Revolution on primetime tv: Jamie oliver takes on the us school food system

There are many reasons to criticize the industrialized, market-based system of American food production and distribution. Buttressed by US governmental and multinational food policy, the current practices of multinational agricultural business conglomerates are ultimately environmentally unsustainable, inhumane to animals, and marginalizing to local farm economies and workers.2 Food distribution and retail networks have historically been inequitable and characterized by racist patterns of disinvestment in low-income and minority communities, while the highly processed foods sold to consumers have been connected to a variety of chronic diseases. Together, these criticisms stand as the foundation for many of the contemporary (if decentralized) US movements that work to construct a healthier and more sustainable food system. For years, however, these oppositional arguments were largely confi ned to circles of academics, farmers, urban agriculturalists, policy wonks, and anti-hunger advocates. Over the last several decades, conscious consumers have joined the conversation as well, and their consumer voices have been heard most clearly in the burgeoning market for local and organically grown foods.4 Conscious food consumers have been implored to “vote with their wallet three times a day” for health and sustainability, a neoliberal mantra that has placed the consumer in direct control of her own well-being as well as of the well-being of her physical and social environment.