Race Matters
True to Our Native Land, edited by Brian Blount, describes itself as the first African-American commentary on the New Testament.
Food
Ted Parks 9-01-2007
A black-and-white movie about the bleakness of life in Watts, California—shot for $10,000 about 30 years ago and never intended for theaters—doesn't exactly fit the Hollywood formula.
Rose Marie Berger, Jonathan Mendez 7-01-2007
Poor Diet. In April, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski encouraged all Oregonians to take the "Food Stamp Challenge" by living on an average food stamp budget of $21 per person per week.
Rose Marie Berger, Jonathan Mendez 7-01-2007
Finally, researchers have harnessed the fruit of the spirit into a new kind of energy drink!
Rose Marie Berger, Jonathan Mendez 3-01-2007
Rose Marie Berger, Jonathan Mendez 3-01-2007
The management of the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina—where 25,000 to 32,000 hogs are slaughtered each day—and the lawyers of a local Catholic parish
Jean B. Nilson 7-01-2006
Congratulations to Sojourners! Again you are setting the agenda for believing and acting Christians.
Emily McGowin 7-01-2006
When I received the May issue on “food and how we get it,” I confess I was skeptical as to its value.
Celeste Kennel-Shank 5-01-2006
Bumper stickers found in many college dormitories and church parking lots during the recent boycott of Taco Bell featured a Spanish-speaking Chihuahua—playing off the chain’s ads—turning down the fast- food chow to demand a penny more per pound for tomato pickers.
Heading the campaign was the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a farm worker-led organization based in Immokalee, Florida, with more than 2,500 members, most of whom are Latinos, Haitians, and Mayan Indians. The nearly four-year boycott put worker concerns—low wages, poor working conditions, and discrimination—in front of many consumers and led to an agreement with Yum! Brands, Taco Bell’s parent company.
The campaign is one of several recent examples of tapping into the power of consumers. Through education, boycotts, and other methods, farm workers can make those who eat the products they grow and pick aware of the conditions they experience—and ask for their help in changing those conditions.
“The life of an agricultural worker is one of exploitation,” said Lucas Benitez, a worker and organizer with the coalition who came to the U.S. from Mexico as a teenager. Farm laborers work long hours, with no benefits, health care, or overtime pay, he said. “The imbalance of power is tremendous.”
The agreement reached by the coalition and Yum! Brands established important precedents of increasing wages coming down the supply chain and involving workers in the monitoring of conditions in the fields, said Brigitte Gynther, an organizer with the coalition. The change for workers has been immediate, Benitez said, after more than 20 years of receiving the same salary. Each week, he said, “depending on how much they harvest, they receive between $15 and $40 more.” Also essential, Gynther said, are the safeguards against what the coalition believes to be inhumane working conditions the pickers have suffered.
Cathy C. Campbell 5-01-2006
“Give us this day our daily bread.” The simplicity of the prayer that Jesus gave us can distract us from its wisdom and its challenge. At its heart is what Walter Brueggemann contends is God’s alternate food policy. The more ease and confidence we have in acquiring food, the easier it is to miss the radical edge that cuts through this prayer. As we appreciate this edge, our eyes open to the power of God’s economy of grace to feed the world with the food that genuinely delights and satisfies.
BREAD—or, generally, food—is a bundle of nutrients that, in the right quantities and combinations, are essential for life. But it is more than this, and reducing bread to these nutrients is the first temptation that Jesus faces. Jesus is hungry, and he has the power to alleviate this hunger by turning a stone to bread. Instead, he responds like this: “As it is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4). His choice is the opposite of that of the original humans, who, unheeding of the word of God, took and ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because it was “good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6).
This separation of the bread that nourishes our bodies from the bread that is the word of God has in our time been reinforced by Karl Marx and by psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. But in Christ we know that our physical, material choices are inextricably bound up with matters of the spirit. Every time we gather at the Lord’s table we enact this reality. It is real bread that we receive, yet in our eating we become the bread that we eat—the body of Christ, blessed and broken for all.
Katie Chilton 5-01-2006
Driving east on Jackson Street one morning,
only a couple of blocks from the bungalow on Abe Street
where a few years ago hundreds of people claimed
to see the reflection of the Virgin in an upstairs window,
I noticed that the diner with the orange awnings
was advertising “fish wings” and found myself wondering
whether fish wings might be some Asian delicacy
Julie Polter 5-01-2006
My mother was a Depression baby in rural North Carolina. At an early age she knew what it was to be hungry, unsure of when and what her next meal would be. As an adult with her own family, she oversaw cupboards jammed with canned goods, a large chest freezer packed with parcels of meat wrapped in white butcher paper and plastic boxes of last summer’s strawberries and sweet corn, and a basement that held dozens of jars of home-canned pickles, green beans, cherries, beets, and jam.
No one within shouting distance of her (and the woman could shout) was going to know anything about hunger. Food was security, in several senses of the word—both preparation to meet real physical needs and contingencies and, I am quite sure, a salve for deep emotional and spiritual wounds inflicted by a difficult and sometimes violent upbringing.
As Christians, many different interpretations of the phrase “food security” are appropriate for our attention. The church often splits over interpretation of Bible verses such as “he has filled the hungry with good things” (Luke 1:53). Some factions favor a purely this-world, material understanding; others take those words as only metaphor for a spiritual feast. But, God’s ongoing dream for us seems to include both satisfying our hunger and thirst for the living bread and water that heals and nourishes our sin-sick souls and providing the literal bread and water to keep our bodies alive, blessed, and blessing. In either case, the promise isn’t to fill us with whatever puffed-air and high-fructose-corn-syrup spiritual or material amalgam is handy, but rather with “good things.”
Ed Spivey Jr. 5-01-2006
Consider the lowly broccoli, pictured here actual size so that we can discuss its health benefits in specific visual detail and, as a result of it being real big on the page, I don’t have to write as much. (It’s been one of those deadlines.)
The broccoli comes from the heart-healthy vegetable group technically known as the “really weird-looking” family of flowering plants. I can speak personally about this weirdness because, having raised the plant for several seasons in my backyard garden, broccoli tends to puts all its energy into stalks the size and consistency of baseball bats. But the florets—the edible parts that remind you of that really bad sci-fi movie where the monster was a giant beach ball painted like a brain—grow so tiny that squirrels perch on electrical lines above and mock them, with a kind of deprecating chittering sound. Nonetheless, when it’s harvest time, I pick them anyway, proudly proclaim, “Look what we grew, honey,” and then throw them immediately into the compost pile.
Danny Duncan Collum 5-01-2006
In his landmark book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser reported that, in a global marketing survey, McDonald’s Golden Arches proved to be a more widely recognized symbol than the Christian cross. The arches are second worldwide, after the Olympic rings. The cross comes in third.
Of all the changes that struck American culture in the last quarter of the 20th century, the explosive growth of the fast-food industry would have to count as one of the most destructive. That’s a big claim. We’re talking about a period of history that saw the advent of music videos, infomercials, and call-waiting. But I’ll stand by it.
Foodways are among the most essential defining elements of any culture; in the past few decades, ours have changed almost beyond recognition. Twenty-first century America has, in large part, left behind regionally grown, home-prepared food for globalized, pre-packaged, sweetened, and fatty convenience stuff. Just as we’ve surrendered control of our free time, and even our inner consciousness, to the TV and advertising industry, we’ve turned over responsibility for much of our daily sustenance to a few transnational marketing corporations.
We are what they sell us. And, in exchange, the lords of the fast-food empire have promised to free us from cooking, dishwashing, and (at least briefly) from complaining children. The consequences of this bargain are written across our strip-malled landscape, our low-wage economy, and our increasingly bloated bodies.
Tom Philpott 5-01-2006
Wander into Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood on a Saturday morning in summer and you’ll see a sight not uncommon in New York City these days: a thriving and well-diversified farmers market.
Neighborhood denizens cluster around stands offering free-range meat, raw-milk cheese, cream-on-top milk, and a whole array of fresh fruit and vegetables—many of them grown right down the block from the market.
Yet unlike most of New York’s bustling greenmarkets, which tend to thrive in upscale residential and shopping areas, this one lies in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Red Hook’s median family income is $15,000—below the federal poverty line of $19,000. Forty percent of the neighborhood’s families live on less than $10,000 per year. The unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-olds stands at 75 percent.
In fact, not many outsiders wander into Red Hook. When New York City’s legendary city planner Robert Moses patched together plans for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in the 1940s, he decided to spare aristocratic Brooklyn Heights and its stately brownstones, sending the BQE along the waterfront at that point. Just south, though, he let the road slice right into working-class Red Hook, leaving it shoehorned between a traffic-choked highway on one side and New York Harbor on the other.
Cathleen Hockman-Wert 5-01-2006
When global food shortages loomed 30 years ago, the Mennonite Central Committee asked its constituents to eat and spend 10 percent less on food. To help with that, the international relief and development organization produced More-with-Less Cookbook, which connects Christian faith with eating rice and beans. Eating more simply, cookbook author Doris Janzen Longacre argued, was not about “cutting back.” Rather, it meant “living joyfully, richly, creatively.”
[In] summer [2005], MCC released another cookbook that calls people of faith to connect values and eating habits. Simply in Season, which I co-wrote with Mary Beth Lind, promotes local, fairly traded, and sustainably grown foods, even if choosing them means spending more.
I approach these choices with no special expertise—I’m just an interested Christian consumer who wants to make decisions in line with my faith. And I confess that paying more for food goes against my North American sense of entitlement to cheap food and my inbred Mennonite frugality. My people believe thriftiness could give cleanliness some solid competition for that place next to godliness.
But what’s not to like about cheap food? Here’s the journey one devout penny-pincher made from spending less to spending for a better world.
Ryan Rodrick Beiler 5-01-2006
Tero Hakala / Shutterstock
“WHAT IS THIS—some kind of school project? You guys aren’t homeless, are you?” asked the clean-cut young policeman with well-gelled hair. His confusion was understandable. Actually, the first thing he said was, “You’re eating out of the garbage? That’s disgusting.”
Indeed, why would four middle-class guys be pawing through garbage bags looking for food? Officer Hair Gel vainly tried to fit us into a category that made sense to him. “Is this for some kind of frat thing?”
His squad car was soon joined by another, and then another. Soon five cruisers surrounded us, making blue and red disco effects on the strip mall alley walls. Must have been a slow night in Fairfax County. We suppressed giggles as we sat on the rear bumper of my station wagon and had our IDs checked.
We must’ve looked pretty shady prowling behind the bakery with our flashlights and bags of loot. But all we were looking for was the bounty of discarded bagels, breads, and pastries we’d come to expect there. We offered the officer a choice muffin. He declined with a smirk. “I can’t stop you from doing this, but a bunch of guys sneaking around behind these stores looks pretty suspicious. Next time you might get shot.”
Thanks for the advice, officer, but at these prices it’s worth the risk.
Dumpster diving has always been a respectable way for penniless students and group houses to acquire furniture and appliances. But why run the risk of harassment, embarrassment—and yes, illness—to scavenge food?
Reason number one—you get a lot of really, really good food really, really free. I often come away with a decent segment of the food pyramid: vegetables, meat, milk, eggs, and almost always lots of bread. And we’re not talking Wonder Bread—we’re talking sprouted wheat berry, pita, ciabatta, foccacia, and any number of Mediterranean-themed baked goods.
Though I’ll occasionally supplement my dumpster bounty with a trip to the natural foods co-op for some local produce or organic oats for homemade granola (bring on the stereotypes), I’ve come to rely mostly on society’s waste for my provision. As Jesus taught, “Do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’...Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things” (Matthew 6:32). In this spirit, dumpstering’s spontaneity is both liberating and satisfying. Instead of the anxiety of bargain-hunting among the throngs at corporate übermarkets, I enjoy the surprises of late-night expeditions and never worry about finding enough to eat.
Molly Marsh 5-01-2006
Every movement needs its revolutionaries and spokespersons, and in the growing crusade for a healthy, ethical, and “fair” food system, Bryant Terry and Anna Lappé happen to be both. Terry is a chef and founder of b-healthy! (Build Healthy Eating and Lifestyles to Help Youth)—a nonprofit group in New York that teaches low-income kids not only about nutrition, but also how to prepare healthy food themselves. Lappé is a writer, speaker, and co-founder (with her mother, Frances Moore Lappé) of the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet Fund. The latter supports grassroots efforts around the world that address the causes of hunger and poverty.
The two packed their passion and experience into Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, a practical book that explains why our food system is the way it is, but also what we can do to change it. And don’t be surprised if, along the way, you pick up a few tips about cooking (pepper grinders are key) and music (Césaria Évora is nice accompaniment to cinnamon-dusted sweet potato fries). Associate editor Molly Marsh spoke recently with the author-activists.
Sojourners: So why the name Grub? What is grub?
Bryant Terry: When Anna and I started working on this project, we had so many people tell us that healthy organic food is for wealthy baby boomers. That’s a common misconception. We wanted people to understand that grub—healthy, local, sustainable food—is food that’s accessible to everyone. It’s something all people have a right to.
Steve Thorngate 5-01-2006
Day Burtness and Dan Borek hoped to start an organic farm and community-supported agriculture program at St. Olaf College. But Northfield, Minnesota—a small, two-college town 35 miles south of Minneapolis-St. Paul—was already served by multiple CSAs and a food co-op. School officials were supportive but skeptical that a student-run farm would find any real market, even if the two students could come up with the necessary land and capital.
But Burtness and Borek obtained the use of a small piece of campus land and later received funding from the student government association. They also met with Hays Atkins, who runs St. Olaf’s food service for the Bon Appétit company, to discuss the possibility of a student farm that would function as a wholesaler instead of a CSA. In a move that would ensure both the college’s green light and, ultimately, the farm’s success, Atkins promised to purchase every piece of produce the farm could grow.
While Atkins’ commitment to a student-initiated project is surprising and impressive, it fits squarely with the considerable energy St. Olaf, a college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, has for several years invested in ecological sustainability. The school’s current strategic plan names sustainability as a goal, and a task force—comprised of students, faculty, and staff—supports several projects aimed at both reducing the college’s collective ecological footprint and facilitating education and conversation on the subject. As anyone who has scrutinized environmental impact knows, a primary concern is food—its production, use, and waste disposal.