How Our Food System Acts as an Invisible Form of Oppression

This is more targeted than keeping people out of jobs, keeping people out of schools, because no one really knows about it.

Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman. You know, today we're seeing an increasing burden of chronic disease primarily caused by our food and our food system. Our current food policies promote the consumption of sugar and unhealthy processed food It allows unregulated marketing to kids. I mean, this is unprecedented in the world. It targets poor and minorities. Something else you might not know is that your zip code is more important than your genetic code in determining your risk of health and disease. I've explored a lot of these topics with many of my guests on this podcast. And in this mini episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy, we're going to revisit portions of those past conversations that examine our food system and how it acts as this invisible form of oppression in our society. So let's dive right in starting with my conversation with the civil rights activist and president of Black Lives Matter for the area of Greater New York, Hawk Newsome.

So you grew up in the Bronx.

In the 80s.

80S, oh yeah.

I'm old, you know.

Yeah.

It was the height of the crack epidemic, right?

So in the environment you lived in, it was violent, it was rough, it was poor. I wanna talk a little bit about the whole food injustice issue for a minute and what it was like growing up in that community, what kind of food there was or wasn't, you know, what your family ate.

You have to look at it from the perspective of people who are living in these conditions. You have $20. It's one or two days before payday. It's a family of four. McDonald's has this dollar menu. That means you could get about eight burgers, four orders of fries for $12. It makes sense economically. We didn't know what clean eating was.

I think that people don't realize that there are massive health disparities. It's like the third world in America. I mean, infant mortality in African American communities is twice that of white communities. If you look at diabetes, we're 80% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes if you're African American. You are four times likely to have kidney failure, three and a half times more likely to get your legs amputated because of diabetes.

My dad had kidney failure. He was on dialysis for like seven years.

Right, and so this is massive and in some ways there's a sense in the general culture of sort of blaming the victim, but the whole system of food is set up in a way that actually is driving these behaviors. And what I've been sort of struck by is a lack of understanding that this is just another form of oppression, that big food and the targeted food marketing and the lack of access to food and the way in which even food stamps are used primarily for junk food and soda.

I would call it a silent killer, right? This would be, in my opinion, this is more targeted than keeping people out of jobs, keeping people out of schools, because no one really knows about it.

Yeah.

Because we've been trained to believe that it is our choice. So when you told me, like, these food companies are intentionally getting people addicted to these foods, it kind of changed my life's path.

Yeah.

You know, it was like an invisible form of racism.

Exactly.

So how did we get here? In my conversation with Columbia University Teachers College researcher Pam Koch, We discussed the structural racism embedded in our food system. Let's listen in.

Nobody really talks that much about structural racism, about what do you mean when you say that? Because it's a sort of a hard concept people understand. How is food racist?

So, well, if you think about the whole history of our country, our country was essentially founded with slavery, which was about producing enough food and obviously was having some people be superior owning slaves and some people being slaves. And that was basically divided as white people owned slaves and black people were slaves. And we never recovered from that. Health problems that we are having that's associated with food is a system problem. It's a problem of our food supply. It's not a problem of the, it's a problem for the individuals that have the health problems. But it's not to blame them. It's actually we should be looking at it as a system problem.

And so- It's not people's personal responsibility as we're taught, right?

It's your fault.

Exactly. Exactly.

Just calories in, calories out. If you just have the willpower and exercise more and don't eat as much.

You'Re gonna be fine.

It's just not that simple. It's definitely not that simple. And so if we think about it that way and we think about the system that we have set up for Africans, Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics who have the highest rates of obesity and all the chronic diseases in our country, it's because of the communities that they have been allowed to live in. And that's essentially how it's happened.

So we have to start talking about that. I mean, I mean the sovereignty of the Native Food System is an interesting topic.

Exactly.

You've got reservations where they were all basically herded to and they basically usurped their traditional food systems and then they shipped in government commodities of flour, sugar and Crisco basically, the shortening, which are all deadly and now they're enormously overweight. 80% get diabetes by the time they're 30. So it's a massive problem. It's almost like the second genocide of the Native Americans. And the African American committee too. slavery was founded on the need to produce sugar and other commodities. And now it was a form of oppression back then through slavery. And today sugar is keeping native and African American and other minority populations down. It's sort of an interesting, it's like a new form of biological slavery that happens with these addictive substances.

And we need to be looking back at the historical context to understand all the food related problems and issues we have if we're going to solve them. And if we don't understand it in that context, and understand that some people have, for generations, been stuck with having limited access to healthy foods at this point. And we need to really change that.

We are told that what we eat is a personal choice that's rooted in our cultural heritage and family customs. We're told that being fat and sick results from eating too much and not exercising enough. This blames the victim. when we know that the food industry designs our food to be addictive. Dr. Shawn Lukin, a practicing family physician in the Bronx and an award-winning NIH-funded investigator, studies these issues. You've written a lot about how do.

We start to change these toxic food environments? What are the levers that we can pull? What are the strategies that we can.

Use to help shift that?

At the end of the day, it's the food system and the food environment.

That is the bigger determinant by far.

Of health, obesity, diabetes, chronic disease than.

Personal choice and responsibility.

That's really clear.

In my patients, I'm struck by how motivated people are, how much they want to get better. And yet, being stifled at every turn, by an environment that's just not supportive of those efforts.

So what's the takeaway here? Well, let's jump back into my conversation with Pam Koch.

What the policies are, what our farm bill is, what our dietary guidelines for Americans are all matter in terms of what people eat. The other is, is that we all need to take responsibility for having a food supply for everyone. that can nourish them. And if we don't take that on as a society, that this is important, this is what we want to happen for everyone, we're not going to be able to move forward.

Martin Luther King once said, Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. We can no longer be silent about this. It's time we say no to big food and institutionalized food injustice that's causing this slow motion genocide. There are things we can't change as individuals. We can't stop natural disasters. We can't end wars. But we all eat. We vote three times a day with our fork. We can end this epidemic of chronic disease and obesity. The single biggest political act and the single biggest act of self-love of rebuilding our communities is to choose real food. We need to educate our kids and ourselves and our communities. We have to do this together. In fact, we can only do this together because getting healthy is a team sport. So thanks for tuning in. If you like this mini edition of the Doctor's Pharmacy, please share it with your friends and family. And until next time, I wish you health and happiness.