Category Archives: Movements

Mitigating Food Waste in the University District

Over the course of our Action Project, I learned many new skills and had experiences that enriched my learning and outlook on the topic of food insecurity. Each group member was tasked with contacting local restaurants and grocery stores to inquire about excess food that could be donated to local shelters that would otherwise be thrown out. In retrospect, I… Read more »

Group Division of Labor: An Insight Into the Global Hunger Debate

Through our group action project, I learned that individual strengths can lead to divisions of labor that are sometimes hard to equalize. I feel this way because I realized that my shortcomings as an organizer and the limits of my time resulted in a less equal contribution than I would have normally expected of myself. I tried to make up… Read more »

Industrial Hemp – what can it do for you?

Our group was on non-food agriculture, focusing on industrial hemp. Of course, the obvious choice for us could’ve been on cannabis, as it has become a larger part of the economy in Washington State and beyond. However, we decided to focus on the legalization of industrial hemp on a federal level for various reasons. Initially, we planned on having educational… Read more »

Chocolate, Cocoa, and Contemplation

Contemplative practices have been an interesting approach to understanding larger food systems. In particular, it has helped me understand food “culture” in America on a much deeper level. Food culture (and generally culture as well) in America is dominated by on the go, fast paced ideals. We want success, a beautiful body, and our good, healthy food and we want… Read more »

Jevons Paradox and American Consumerism

I think a big point from lecture that was thought-provoking to me was the idea of metabolic rift. In particular the idea that because of how global, food consumption has become we have created imbalances in natural levels of nutrients/water from food producing countries by transporting nutrient rich foods to wealthier countries to be consumed. This cycle is countering the… Read more »

Examining the relationship between modern farming techniques and disease incidence

The Australian Aborigines experiment from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food peeked my interest due to its findings and its connections to my background in biology. The basis of the experiment was to isolate recently westernized Aborigines with type 2 diabetes into an area away from western civilization. This coerced the relocated Aborigines to rely on foraging to obtain food,… Read more »

Is Condemning Planting Trees as Counterproductive as Driving Your Prius to Plant a Tree?

My mother and I would yell about the compost while I was growing up, quite literally scream at each other over an apple core.  But before that apple was bit into, eaten, and mistakenly sent to the landfill rather than our compost bin, the question was had I washed it or not?  Because “Yes Willa I always buy organic apples,… Read more »

Elevating Maniates and Pollan with Indigenous Food and Land Theory

In his article, Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?, author Michael F. Maniates grapples with what he calls the individualization of responsibility that has become embedded into neoliberal environmentalism. This critique starkly undermines Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, which ends with a vague prescription for prudent consumer choices as a method of subverting the industrial… Read more »

Regenerative Farming in the Face of Industrialized Agriculture and Food Fads

What I found most interesting and thought provoking about this week’s lessons was the TED Talk video of Joel Salatin discussing about how he transformed his barren, wasteland of a farm into a paradise of abundance through the practice of regenerative farming solely using biological methods. By reintroducing organic matter into the soil, growing a variety of crops, and by… Read more »

The Cost of Culture: Fads & The Rise of “Food”

A major concern with the incline of nutritionism in modern food systems is that there has been a perpetual shift in the science behind dietary guidelines, specifically within the last century as fads arose in Western cultures. Additionally, the assertion that food is more than just the sum of its parts in Pollan’s writing exemplifies the criticality of our own… Read more »