Ruin Their Crops on the Ground by Andrea Freeman
Review
The thesis of the book is on page 1 and page 9.
I would call this a general/introductory book about food as a political technology. While the book covers many topics in different communities it doesn’t go in depth about one in particular. A good read but it is more of a heavily cited combination of different sources where the author isn’t making a strong argument throughout. The most we hear about her argument is in the introduction and the last chapter with the middle just building framework to support an idea.
On a personal level it did bring me a modicum of comfort to hear that nutrition on an individual basis is influenced by the racial, ethnic, or socio-economic factors. I think a lot of early 2000s diet culture places food choices as the sole result of the individual. This has really pained me all my life that when given no foundation on how to each better society said it was my fault alone. While I have to be the impetus for the change in my life I found solace in understanding how my eating habits were shaped by the different family histories I inherited from my parents.
Quote
“Instead of an important legacy, food associated with Black people becomes a symbol of poor choices that require correction from people who know better.” (2)
“Outsiders often blame indigenous people for their health problems, ignoring the history of colonialism and attempts at genocide and assimilation that created structural barriers to good health.” (32)
“It demands a deeper analysis of the effects of poverty, racism, and government actions that led to inadequate medical services on and off reservations and lack of access to nutritious food.” (33)
“But when they tried to keep chickens or goats like they did back home, they bumped up against city nuisance ordinances prohibiting the animals. This was no coincidence.” (58)
“The Free breakfast Program threatened the FBI because it transformed public perception of the Black Panthers. Suddenly, liberal white and moderate Black people saw the Party as a legitimate organization worthy of their support.” (66)
“Subsidies make the unhealthiest food the cheapest. And prices for basic goods are higher in poor neighborhoods. Items sold in bigger packages cost less per ounce but stores in poor areas generally stock only small quantities.” (67)
“Colonialism, violence, assimilation, corporate domination, and cultural appropriation had a ruinous effect on Indigenous diets. As food jumped across moving borders, a new version of Mexican food emerged that eventually spread across the globe. People came to revere it as decadent and fun but nutritious.” (69 - 70)
“Americanizers assumed that newly educated mothers would and could embrace food habits that would hasten their families’ journeys to become real Americans. But Mexican mothers and daughters could not control the price of food or their access to it.” (82)
“The belief that Latinas are ignorant about proper diets persists, fifty years after the program’s inception, keeping it palatable to policymakers and justifying food restrictions that steer participants toward subsidized commodities.” (83)
“Latine households that don’t depend on USDA nutrition programs have better diets and health outcomes. Corporate profits rather than health considerations play a significant role in shaping USDA nutrition.” (84)
“Children learn to change their tastes and habits as a social survival strategy, and American food is a more affordable status symbol than brand-name clothing or accessories. Rejecting traditional food in favor of U.S. favorites can offer a shortcut up the school social ladder, but it can also wreak havoc at home.” (85)
“Tying together the health of the population and the industry was an ingenious way to ensure the dairy trade’s survival.” (96)
“The influx of milk products to government programs and food banks disproportionately harms Indigenous, Black, and Latin people, who participate in these programs at the highest rates and experience higher rates of dairy- related harms than white people.” (104)
“These ads reflected USDA-driven efforts to expand the milk market beyond white consumers even though the agency knew that drinking milk made most people who are not white sick.” (108)
“Clinical studies contradict these industry claims. Exercising, reducing sodium, and eating less animal protein and more foods like beans, kale, and broccoli build bone density better than consuming dairy does.” (114)
“Many people who survive on SNAP or WIC benefits don’t have genuine choices.” (116)
“Since the first dietary guidelines for Americans came out in 1998, childhood and adult obesity have tripled. Instead of responding to that change in the nation’s health profiles, the guidelines have successfully propped up a flailing milk market.
“Government programs that push milk to the most vulnerable populations for the purpose of boosting Big Food and Ag companies send a clear message: Corporations’ profits matter. Black, Indigenous, and Latin lives don’t.” (119)
“In short, districts treated kitchens more like small businesses than government programs.” (125)
“Whenever advocacy for healthier school meals has led to regulatory reform, corporate pushback has been swift and effective.” (131)
“No matter how many incremental changes alternating administrations make to school food requirements, there will be no significant reform until the USDA is divorced from Big Food and Ag.” (135)
“The USDA is responsible for feeding students who cannot afford lunch. Letting empathetic strangers pick up the tab falsely frames poverty, food insecurity, and discrimination as individual, not systemic, issues.” (140)
“Students who rely on free lunches often consume very few calories outside of school or get them through fast food or cheap, low-quality convenience foods. This means that the USDA has control over most of their food intake. When USDA food is not nutritious, food-related sickness is practically inevitable.. For corporations, their privileged position in school lunchrooms is a gift that keeps on giving. They profit first from their original sales and then many times over across the lifespan of students who form their dietary habits and preferences in childhood. School lunches, initially conceived as a way to level unequal access to food, have created separate nutritional tracks along race and class lines that lead to lifelong health disparities.” (143)
“The ethic aisles in supermarkets represent another holdout. Ethnic is an ambiguous terms that stores apply loosely to any food not categorized as Black or white…This food segregation reinforces the idea that Asian and Latin food, no matter how common it has become among white people (think Taco Tuesday), is forever something separate and exotic.” (150)
“But advertising is not a public good. It is a tool of corporate manipulation that can increase debt, decrease health, and leave its targets worse off. This makes its centrality in the civil rights movement surprising.” (160)
“These days, companies believe they have a greater market share to gain by shunning instead of embracing racist practices and stereotypes.”
“Beyond these marketing stunts, food corporations could create systemic change by revising their hiring, employment, and production practices.” (169)
“The USDA is unlikely to fund this type of food truth campaign because it would directly oppose its interest. It stands to gain more from supporting food industry giants than from making consumers aware of the harms that they cause…Congress should resist corporate influence and clamp down on race-targeted marketing by making it unlawful in all its forms…Individual agency is important but can only exist when people have true opinions. Until ties between the industry and politicians are served, the U.S. will continue to be a nation of fast and ultra-processed food.” (171)
“Corporations do not feel compassion. Sickness and loss do not move them. Appealing to their humanity is not an effective political strategy.” (172)
“All the significant civil rights victories have come after years - or decades - long campaigns driven by activists. The fight for food justice will be no different.” (174)
“Leveraging hunger as a method to force people into unskilled work that will not advance their social or financial status is a practice dating back to enslavement.” (179)
“Work requirements that condition access to adequate nutrition on the performance of labor are a vestige of slavery. They require poor people to work in low-wage, dead-end, unskilled jobs to get food instead of receiving high-skilled job training or education. They prevent people from fulfilling their family responsibilities. This is a modern form of control over labor and diet.” (180)
“Attaching work requirements to government benefits reflects a belief that social assistance is not a right of citizenship but a gift that its recipients must earn. It insists that poverty is not an accident of birth and social circumstances but a reflection of individuals’ bad choices or capabilities.” (180)
“The portrayal of people who get SNAP as lazy is a lie that grows from and feeds into racial stereotypes. Some people get stuck in low-wage jobs because they lack access to education or training for higher-paying jobs.” (181)
“Realistically, people who need food assistance have no alternative but to work to get it. If they had another source of money or food, they would use it.” (188)
“The Supreme Court has resisted findings of discriminatory intent, even when statistics speak for themselves.” (189)
“Health equality is foundational to all other forms of equality, which people cannot enjoy in the face of sickness or death.” (190)
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