Perspective Food Relationships, Sara Rotz

PERSPECTIVE FOOD RELATIONSHIPS SARAH FOOD AS RELATIONS REFLECTING ON OUR ROOTS , RE ) OUR RELATIONSHIPS Sarah is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of mental Urban Change at York University . Her academic and organizing work is grounded in environmental justice , with a focus on land and food systems . Learning Outcomes 242 FOOD RELATIONSHIPS

After reading and discussing this text , students should be able to Describe the relationship between structural food issues and personal food choices and beliefs . on and question their relationship to food and body , particularly as related to issues of systemic racism and sexism . Critically interrogate the personal and political impacts of diet culture , and propose alternative perspectives toward food , dieting , and body acceptance . INTRODUCTION How how you think about your ship to food ?

If you re like many students I speak to , you might say , I try to eat healthy , but other than that not too Yet we are inundated with all sorts of food messages every day . How , then , can we make sense of all this information if we dont ask ourselves some critical questions ?

Lets start with the ing How would you describe your relationship to food ?

What meaning does food have in your life ?

What thoughts and feelings does food evoke for you ?

What different feelings are associated with certain foods and food practices ?

What key memories have shaped your coming to know food ?

This process of has been powerful for me personally , because it has helped me connect food system issues , such as industrialization , corporate concentration , and systemic racism , to cultural and emotional dimensions , such as diet culture , body image , and ( fear or disdain of ness ) For this chapter , I draw from my own reflection process to make some connections between seemingly abstract structural forces of racism , settler colonialism , and patriarchy to our relationships with food , our bodies , and ourselves . SARAH 243

Some of my earliest food messages centered on themes of food restriction and , creating an inner world of sion and . Many of the people in my the an anxious and polarized relationship with food , displaying a venomous hate for both the calorie and the body in some moments , and a ravenous desire for food in others . The latter often ended in and punishing remarks about piggies , along with promises to never do that Weekend brunches were often followed by declarations that we don need to eat anything until dinner ! I remember feeling vous , thinking But , what if I get hungry before dinner ?

The sage I took from this was that that hunger is something to be controlled , managed , and contained , and that one should only feel hungry at socially appropriate times . If , then , my hunger arose outside of these socially sanctioned moments ( which was often ) I would feel shame Why am I hungry ?

This isn right , I shouldn ?

feel hungry . Looking back , I see how immediately I internalized my parents relationship to food as I grew . Their punitive , regulatory voice became my own . OUR RELATIONSHIP TO FOOD Exploring our personal relationships to food ( made up of twined experiences , perceptions , narratives , and messages ) can feel difficult because it is so deeply connected to our core sense of self . Our early messages about food tell us a great deal about whether or not we can ( and should ) trust selves , our bodies , and our feelings . If they are shaming , critical , and restrictive messages , they can have deep and persistent tive effects on our , and our degree of body acceptance . They also shape how we understand and internalize larger messages , such as and the idealization of ness . The relationship between the personal and political reveal themselves in the realm of food . Our internal relationship to food is shaped and informed by our familial and 244 FOOD RELATIONSHIPS

food and practices , which are strongly determined by larger forces that condition how we understand , access , act with , and consume food . Put simply , our ability to engage in different food practices ( whether we gain access to food from a fridge , restaurant , garden , or forest ) are limited to a large extent by the culture and society We live in ( eg , how We are in society to have access to economic resources , cultural , land , and natural spaces ) So while we can certainly push back against and move beyond food messages that feel unhealthy and harmful to us , it is helpful to remember that our social conditions have heavily encouraged some ways of ing and interacting with food , while making others incredibly difficult . As my own memories affirm , many of us struggle with various forms of rigid and disordered eating , which can be described as a way of relating to food that causes emotional , psychological or physical harm . Again , this harmful relationship does not arise simply from one own forces shape our relationships to food . Diet culture , defined as a system of beliefs that equate thinness and particular body shapes and sizes to health and moral virtue , has played a particularly destructive role here . Its roots run deep . As systems of capitalism , ism , and ecological imperialism reveal , unhealthy and unethical systems often cultivate unhealthy and dysfunctional relations to food , the land , each other , and ourselves . GETTING TO THE ROOTS OF OUR PERSONAL FOOD RELATIONS The cycle of eating has become so common in Western culture that most of us can easily recognize it in selves and others . and diet culture have a long history rooted in European imperial and colonial expansion ( marked by resource theft and political and cultural domination ) SARAH 245

and cultural beliefs in the superiority of white in particular . These are the same systems through which the food industry has evolved . In her book , Fearing the Black Body The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia , sociologist Sabrina Strings clearly shows how racism ( linked to the Atlantic slave trade ) and the rise of religious Protestantism shaped expressions around food and the body , coming together firmly in the early century . language and the admiration of the thin body were deployed through popular culture and media by Europeans and white Americans to create and reinforce social distinctions between themselves and greedy and fat racial Religious language linked slenderness to civilized dispositions and moral and racial superiority , while equating fatness to signs of ungodliness , poor constitution , and savagery . The of in dominant North American culture had material interests and consequences , and it played a key role in degrading Black people , hybrid whites ( Celtic Irish , southern Italians , Russians ) immigrants , and poor people . As feminist and gender scholars have shown , and thin obsession has targeted women by regulating and denigrating women relationships with food and their bodies . White women became the representatives and delegates of the white Protestant ideal , involuntarily assigned the role of ing established codes of slender woman is a , civil , dignified , and pure woman . In this way , Strings argues that race acts as a double agent to both degrade black women and discipline white The disciplining language of has been passed down through generations of families , and mine was not immune . Reflecting on how the main tenets of diet culture have shown up . Strings 2019 , 246 FOOD RELATIONSHIPS

in my own my home , amongst friends , at school , and in the media , the messaging was everywhere . Family and friends were often comparing themselves and each other to white , thin ideals , and they tended to associate thinness with health and moral virtue . When I was as young as ten or eleven , I remember the shame and frustration on the faces of female friends as they declared their weight loss goals and focused on getting I learned at a young age that weight loss was widely attributed to sexual desirability and social status . Around this time , my mom began an especially intensive healthy eating phase in which she demonized certain foods and revered This language of good or healthy , versus bad or unhealthy foods , creates a sense of shame and erodes our pleasure and trust around food . These thoughts and practices have ing impacts on our internal lives and psyches . Also , these ally constructed categories of food ( as either good or bad ) are rooted in racist and language that centers white American foods while excluding , demonizing , or otherwise appropriating foods from cultures and communities . When I was young , my family didn cook or eat together . Money and time were both fairly tight , but that doesnt fully explain why our food culture felt so isolating and . My family , too often , carried and reinforced food sages based in shame , restriction , and Looking back , I would describe our food atmosphere as unloving , with tones of hostility . Food preparation and eating practices were often spoken about an unwelcome obligation ( and unwelcome calories ) than as a potentially joyful . See Christy Harrison book , Reclaim Your Time , Money , and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating for a deeper analysis of diet culture . I now see that my mother was merely responding to the same diet culture and messaging that pervades our society . Both markers of broader settler colonial and European imperial cultural norms and ways of knowing . SARAH 247

to bring people together . These characteristics are not unique to my family . They are premised on sentiments that openly loving and finding joy and pleasure in food implies you are weak , inferior , boorish , and unrefined . These sentiments have evolved serve the interests food and diet culture , but they have particular historical origins in North America under white European settler colonialism . While particular in how they function , settler colonial and enslavement societies are underpinned by beliefs and practices of discipline , control , and hierarchy , alongside individualist , acquisitive , and supremacist ways of thinking . REFLECTING ON COLONIAL FOOD RELATIONS While my ancestors may not have been the central architects of colonial invasion ( although still unclear about the details ) they were by and large colonial in their mentality and actions . Like most settler Canadians , my ancestors were born into a mental framework of arrogance that operates as a widespread system or method of control and underpins our dominant society . In terms of food , the settler colonial mental framework drove the project of land theft and resource lation , and gave rise to the dominant food system we are now steeped in . The settler colonial origins of our food system are marked by the rise of the settler patriarchal family farm engaged in production using increasingly large and machines and inputs ( such as seeds , chemical fertilizers , and pesticides ) on relatively large plots of land within a growing industry . In turn , the vast majority of agricultural land and beings ( also described as resources ) in Canada have been built by and for white settler people , and corporations . It is thus unsurprising that nearly all of the agricultural land in Canada is managed by white ( male ) Barker 2009 , 341 . 248 FOOD RELATIONSHIPS

settler farmers . Collectively , settler culture understands land and food as an economic resource and commodity , and this way of seeing has deeply shaped how settler societies and institutions relate to it . Put differently , regardless of the motives of individual settlers , the structure of colonization ( comprised of institutions , laws and policies , norms , and ) evolved with intent and pose . Patrick Wolfe argues that to effectively accumulate land and build an industry , peoples and cultures currently living on those lands must be Giving the lie to the rhetoric that Canada was empty land or terra , Indigenous had deeply rooted food relations and practiced complex forms of food growing and gathering for centuries before contact with Europeans they continue to do so today . Colonial created policies to suppress Indigenous food growing , gathering , and harvesting while also restricting Indigenous involvement in settler while colonial makers argued that they wanted Indigenous people to be ers . These policies ( including the homestead , reserve , pass , and scrip systems ) played a central role in Indigenous Nations and dismantling their food and livelihood systems . Further , they forced certain settler food cultures , habits , and relations upon Indigenous Nations . Forced starvation , food and water contamination , the prohibition of Indigenous food practices , and other food injustices that the colonial government has inflicted on Indigenous peoples are often strategies in the larger project of settler expansion . Indeed , settler expansion requires the concurrent undermining of Indigenous , control , and ( although Indigenous peoples , communities , and nations have done a great deal to resist this ) How the elimination happens is always ongoing , and it shifts according Indigenous relations of mediation , action , and resistance . SARAH 249

FOOD RELATIONS MAKING JOY , LOVE , KIN JUSTICE If colonial and behaviors are conditional rather than inevitable states of a , how then can we move beyond colonial and patriarchal food relationships , both personally and collectively ?

I have shifted away from the perspective that food solutions must be found primarily through legal regulation ( banning or mandating certain foods or ents ) that would change consumer behavior . This is specifically because these approaches have been shown to reinforce diet ture tenets of discipline , restriction , and shame , while ring structural harms onto individuals and deploying cultures of surveillance onto those with the least power . Taking direction from Black and Indigenous scholars , activists , and in community with students and envision what it means to build a ( de ) anti ) colonial and feminist relationship toward food . As Kim explains , in order to sustain good relations among all the beings that inhabit these lands , we must undercut settler ( property ) relations . Instead of killing the Indian to save the man , we must turn the ontological . To differentiate between social states and cultural imperatives , Barker points to Alfred passage from ( 2005 , 109 ) As a clash of cultures , civilizations , this problem could be discussed in more objective cal terms to avoid the discomfort of personal responsibility , but in reality , the injustices we live with are a matter of choices and behaviours committed within a worldview defined by a mental framework of and political ideologies set in opposition to this term is the equivalent to Indigenous , meaning roughly original or authentic peoples peoples and our . The basic stance of the problem of colonialism is the belief in the superiority and of culture . 250 FOOD RELATIONSHIPS

As a first step in this process , I began working to front my internalized racism , sexism and , especially with how I thought about and acted on food . By applying processes of reflection to my own life , I have been able to better understand how these internalized mental have guided my approach to food and my body . The wisdom and port of teachers and community have shown me the power of practices and relations grounded in attunement and ( through , for instance , an intuitive eating approach ) starting with simply listening to and affirming my body own intuitions , desires , and needs . Doing this work has allowed me to begin healing and food behaviours while encouraging internal dialogue that from appearance . For me , these teachings have been the most ing and sustainable path of recovery from personally destructive food relations . In addition , they can be extrapolated to the ical . Given our deeply unequal social conditions , we know that declaring that all people ought to just make healthy food choices only strengthens food messages , especially for folks and those in larger bodies . Instead , what would it mean to center the needs and of those whose bodies and identities fall outside of the limited boundaries of diet ture , and who bear the brunt of white , heteronormative archy ?

What would it mean to apply and feminist mental to our understanding of and relations to land more broadly ?

Wise teachers and practitioners are showing us what a different way can look like through visions , principles , and practices of collective cultural resurgence , ing , reciprocity and , land reclamation , remediation . See 2020 . SARAH 251 and , and food Taking these visions , principles and practices seriously allows us to work together toward emancipatory food relations rooted in personal food relations of pleasure , joy , and deep acceptance , alongside and mutually supportive family , kinship , and collective food cultures . Discussion Questions What are some of your significant experiences with growing food , working with soil , or cooking and preparing food ?

In what ways have these food experiences been by your or race , gender , or class ?

When you think about Canadian food , what kinds of foods do you think of ?

What messages have you been told about Canadian food ?

What kinds of foods and what different communities and populations of people might these categories and messages exclude ?

How much do you know about First Nations ( or , for instance ) or foods , or Haitian , Jamaican , or South Asian foods ?

Why or why not ?

I been thinking a lot about how the concept of can be applied to and righting our relations to food , land , and the body as Indigenous people Making or creating kin can call people ( including those who do not fit well into the settler category ) to be more accountable to Indigenous long constituted in intimate relation with this place . Kinship might inspire change , new ways of organizing and standing together in the face of state violence against both humans and the ( Bear 2019 , 38 ) 252 FOOD RELATIONSHIPS

Additional Resources Brady , Power , and . 2017 . Still Hungry for a Feminist Food In Critical Perspectives in Food Studies , edited by Mustafa , Anthony , Sumner , ed . Oxford Oxford University Press . Carter , 1990 . Lost Harvests Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy . Montreal University Press . 2016 . Imperial Plots Women , Land , and the Spadework of British Colonialism on the Canadian Prairies . of Press . 2012 . Resurgence Indigenous ways to and Sustainable Indigeneity , Education ( Society ( Cox , 2020 . Fat Girls in Black Bodies Creating Communities of Our Own . North Atlantic Books . 2013 . Clearing the Plains Disease , Politics of Starvation , and the Loss of Aboriginal Life . Regina University of Regina Press . 1978 . World Market , State , and Family Farm Social Bases of Household Production in the Era of Wage Comparative Studies in Society and ( Harrison , 2021 . Food Psych 269 Gender Dynamics in Food Media and Marketing with Emily , and the Links Between White Supremacy , Diet Culture , and Nutrition Food Psych 269 . 2015 . Braiding Indigenous Wisdom , Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants . Milkweed Editions . SARAH 253

La Via . 2009 . La Via Policy Documents . and . 2020 . Beyond The South Atlantic ( and Mitchell . 2017 . Rigid Dietary Control , Flexible Dietary Control , and Intuitive Eating Evidence for Their Relationship to Disordered Eating and Body Image Eating . Monture , 2014 . We Share Our Matters ( Ten ) Two Centuries of Writing and Resistance at Six Nations of Grand River . University of Press . of ( Feminist ) Indigenous , 1995 . Perspectives Healing , Restoration , and Indigenous Law News A Notes ( Summer ) Rogers , Taylor , and . Webb . 2019 . No for You ! Exploring a Sociocultural Model of ing in the Presence of Family Involving Critical Caregiver Eating Messages , Relational Body Image , and Attitudes in College Body ( 2017 . They Took Our Beads , It Was a Fair Trade , Get over It Settler Colonial Logics , Racial Hierarchies and Material Dominance in Canadian . Simpson , 2014 . Land as Pedagogy Intelligence and Rebellious Indigeneity , tion Society ( 254 FOOD RELATIONSHIPS

, 2018 . Fighting Fat Canada , University of Press . 2017 . Food Sovereignty , Justice , and Indigenous Oxford Handbook on Food Ethics , 2018 . Settler Colonialism , Ecology , and Environmental Injustice . Environment and Society Advances in ( Wildcat , and . 2014 . Learning from the Land Indigenous Land Based Pedagogy and Indigeneity , Education ( Wolfe , 2006 . Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the of Genocide ( References Alfred , 2005 . Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom . University of Press . Barker , AJ . 2009 . The Contemporary Reality of Canadian Settler Colonialism and the Hybrid Colonial American Indian Quarterly 33 ( Harrison , 2019 . Reclaim Your Time , Money , Being , and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating . New York Little , Brown . Strings , 2019 . Fearing the Black Body The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia . New York NYU Press . SARAH 255

, 2019 . Caretaking Relations , Not American ( and . 2020 . Intuitive Eating , Edition A Approach . New York Martins Publishing Group . 256 FOOD RELATIONSHIPS