Rebel Takes: On the Future of Food

What does it mean when a food-rich society has thousands going hungry?
How do food and politics intersect?
How can our food habits reconnect us with nature?

From family dinners to solo lunches, chain supermarkets to local greengrocers, a measure of wealth to a tactic of civil rights movements, how and what we eat has shaped our relationship with one another and with our environment.

But how can we use the cultural, social, personal, and political power of food to make a change in the world?

Catherine Joy White unpacks the rich and expansive legacy that informs our treatment of food on a global scale and uses it to create a roadmap for the future. White deftly tackles issues such as food poverty and its intersections with identity, misconceptions of disordered eating, nationwide movements such as Marcus Rashford’s campaign to feed the children of Britain, as well as innovative new ways of growing, consuming, and sharing food in response to the climate crisis.

What we eat matters, and On the Future of Food is a deeply thoughtful, joyfully optimistic call to imagine and demand better — for ourselves and for future generations.

Rebel Takes is a series that asks its writers to hope. Exploring the past and present of foundational aspects of society, each installment envisions an alternative future, charges history with radical possibility, and sets out to answer the question: how can we make change happen?