W.It was probably only a matter of time before the most fundamental of human existence – food – was politicized again on the big stage. Not that food wasn’t always political. From access to ingredients, to preparation and to the decision of who is allowed to eat what in the end, it has always been an instrument of oppression and liberation. Salt, for example, which was not only an ingredient in fairy tales, but also the greatest political issue in culinary history, was subject to the longest economic monopoly ever: for more than 2000 years, the state in China controlled the price of “yellow gold”. In India, it was Gandhi’s salt march that became a formative event on the road to independence. In 1930 he and his followers traveled almost 400 kilometers to the sea, where he won a few grains of salt – a privilege that was actually reserved for the British colonial powers.
“Hunger is one of the instruments of repression,” wrote the socialist African American Black Panther Movement newspaper in 1969, and so the activists began giving free breakfast to black school children, which caused a lot of uproar at the time at the FBI and nonetheless from the US government has been adopted until today; Long before civil rights equality in the United States, Coca Cola was available to everyone.
While rising food prices at the beginning of the millennium led to unrest in many countries in the so-called global south, food has increasingly become a status symbol in affluent societies, with avocado toast and superfood muesli with oat milk being celebrated on Instagram. UNESCO recently recalled that food has a completely different story when it declared the Haitian national dish, the Soup Joumou, an intangible world cultural heritage.
Eat the rich food
“This is not only a sign of hope and encouragement, but also a call to unity for the Haitian people who are going through a particularly difficult moment in their rich history,” said the Haitian UNESCO delegates. The poverty-stricken country suffered the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse and a major earthquake this year.
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