i have to agree with the racist/classist/queerphobic etc. analysis here.

in doing interviews and workshops with recipes for the people many queer and trans POCs begin by sharing their stories of how they relate to food— personally, spiritually, emotionally, physically, and collectively. many of the discourse is uncovers that as youth QPOCS back home or in their neighborhoods had sustainable agriculture, had community gardens among neighbors or backyard gardens where neighbors would trade green foods and fresh produce. furthermore, people talking about their homelands talked about agricultural backgrounds, about a common understanding of knowing the source of your food in the marketplace, having long-standing relationships with your village/town/barrio/pronvince’s growers and fisher people. food was more intimate without the colonial and 1st world interruptions. in regards to omnivore practices, if people ate goat or chickens, most likely they had to by killing the animals with their bare hands.

people of color arrived to the u.s. for more opportunity because they were forced by militarization/starvation/false pretenses, all imposed by institutional 1st world governments that made it key to pillage their soil, their crops, use agricultural practices that would deprive any sustainable possibility for healthy re-growth in order to speed up the corporate model for greedy 1st world, usually u.s. consumption.  also, the u.s. empire isn’t the u.s. empire if they don’t re-condition and make themselves the faux-authority on what is “healthy” “cool” “expensive” and other communities in that capitalist racist construct are meant to follow this. how many times have i been told by my own relatives surrounded in fresh papaya, coconuts, mangoes, and other produce that eating meat is healthier, that that is what is american, that is what rich people do.  after all, isn’t that what we globally are supposed to aspire to? internalized racism destined to be richer, whiter, meat eating-er?

when you go to the philippines you can find all of the following: mcdonald’s, burger king, wendy’s, even a kentucky fried chicken. why? because american corporations are distinctly related to globalizing third world markets. colonial empire and militarization also affects what people have to bring to their table because they are forced, “re-educated” and left with minimal options of healthy. if people are eating crap, they are less likely to revolt, to respond in critical awareness, because if the bad education, the soldiers, the pillaging doesn’t get the brown people, well their diet will give them diabetes, cancer, and chronic heart disease. this same colonial conquest goes for low income neighborhoods and urban places where food deserts are common place. 

when a people are militarized so much of course in hawaii, they are going to eat food in a can. it’s mobile as mentioned, it doesn’t need electricity for refrigeration, it is falsely convenient. but how many affluent white straight people eat spam? they were never placed in the racist and disparate circumstances to even consider it.

in working with LGBTQGNC (lesbian, bi, gay, transgender, queer/questioning, gender-non conforming) youth communities in shelters, who are homeless, who are surviving a corrupt(mostly white, straight, & adult) social service system, they are fed pop tarts and aldi’s juice boxes. they are given stale wonder bread and candy and chips. this is what foundations and grants that offer funding supply youth who are usually poor, people of color, immigrant, and in urban areas. this is a conscious act, not coincidental. their lives are seen as less valid and therefore, given less access to healthy green fresh food. their choices are shaped by privileged adults who dehumanize their experiences and don’t exactly prioritize or provide the healthiest freshest nutritional food options, among other factors.

don’t confuse individual choice with having freedom in food and socially conscious food access. many people everyday don’t have that leisure and are surviving systems that give them mcdonald’s and french fries as a “vegetable” in lunch cafeterias the only option for nutrition. these choices are government sanctioned, corporately ensured, and systemically enforced.

to spell it out for you:  people of color and poor people/youth are not given the choices of proper nutrition and food. worse even, their rich produce and farm food his/herstories have been stolen by u.s. and 1st world corporate ideals of eating. people don’t just wake up and say, hey i am going to eat crap today.  there are racist, classist, and heteronormative systems in place that control every aspect how we perceive, grow, buy, eat, enjoy and consume food.  despite all this though, there are low income, poc, urban and poor communities engaged in critical food practices, growing and eating. food sovereignty is a movement that has pre-existed before the white, usually straight, affluent vegan discourse co-opted (read: racism) what they consider to be healthier food. too frequently do i see another macrobiotic vegan restaurant in nyc that serves japanese, south indian, latin@, and african food made by white people and then told oh those poor people in —insert brown/black/indigenous country here— don’t know how to be healthy.  white, rich and straight adult people didn’t invent healthy or good food. if anything they eschewed their meat and potatoes ideal and in turn, stole many of color and indigenous healthy food practices for themselves.

just because you don’t see people of color and poor people growing/eating healthy green food, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. it just means someone else is controlling the discourse. please see consider a few resources:

http://www.decolonialfoodforthought.com/
http://www.cskdetroit.org/EWG/foodjustice.cfm
http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/3545/true-food-justice-requires-racial-justice
http://brooklynfarmer.wordpress.com/
http://www.foodsecurity.org/
http://mxgm.org/web/programs-initiatives/index.html

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