Food Justice and the Challenge to Neoliberalism

Reading Alkon’s work made me realize how many problems in the food system I had never really thought about before. I usually think about food in simple ways, like price, taste, or whether it is healthy. After this reading, I started to understand that food is also connected to unfair wages, race, and power. It made me notice that the people who grow and prepare food often struggle the most, even though everyone depends on them every day. One idea that stood out to me was that food justice is about more than access to healthy food. Alkon explains that it also involves challenging exploitation and unfair treatment within the food system. This made me rethink common solutions like organic stores or farmers markets. While those options may help some people, they do not fix deeper problems like poverty or discrimination. Real change has to happen on a larger level. I was also interested in how society focuses on individual choice instead of responsibility from larger systems. Many food movements encourage people to create change by buying certain foods, but this mainly works for people who can afford those choices. This made me think about how easy it is to blame individuals for unhealthy eating without considering limits like money, time, or transportation. Overall, Alkon helped me see that food justice is really about fairness and human rights. It is not only about eating healthy, but also about treating workers with respect and creating a system that supports everyone. This reading changed the way I think about where food comes from and who is affected by it.