Food as Radical Empathy

 

I strongly support how food is used as a common ground to bring people together in this subject of radical empathy. Like we mentioned in this weeks’ class discussion, everyone eats food, so everyone should care and try to pay attention to what’s going on. In this ted talk, Allison highlighted more than the importance of using food as radical empathy. I like how YouTube highlights the sections of the video because it categorizes the problem being addressed thoroughly and gives me a better understanding of the overall goal.

            For example, under the section of “Why Food,” she mentioned some very critical points to why food can be used as a common ground. One of them was how a comedian recognizes news anchors who pump anti-Muslimism propaganda on their channel then proceeds enjoy “Halal Food” from a “Halal” food truck just outside their workplace. It was really the example after that she mentioned that made me really understand how important radical empathy through food was. She mentions how food can be a factor in social exclusion along with younger people culturally different backgrounds bringing school lunch. That one example is so clear to me because I’ve seen it firsthand, and I regret contributing to it when I was younger. I appreciate that I’ve matured to see I was wrong not being more understanding.

Allison also makes great points with telling people to learn more about other cultures’ foods and trying them. Since being in environmental science, I’ve had a significantly different perspective on our agricultural systems in the U.S and the food industry to the point I’ve been checking the ingredients of every item I buy or what’s selling the most since I work there. With that being said, it’s often that I have in-depth conversations with customers shopping in our international sections about food quality and preferences which always have a common ending of some sort saying half of the food we produce is harming us.