Food As Radical Empathy

 Alison Alkon offers valid points viewing food as a focal point for all groups of people, working to create empathy for under recognized groups. She emphasized the importance of confronting political, material, and injustice.  Her call is to not just care for people's injustice, but to take action. Her strategic goals for change are to address capitalism, racial segregation, labor exploitation, and environmental degradation. My experience working different aspects of the food service and food sales has shown positive advancement in all the stated areas.  We will need to continue our awareness to make consistent improvements. Providing different cuisines, not only educates our palates, but it also brings us closer to each of these ethnic groups. The successful food companies are aware of our growing minority populations and produce foods to meet this growing demand, such as authentic cuisines and religious Halal requirements. We are seeing increasing wages in a traditionally low pay industry. Food manufacturers will need to listen to the growing younger populations, to meet their food preferences and requirements.  As the era of cheap foods deludes us, we have the power to demand clean nutritious foods for all people while addressing food insecurity.  We need to use our dollars to support companies that provide continued positive results in all these areas.