Zócalo Public Square and The California Wellness Foundation • July 28, 2015
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Americans are eating healthier, smoking less, exercising more, and living longer than ever before–but only if they can afford it.
Media
Undercover Reporting: Behind the Scenes
Logan Symposium • April 28, 2017 It was a real honor to share the stage with Ailsa Chang (“Planet Money”), Suki Kim (Without You, There is No Us), Shane Bauer (Mother Jones), and James Jones (Frontline) to discuss the complexities of undercover reporting at the Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting hosted by the Investigative Reporting … Read more
Explaining White Resentment to a Black Audience
Taking my first (public) stab at explaining white resentment to a predominantly black audience
Southern Foodways Symposium Lecture:
Jiffy to Maseca
Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium • Oct. 14, 2016 Jiffy corn muffin mix is the second-most sold dry grocery item in the U.S. Maseca is used in more than two-thirds of all corn tortillas in Mexico. Yet the food world tends to sneer at them both. By tracing the origin stories of these two iconic corn mixes, I explore how … Read more
Obese, Yet Malnourished
Thank You Democracy • March 18, 2015 I enjoyed chiming in with Jefferson Davis for this radio show, Thank You Democracy, out in Portland, OR. You can listen to the whole show here.
Stateside with Cynthia Canty
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
HuffPost Live: Can Whole Foods Feed the Poor?
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.
What I learned in the garlic fields
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
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.
