Opinion: Our holiday food choices can truly change the world
Thanksgiving dinner is finished. On to Christmas feasting. 'Tis the season for cooking and changing the world.
Someone has called food a social justice gateway drug. Watch out. What you eat can change you.
As smells of delicacies fill our kitchens, a whiff of wastefulness drifts in as we toss aside any less-than-perfect produce. Amid abundance, we smell the inexcusable odor of hunger. Accompanying our sizzling steak, we sniff a hint of environmental costs. We quickly vent uncomfortable smells away.
What we eat can bring a fresh smell to our usual overcooked opinions.
Food can deepen our appreciation for Indigenous peoples. Potatoes, corn, beans, squash, peppers, yams, peanuts, pecans, and strawberries, to name a few, are indigenous to the Americas. Out with inaccurate images of savages and in with images of wise food connoisseurs.
Food can give us an appreciation for immigrants. We’re lucky there wasn’t a wall to keep out tacos and empanadas. Growing up, I didn’t hear of tacos until I was in high school and had a summer factory job.
Clem always brought interesting lunches. I asked him what he was eating. The next day he brought me a taco. It was incredibly spicy but delicious. I was hooked.
Immigrants keep expanding our diets. Thanks to a friend, I know how to make curry with whatever is hanging out in my refrigerator.
Food can help bridge our differences. Families may not agree on political candidates, masks and guns, but we can all agree that Aunt Arvilla’s cream pie is the best.
Food stories tell us about our roots. I have memories of eating delicious liver and onions and pickled tongue. These foods reveal that my family was frugal. We find connection in food stories.
Food can help save us from climate catastrophe in multiple ways. Our nation throws away more food than anyone else in the world, almost 80 billion pounds every year, or about 35% of our food.
When Annie Lowrey, writer for The Atlantic, checked with climate change and land use experts as to what changes could have the most environmental impact, they identified — “quit wasting food and eat less meat.”
Lowrey’s article goes on to say that “getting households to recycle, switch to LED lighting and hybrid vehicles, and add rooftop solar systems would save less than half the carbon emissions combined than reducing food waste and adopting a plant-based diet.”
Eating less meat is not a popular message.
"More with Less," a Mennonite cookbook from 1976, attempted to find more sustainable ways to eat. Doris Longacre, the cookbook’s editor, included information on the grain needed to produce a pound of beef.
The cookbook’s "less meat" message was controversial. A study of later cookbooks, compiled by various Mennonite churches, showed that "More with Less" changed Mennonite recipes. Cooks quietly, subversively and deliciously change our diets.
Food can help us see our interconnectedness to distant injustices. Some of us remember the success of the grape boycott, which increased pay and benefits for farm workers.
Boycotts remain a way to address wrongs. We can put the smell of justice on our Christmas tables by keeping Pillsbury out of our kitchens.
General Mills, Pillsbury’s parent company, is producing products in occupied East Jerusalem. The factory is on confiscated land and benefits from Israel’s war crimes. Several human rights groups, including Jewish Voices for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine and American Friends Service Committee, support the Pillsbury boycott.
This Christmas cooking season, we can change the world. Let’s cook something from another culture.
Let’s say “no” to Pillsbury rolls. Let’s put lentils on the menu. Let’s eat our leftovers. And let’s all agree that Aunt Arvilla’s cream pie is the best.
Jane Yoder-Short lives in Kalona.
This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Opinion: Our holiday food choices can truly change the world
