Not Just Food

Food shows up in many ways in our lives. What does it mean for food to hold such deep significance, and how does it represent our values? What does it mean to eat with friends, or eat alone? From sharing meals with loved ones, eating dining hall food with new friends at college, cooking for my family, cooking from a young age, and volunteering to help close the food insecurity gap, there are many ways that food has been used for justice- but also injustice.

The food that I have with my friends at Waffle House after a camping trip is restoring my body, my mood, my energy. But how does the exact same food impact the Waffle House employee behind the counter? Does it restore them in the same way, or are they actually oppressed by the same food by being paid minimum wage. Waffle House workers make on average $10, but the living wage in North Carolina is $22.50. They are not having the same experience with the same food that I am eating, even within us being 20 feet of each other. How does one bring justice to that? What can a regular person like me, a college student that is hungry after a hike, do to help bring justice to that person? I am trying to figure out what my role is with food. I want to learn why I have been so fortunate to have positive experiences with food, but simultaneously, many people do not.

I have found so much joy in going to Commons at my time here at Davidson. It is where I have met new friends, had deep conversations with my closest people, talked to the workers, and nourished my body. However, as much as I enjoy the environment, the food, and the social aspect of it, I have questioned to myself a lot, “Where does the food go at the end of the day”? I got my answer one day, on the Sunday that we got back from Thanksgiving Break. My friends and I were at Commons for a while, and they were getting ready to close, so one of the Commons workers came up to our table and said, “Make sure you get the food that you want before we close and throw it all out”. That stuck with me because I thought about all of the people that were going to go hungry that night, but an institution like Davidson had an enormous amount of food that they were going to throw away. It can be unrealistic to look at a problem that big and think that there is one solution, and that it is fixable right away. However, there is value in recognizing that there can be injustice existing in a place that one currently is living in, and try to think of small ways (or big ways) that one can help work towards a solution, as there is never just one singular solution to something. 

My friend Stella and I became passionate about food insecurity one night after discussing and reflecting on the massive amounts of food that go to waste in our school. We decided to have a conversation with President Hicks to discuss ways that we could decrease the amount of food waste, and start an initiative to assist families that were suffering throughout the SNAP crisis when the government shut down. One of the things that I took away from the meeting was that there are several organizations doing good work in the community, and one was of particular interest to me. The Bulb is a nonprofit that holds mobile farmers markets with produce that would have been thrown away and then redistributes the produce to low income families. I have now been volunteering with The Bulb for a couple of shifts, and want to continue next semester. I have felt that I am helping the people around me and the environment when I volunteer with this organization, and as my working definition of Justice says, Justice is what one can do with the inequalities that exist in our everyday lives.