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TheCOVID-19 pandemichas caused much devastation.
It has also prompted a crucial reckoning with our essential needs.
What is healthy eating if so many of us simply do not have enough to eat?
What is healthy eating if our relationship with food creates or springs from deep emotional wounds?
Getty Images / Bravo / Contributor
Hearing these thoughtand actionleaders talk about how theyve been reshaping the food space has been like witnessing a revolution.
The premiere episode, for instance, explores immigration politics at the U.S.-Mexico border by way of the burrito.
Lakshmi will continue to tell these stories, asTaste the Nationhas been renewed for a second season.
Ethan Harrison
For Lakshmi, its a personal storyanda universal one.
SELF: What would you like people to know about your mission?
I work with a few young women who have gone on to do incredible things.
World Central Kitchen
Id like to see a lot more women of color in leadership roles at restaurants across the country.
SELF: How has the pandemic influenced your work in the food world?
I began shooting cooking videos during quarantine, and now it is something that gives me great joy.
Christian Rodriguez / Jenny Anderson
We brought back many previous winners, like Kristen Kish and Brooke Williamson, as guest judges.
It was a herculean effort on everyones part to shoot this season.
SELF: What does the future of healthy eating look like to you?
Brenton Gieser
Everyone should have access to food that is nutritious and satisfying.
Washington tells SELF she credits this “tomato that changed my world with sparking her passion for growing food.
I realized that it was about more than growing food, Washington says.
Heidi Ehalt
Its about trying to break that cycle.
Washington:That I’m just an ordinary person trying to do ordinary things.
I’m not about accolades.
Regina Anderson
It’s just that you see injustice and you call it out.
And there’s others who see a problem or injustice and challenge it.
That’s how I look at it.
Abbey Lossing
SELF: How has the pandemic influenced your work?
Washington:It really exacerbated the problems that we already had when it came to hunger and poverty.
COVID has changed the whole paradigm of not only the food system but the economic system.
Diana Ejaita
People have lost jobs, people have lost businesses.
So how do we come out of COVID with a food system that’s more fair and just?
How do we put more emphasis on making sure that these employees are paid living wages and protected?
Wendy Lopez and Jessica Jones
Because this is the beginning.
There are probably more viruses to come.
How do we preparenot only in terms of food, but economically and emotionally?
Nadja Oertelt
It’s not for some, it’s not for the rich, but it is for everyone.
He even made a recent guest appearance on Michelle Obama’s new Netflix show,Waffles + Mochi.
Its making good meals to feed the many who cannot, Andres tells SELF.
Sterling Pics
Andres, originally from Spain, became a naturalized American citizen in 2013.
Andres also demands better from his country like the kind of person who believes in it deeply.
Andres:That my mission is their mission.
Errol Dunlap
What I want people to know is that together, we can be building longer tables and shorter walls.
We can guess, but we dont know.
Democratic systems or not.
Julie Soefer Photography
All the shortfalls that we still have in our society.
Food is not taken seriously enough at the highest levels of government in every country of the world.
In the case of America, its going to require multiple departments working on different issues.
Colin Lenton
Because one department alone cannot handle the complexity of feeding America and the world.
Andres:I think any eating is healthy eating.
And I know this will be highly controversial.
Feeding America
And my answer to them was, Im not going to the meeting.
Because we are not giving them anything.
The future of healthy eating is where every single family has food on the table every single night.
Jordan Moss
Thats the first stepnot talking about organic food.
Healthy food is not about the food itself.
Its about everything else that is even deeper than the food.
Asia Pietrzyk
On the subway, people would glare and move away.
It was like the sea was parting, Chang tells SELF.
I just felt like I was like this walking disease.
Between the heartbreaking stories and firsthand racism, We were hurting so much, Chang says.
Of course, food insecurity, senior isolation, andanti-Asian racismdont begin and end with COVID-19.
It might be in a different iteration, Tsai says.
SELF: What do you feel is the most pressing problem related to food in your area of expertise?
They didn’t know what to do with the food.
It’s like, canned tuna and preserved sliced apples.
Number one: They don’t recognize it.
Number two: It’s not senior-friendly.
A lot of them have arthritis, so they have trouble opening the cans.
Chang:It’s so important to take care of your own communities if no one else is.
But its also so important to understand that this takes everyone’s efforts.
Its something that brings all cultures, all people, all backgrounds together.
Tsai:I think healthy eating overall is taking in something that fulfills you wholly and holistically.
Food is such an instrumental tool in people being able to feel whole.
Khanna:This whole food system that we have today is based on a mentality of extraction and exploitation.
At 27, Shermanby then a well-regarded chef in Minneapolishad a disorienting epiphany.
But I didn’t know anything about Lakota food at that moment.
Today, Shermans career is dedicated to reviving Indigenous foodways and reshaping North American cuisine.
This summer, NaTIFS will open its first Indigenous Food Lab in Minneapolis.
After that, maybe Mexico, Australia, or South America.
We look at this Indigenous perspective on a global scale, Sherman says.
Sherman:We were getting ready to launch the first Indigenous Food Lab, then COVID hit.
We’ve been sending out 10,000 meals a week as of the past couple of months.
SELF: What do you feel the most pressing problem related to food in your area of expertise?
Sherman:More access to regionally produced and community-based foods.
Regina Anderson
Executive Director ofFood Recovery NetworkWashington, D.C. For them, this is about systems-change work.
We need to build it better.
I believe very deeply in the ability of young people to make positive change, she says.
This is completely solvable if people just decide we’re not gonna throw away perfectly good food.
We’re gonna keep recovering food.
This is how I’m inspired every single day.
Anderson:Food recovery is for everyone.
I’ve never met anybody who’s like, Oh, I really love wasting food.
People really understand immediately the issue that we’re trying to tackle.
And the issue crosses all the political lines that you could possibly imagine.
Food is for everyone.
We all have stories about our cultures, our families, the best meal you’ve ever had.
Food really can connect all of us.
Anderson:It looks very tasty.
And I really do want everyone to be able to enjoy that.
We just want to verify that everyone has access to that.
We want immigrants and people born here to be able to see foods that reflect their cultures.
We can all share and learn to enjoy one anothers food.
We work hard to break that all down and redefine what health looks like for people, Lopez explains.
(Lopez and Jones areSELF columnistsas well.)
Our main message is that health and health recommendations should be accessible to everyone, Lopez says.
That means physically, mentally, and emotionally.
As Lopez puts it, individual health is way more complex than, you know, eat more vegetables.
SELF: How did you come to do what you do?
Our friends suggested that we put it online so that we could reach more people.
Then we got on YouTube, and it grew from there.
We were like, why don’t we just do a podcast?
SELF:What do you think is the most pressing problem related to your area?
That impacts how you see food and health.
SELF: How has the pandemic impacted your work?
Jones:I also do private practice, and people have had different responses to the pandemic.
So its working through those feelings.
It offers the promise of a more sustainable, safe, and reliable alternative for producing animal protein.
New Harvest is a nonprofit research institute helping to bring that promise much closer to reality.
It does a job, which is feed people, Datar says.
Theres no denying it: Eating meat is very satiating.
It offers a lot of nutrition.
Its terrible for food security.
And experts are also warning that factory farms may fuel the emergence of future zoonotic disease epidemics.
Datar:I was pursuing a cell bio degree at the University of Alberta, where I am currently.
My professor introduced the idea that we could grow food from cells, and I just latched onto it.
I ended up writing a big paper on it and sent it to the person who founded New Harvest.
He was like, You really should get this published.
He emailed a bunch of researchers and they did a peer review of my paper.
It was science at its finest in terms of starting a conversation and working through ideas together without judgment.
Datar:Healthy is always framed in an individual way.
You see all kinds of studies about Is meat good for you or bad for you?
and red meat versus white meat.
And thats not just about your eating choicesthat’s about your food manufacturing choices.
It’s not just the fact that technology advances, it’showit advances.
What happens in the lab?
Who has access to it?
Who’s going to be manufacturing it?
What is the world that we want to work towards?
Cole:It means access to vegan food.
People just wanna live better, they wanna live longer.
Theyre curious about what the lifestyle entails.
Cole:Unfortunately, many businesses can’t say that business has grown in the pandemic.
I still got lines down the block and around the corner every single day.
The pandemic has really given us the ability to seek opportunities to be a better business.
We fed every single firefighter in Atlanta, frontline workers in the middle of the pandemic.
We’ve also supported businesses by paying their rent through the pandemic.
I realized that Slutty Vegan is a weatherproof business.
Cole:Food insecurity.
Not only am I building the neighborhoods back up, I’m providing access to vegan food.
And I thought, who better to talk about Health at Every Size than a fat Black woman?
Who better than me?
Garnett returned to practicing as an R.D.
to help challenge these expectations on a systemic and individual level.
She also works with dietetics and health care providers on providing multiculturally competent care.
She is training as a death doula so she can better explore those themes with her clients.
Garnett:I’m here to have a good time, and if people are inspired that’s great.
I’m definitely a hedonist.
I do believe life should be enjoyed and food should be enjoyable.
So I’m here to experience all that life has to offer.
Im taking this time to go within and focus.
I’ve been making a lot of moves behind the scenes.
I haven’t been posting on social media.
I’ve just been doing the work.
This is a period of incubation and learning and feeling kind of like a caterpillar.
And then in the next phase of my life, I think I’m gonna be the butterfly.
Just this nourishment that happens when you’re in community.
Community is how folks have survived all these centuries, its how folks will survive during a pandemic.
With physical and vocational rehab, Ha learned how to navigate the world with vision lossincluding the kitchen.
The home cook memorized where everything was and started relying deeply on her other senses.
Ha was legally blind by the time her husband convinced her she had a story to tell onMasterChef.
He said, you might cook really well.
(Interspersed with cooking segments and celebrity guests were tips about accessible cooking and eating for good eye health.
The hosts and guests also narrated their environment and actions in detail for the audience.)
Ha:The industry of food is still very exclusive.
Its still very male-dominated, and there are very few with visible disabilities.
It really comes down to education and awareness.
Ha:We quickly pivoted to doing takeout and delivery.
And then at the Blind Goat, we started something called theG.O.A.T.
It’s a subscription service, and every month I would do a cooking class with people.
So we took that experience virtual.
We started doing that to still bring people that interactive and togetherness experience during the pandemic.
But there are just so many other angles to it, Abhi Ramesh tells SELF.
That’s a big misconception.
The fact that those two problems exist together at the same time is this cruel irony, Ramesh says.
His companys mission is to tackle both at once.
(The company is reportedly looking into accepting SNAP/EBT.)
SELF: How has the pandemic influenced your work/mission?
Ramesh:In March of last year when COVID began, we saw a huge spike in demand.
Our new customer volume was up five times, and it happened basically overnight.
Restaurants were shut down, stadiums, universities, and all of their food suppliers were hit really hard.
So we bought a lot of stuff from these companies.
One fun example is a popcorn-growing co-op that sells 80% of their popcorn to the movie theater industry.
All of a sudden, they have nowhere for that popcorn to go.
So they sold it to us, and we sold popcorn on our marketplace for our customers.
Ramesh:How fragmented the food supply chain is.
But what they don’t know is that there were, like, 10 different steps along the way.
SELF: What would you like people to know about your mission and your work?
Ramesh:Our internal mission statement is to build a mission-driven, affordable grocery store online.
The affordability part is critical as well for us.
There is a market for that, but our goal is to build something quite different.
Our goal is to build value and affordability for the consumer.
We can solve this, Babineaux-Fontenot tells SELF.
However, she also understands the scale of the problem before us.
We will not food bank our way through food insecurity, the CEO says.
The economic shock of the pandemic has both multiplied and exposedAmericas existing hunger crisis.
Yet the Feeding America data pipe never closed its doors, Babineaux-Fontenot says.
The organization distributed 5.8 billion meals from March 2020 to January 2021, she adds.
(It typically provides about 4.3 billion meals in 12 months.)
She credits the hard work, innovation, and altruism of the organizations volunteers and donors.
The generosity of the American public has been so clear, Babineaux-Fontenot says.
And Feeding America is committed to seeing the challenge through.
My grandparents were sharecroppers, my parents didn’t have the opportunity to graduate from high school.
Then I had a life-altering event: cancer.
I thought, This is one of those moments where you get to make significant changes.
I needed something else in order for me to feel that I had fulfilled the promise of my life.
This opportunity presented itself, and the rest is history.
Babineaux-Fontenot:Cracking the code on chronic food insecurity.
The assault on those families is deep, meaningful, and difficult to quantify.
I wish that people understood how traumatic it is to struggle with food insecurity.
Babineaux-Fontenot:We will not food bank our way through food insecurity.
We also want to be partners in the long-term work that’s ahead.
If we decide as a society that this is not acceptable, we can do something about it.
Cover interviews by Esther Tseng; writing by Carolyn Todd.
Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.
