Tracie McMillan, Author at Tracie McMillan

A Detroit Opera Celebrates Frida Kahlo’s Life And Cooking

January 22, 2025February 25, 2015

NPR.org — The Salt Feb. 25, 2015

The life of Frida Kahlo seems tailor-made for an opera: pain, love, art, travel and revolution. So the Michigan Opera Theater’s decision to mount a production of the opera Frida, opening Mar. 7 in Detroit — where the iconic painter lived with her husband, Diego Rivera, for nearly a year, and where she survived a miscarriage that marked a turning point in her art — isn’t so surprising.

But here’s something that is: The opera is celebrating not only Kahlo’s art and life, but her recipes and cooking, too.

How NAFTA Changed American (And Mexican) Food Forever

January 22, 2025February 13, 2015

NPR.org — The Salt • Feb. 13, 2015

If you were to try and list the biggest game-changers for the American food system in the last two decades, you might note the Food Network, or the writing of Michael Pollan, or maybe even the evolution of Walmart.

But you’d probably overlook NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.

And that would be a mistake, according to a lengthy report out early February from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Florida Tomato Pickers’ Wins Could Extend To Dairy, Berry Workers

January 22, 2025December 12, 2014

NPR.org – The Salt • Dec. 12, 2014

Farm workers in America have long been among the nation’s poorest paid and most abused workers. But conditions have been improving for Florida tomato pickers, and those advances may soon reach other farm fields, according to the annual report released Thursday by the Fair Food Standards Council, or FFSC, a labor oversight group based in Sarasota, Fla.

Stateside with Cynthia Canty

December 16, 2023December 8, 2014

Michigan Radio • Dec. 8, 2014 When Whole Foods opened in Detroit, there were questions on whether or not the vast majority of Detroit could afford the upscale grocer. Goals were set into place to make the grocer more accessible to the citizens of Detroit. The results, however, have been a mixed bag. Here, I … Read more

BONUS: How Whole Foods really prices its food

April 1, 2024November 22, 2014

It’s easy to gloss over the details in all the hubbub over the feature I just published with Slate and the Food and Environment Reporting Network, “Can Whole Foods Really Chance the Way Poor People Eat?” But I would encourage anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of food reporting to pay attention to the data set we amassed for the piece.

What’s the big deal with the data?

Comparing food prices between stores is phenomenally difficult to do well. Brand names, sale prices, different sized packaging…all of it gets very confusing, very quickly. The USDA does track food prices, but only at the bulk level—for a pound of green peas, for example. But most of us don’t buy just a pound of shelled green peas. We buy Green Giant, or we buy Cascadian Farmr, or we buy White Rose, with all the presumed differences between them affecting price. There simply isn’t anywhere that researchers can go, let alone consumers, to see a coherent comparison with name brands. Until now.

HuffPost Live: Can Whole Foods Feed the Poor?

April 1, 2024November 21, 2014

HuffPost Live • Nov. 21, 2014

“Is it Whole Foods’ job to help poor people eat well?” they asked me on HuffPost Live.

“Only when the CEO starts saying it is,” says I.

Can Whole Foods Change the Way Poor People Eat?

January 22, 2025November 19, 2014

Slate; Food and Environment Reporting Network

Nov. 19, 2014

(1) “Everybody Was Talking About It”

A couple of years ago, as winter gave way to spring, Toyoda Ruff began to think about changing how she ate. Ruff had always been heavy, but her son, Tarik, a freshman honor student, had recently crossed the 300-pound mark, prompting Ruff to ferry him to appointments at a children’s weight loss clinic, 11 miles away in Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood, and to document everything he ate for two months. At 270 pounds, her husband, Jermaine Harris, wanted to slim down, too. Ruff was beginning to see her family’s weekly fast-food habit and visits to Golden Corral’s all-you-can-eat buffet as a problem.

As Ruff mulled over these changes, a friend cajoled her into joining a healthy cooking class at their church. Ruff was on medical leave from her job as a probation officer due to an injury, and the break gave her time to consider her meals. The more she thought about eating healthy, the more intrigued she was by a new store: Whole Foods, which had just opened in Detroit. “It was on the news. People were talking about it at church,” Ruff said. “Everybody was talking about it.”

What I learned in the garlic fields

April 1, 2024November 3, 2014

FERN Talks & Eats • Nov. 3, 2014

Brooklyn, NY

I was honored to take part in a live storytelling event hosted by the wonderful Food and Environment Reporting Network. Below is the text of the story I performed.

Rosalinda is fourteen when I meet her. She has brown skin and black hair and eyes so pretty that even when she wears bandanas over her face in the field, you can tell she is beautiful.

Inez is fourteen, too, with the same brown skin and black hair that Rosalinda has, but her eyes aren’t as big, her smile not as wide.

They both change my life forever.

Why class, and poverty, are the biggest problems with food

April 1, 2024October 28, 2014

At the James Beard Foundation Food Conference this week, I argued that addressing poverty was not a marginal concern for anyone interested in changing our food system, but a central one. But upon reflection, I realized I’d left something important out: Lower-income Americans matter for the food movement in an integral way, because it’s their concerns—not those of elites—that can give food advocates political weight. To push food into a political issue instead of a lifestyle change takes numbers—and there are way more low-income people than there are wealthy.

Food, Health and Place: Why Equity Matters

April 1, 2024October 28, 2014

James Beard Foundation Food Conference • October 28, 2014

At this year’s James Beard Foundation Food Conference, “Health and Food: Is Better Food a Prescription for a Healthier America?” I had the pleasure of moderating a panel on Food, Health & Place: Why Equity Matters, with leading experts in food and equity.