Edible justice: exploring cultural inclusivity, medicinal eating, and access in contemporary food systems

Abstract

As the global push for food security continues, food advocates increasingly look towards justice scholars for insights into the multiple facets of oppression that reinstate food insecurity as one of the most widespread injustices today's contemporary audiences face. Alternative food systems spring up in response to the interdisciplinary harm caused by the current capitalist food regime, though still embedded in ideologies of whiteness, settler-colonialism, and neoliberalism. This paper explores the effects of pervasive whiteness as an embedded statute of alternative food systems and how cultural inclusion (or lack there of) shows up in alternative and emergency food access spaces like food banks and food rescues, contributing to the maintenance of whiteness and therefor discounting medicinal eating as a traditional culinary practice of the non-Western world. This thesis advocates for the implementation of tangible cultural inclusion like spices and universal staples (rice, teas, etc..) within alternative food access points to better cater to racial and ethnic minorities, preserving cultural normalcy in high stigma environments like food banks/rescues.