about food. Why don’t we bring this up? Why is it always the happy, vegetables with kids photos? Our leaders need to be getting really deep in there. Stop obsessing over the symptom and dig in deep.

Feed us.

#politics #politicsoffood #electionyear #jamieoliver #inflammation #farms #industrial farming #health