Oppressive food policies, hidden in plain sight

By Sarah Alvarez

One approach to understanding our current food system is on display in Andrea Freeman’s theory of food oppression, in her paper titled “The Unbearable Whiteness of Milk: Food Oppression and the USDA.” This paper piqued my interest because I heard Professor Freeman present her research on a squally spring afternoon in Portland, Oregon at the conference 21st Century Food Law: What’s On Our Plates?

Source: https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/resources/2015-2020_Dietary_Guidelines.pdf

According to Freeman, food oppression can be summarized as food policy or government action which institutionally disfavors social miniorites. She uses an analysis called critical race theory, which looks deeply at the “why” of racial, social, political, and economic issues, which inevitably leads to an analysis focusing on present and historical power structures. This paper highlights the United State Department of Agriculture’s policies in regard to milk to focus on how food oppression arises and operates. The USDA provides dietary guidelines for healthy eating in America. These guidelines currently encourage people to avoid high-fat dairy products; the recommendation is based on scientific studies which show that high dairy consumption is not healthy and can lead to heart disease, obesity, and cancer. Recognition that milk is poor for health has led to commercial milk sales dropping over time.

Despite this pretty clear warning and trend from the agency itself and other scientific sources, the USDA still encourages milk consumption. The Dairy Management Incorporated (DMI) is an active marketing arm of the USDA. It partners directly with fast-food chains like Taco Bell and Domino’s Pizza and is funded mostly by national dairy producers. DMI produces advertising projects promoting milk product consumption in schools and in private establishments. These projects have ranged from, expensive Super bowl ads for new, cheesy fast-food products, engineering fast food products with extra milk product, promoting fast-food coupons distribution in public schools, and most notably the famous “Got Milk” campaign.  DMI actively promotes milk in this way to offload dairy product surpluses in a profitable fashion, despite the USDA’s stance on the nutritional value of milk. Further, much of this advertising is targeted at racial minority groups. Ads, like “Got Milk”, frequently feature famous Black and Latinx people. Ads also tap into

Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/24/got-milk-ads_n_4847121.html

economic worries of minorities by exploiting the idea that fast-food is a cheap, high caloric, and therefor good option, rather than a medically risky food option. In addition to specified print and TV advertising, African American and Latinx communities are targeted by fast food operations in their own neighborhood. Many minority communities live in food deserts, where there is a lack of reasonable access to a supermarket or grocery store; fast food restaurants are often
present in the stead of these healthy food shopping options. A clear link can be understood between these practices, and social minority groups’ disproportionate representation in cancer, heart disease, and diabetes diagnoses.

Freeman also ties the concept of healthism into her food oppression argument. Healthism promotes inelastic norms of thinness and health, while promoting that these values are an individual’s own choice and not being healthy is a person’s own failure. Healthism paints many minority folks with the broad brush of unhealthiness, without taking into account variation in body structure, specific cultural standards, historical racism, and the continued targeting for unhealthy foods.

The targeting of people of color for offloading milk surpluses is an invisible and insidious form of oppression for a few reasons. First, food and its effects on health are felt over time, in the aggregate, on groups that already bear the brunt of social, economic, and racial oppression. Second, as in many American ideals, food choice is valued as fiercely autonomous and therefore the health consequences of eating are the sole fault of the individual, not society or government, no matter how disproportionate the advertising or effects. It reinforces false stereotypes and unwarranted assumptions that people of color who consume fast food are lazy or lack self-control, and it stifles a more critical analysis that would be more adept at revealing root causes. Third, this topic lacks the sexiness of many other current social justice causes.  Though just as worthy, as other currently popular movement ideas, systematic food injustice still lacks traction in national awareness. Despite this general lack of interest, food oppression is important; and it makes sense when viewed in the context of systematic oppression of minority and poor people in the United States. Professor Freeman’s work offers analysis of this milky issue. It also provides us with a framework to look more critically at whatever it is that we are interested in studying. Where is the true monetary interest? How are underlying structural issues at play here? How are legal issues that seem insular on their face affecting our most vulnerable populations? How do the issues we are interested in relate to race and income inequality?

Professor Freeman’s work also offers solutions to this specific problem. As a lawyer, she of course mentions the possibility of challenging systematic food oppression with a constitutional equal protection argument or the like. However, during her paper presentation she highlighted that the most effective way to combat this issue would be go directly to impacted communities through a tweaked educational model. Instead of trying to communicate to people that a lot of cheese or milk in your food is bad, offering the clear message that “as social minority in America, you are intentionally being targeted to off-load dairy products which aren’t even good for you”, might be more effective. Educationally, talking or lecturing folks about nutrition with one hand, while subsiding cheese and milk in school lunches (and the like) with the other hand, of course fails to remedy poor nutrition for poor people and associated health concerns. Instead, Freeman advocates that people should get a strong dose of truth. For both lawyers and folks disproportionately affected, advice to critically examine power structures might be just what the doctor ordered to begin analyzing our realities.

« »