One of the threads of this week's essay was how food writers - like Wilson, van Tulleken et al., – invariably frame solutions to our broken food system in terms of individual behaviour change. Even when they claim they want to transform the system, their solutions always default back to neoliberal ideas around 'choice'. van Tulleken wants warnings on UPFs to help us be better informed. Wilson wants us to procure, carry home, wash, peel, chop, boil, and mash, a entire kilogram of sweet potatoes.
These so-called solutions are far from revolutionary or radical. Like Wilson and vT, they're boring, and lack imagination. They reaffirm a moralised, middle-class neoliberal fantasy of how and what we should eat. And they rely heavily on women's, usually mother's, foodwork.
But what would a more radical, equitable, and just food system really look like? What else could we do with a kilo bag of sweet potatoes when they're not being used as an ideological tool? What would it mean if foodwork wasn't a private enterprise that we all do in our individual homes, but a social institution like the NHS? What wouldsocialised foodwork mean for mothers, carers, elderly, disabled and chronically ill folks?
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