"Real Food, Real People"

I've mentioned before the importance of remembering the human beings whose work allows us to eat every day. The farm workers who plant, tend and harvest, the factory workers who cook, package and inspect. Even the truck drivers who transport.

Who do we imagine those people are? What do they look like? What are their lives like?

Recently I encountered a label on the back of a Triscuit box that said "Real Food Made by Real People". There was a picture on the back of 5 friendly-looking white guys dressed in plaid shirts and jeans - the family farmers who grew the "silver white wheat" that went into every cracker.

The racism here is a gentle breeze when compared to the hurricane gale of cross burnings or lynchings. (But then, if you've ever been to a picnic on a breezy day, sometimes those gusts can really pick up and you suddenly have paper plates and potato chips flying everywhere... I digress. The point is, I don't think it makes sense to react with outrage as opposed to mere observation.)

"Real Food, Real people" is a kind of very subtle racism that wends it's thread-like tendrils through all of American life, including, IMO, otherwise progressive circles.

There's a notable desire for food to be "pure", or to appear so, that's old as... well, ok, at least as old as this ad for "SnowDrift shortening". Probably older than that. A desire for purity in food isn't itself an evil thing. But that kind of desire can often come from a place of fear, similar to that which underlies racism. And because they share that same root, there can be dangerous overlap if it goes unchecked. The Triscuit package makes this connection so seamlessly that it's startling.

"Real people"... somehow, we imagine the "lesser" brands of crackers - full of GMO-laced wheat, grown on vast expanses of pesticide-ridden fields and desperately poor brown migrant workers, hacking and groaning like the "un-women" from the Handmaid's Tale. Who'd want to eat that shit?

But Triscuits... Triscuits are from "real people" like your local white farmer, so they're safe. You don't have to worry about your local farmer being dirty, speaking Spanish, or playing music too loud. He's honest and fair, and worth paying the extra 50c for.

Through the lens of gratitude, it's important to be thankful for both "pure" AND "impure" food. Be grateful for the perfect strawberry and the imperfect one. Be grateful for the packaged, denatured, preservative-filled snack cake from a factory or the fair-trade chocolate cookies made from scratch by your dear friend (which one is "pure" there? You decide!). Be grateful for all the work and thought and striving that went into the creation of all these things.

And most importantly, remember that ALL people who make food are worthy of our respect. Their lives are complicated, and aspects of their farming and factory work are surely complicated, almost never some perfect ideal. Let's strive to improve conditions for ALL workers, as well as improve the quality of food that EVERYone eats.

All food is real food, made by real people.