We THINK we have a choice

We saw the legendary Keith Morris play with his band OFF! (formerly the frontman of Black Flag and Circle Jerks) a few months ago, right before the 2024 U.S. election. In between songs, speaking to a mesmerized New York packed crowd, he ranted repeatedly, “We think we have a choice, we think we have a choice, we think we have a choice…”

This stuck with me. At the surface, we have tons of choices, but who is steering these choices, and are we siphoned into just a handful of 1-2 choices when it comes time to who we vote for, what social media platforms we participate in (bye bye TikTok), or what food choices we have on hand? We live in a monopolized, concentrated, and consolidated world order with massive power imbalances.

Now, dear reader, I am well aware that I live in a country with technically endless choices, and democracy is technically still standing (some would disagree with that!). Choice can be a beautiful thing. The choice to celebrate. The choice to act. The choice to revolt! The choice to check out. However, cracks are emerging across many countries and communities, beckoning questions like who has more choice? Who has less and why? Who is steering our choices? Who is interfering with them?

Yet, I wonder more and more about equity, freedoms, and diversity of choice, particularly in the context of food systems, and how these systems fundamentally are meant to ensure food security and optimal nutrition.

Equity of choice

The diversity and range of food choices depend on who you are, where you live, and the structures that support your life. The ability to choose a nutritious diet is conditioned by inequities in food access—which stem from broader social inequities. For example, physical, economic, and social access to food can provide many or limited choices. Consider these questions:

• How close do you live to food sources?

• Are you living in an area that lacks affordable, healthy food?

• Do you have to take two buses and a subway to get to the market?

• Do you need a car because there is no public transport?

• Once you get to the market, can you afford the food?

• Do you have enough money to buy food?

• Are the markets even appropriate to your social norms and culture?

• Do systems oppress your ability to choose?

And that's just for consumers! Think about farmers: Can small-scale farms and enterprises compete with large farms or transnational companies, or do they have to make harder, more limited choices to stay competitive?

Freedom of choice

Those who have the freedom of choice — in what kinds of foods they eat, how much they eat, and for farmers, what they grow and how they grow it — can make choices that benefit the world. For example, if countries with high meat consumption reduce their intake, they could help mitigate climate change, improve environmental sustainability, and promote animal welfare. It is often thought that one person can't change the world. Yet, we know that individual actions, when combined, can lead to collective impact. Individual choices can create change.

But people want autonomy. They don't want to be told what to eat. And they don't always want to make choices based on altruism. Many resonate with Federico Fellini, who once said...

"I became burdened…with useless baggage that I now want off my back. I want to uneducate myself of…worthless concepts, so that I may return to a virginal personality…to a rebirth of real intent and of real self. Then I won’t be lost in a collective whole that fits nobody because it’s made to fit everybody. Wherever I go, from the corner of my eye, I see…people moving in groups, like schools of fish… This is one of the things I fear more than anything else. I loathe collectivity."

That may be true. In the United States, for example, dietary choice is often driven by taste, price, and convenience and is less about solving “we are all in this together” problems such as climate change.

Diversity of choice

While some have more freedoms when it comes to choice, it begs the question as to how many choices we have within choice. Do we have a lot of variety, diversity, and range of choice? Some would argue no because the world has become more similar and homogeneous. We are converging. Technology has helped with process along. As Herbert Marcuse argued in his book One Dimensional Man, while technology provides endless information and choice, it would result in less variety of ideas and creative thinking. So, although people think they have more choices, the choices lack significant differences. This was written in the 1960s…

When considering the diversity of choice, it raises the question of who provides it. We know that our global food system is hyper-consolidated and concentrated — from the seeds to the inputs used on crops, to the varieties of crops grown and the agricultural subsidies that support only a handful of crops, to the retail markets that sell us our food. A handful of transnational companies control the majority of supplies, commodities, and foods we eat at every step of the supply chain.

Just knowing this makes me want to pull a Lloyd Dobler. If you don't know who Lloyd is, I encourage you to watch "Say Anything" — an '80s romantic comedy written and directed by Cameron Crowe. The lovable Lloyd Dobler, played by John Cusack, is asked about his plans for the future. He says:

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.

That sounds about right. You might want to avoid products made, processed, or sold by massive corporate food companies, but here's the harsh reality: we often don't have a real alternative. The scary part? Many of us can't simply opt-out. We can't all plant our own gardens, eat exclusively from what we grow, show local, and choose only foods that are good for us and the planet. The food system is like an invisible cage, constraining both farmers and consumers. Our choices are frequently predetermined by complex, interconnected systems that prioritize efficiency and profit over individual well-being and environmental sustainability. It's not just about willpower or desire. The barriers are systemic, making truly independent food choices incredibly challenging for most people. We're caught in a web of limited options, corporate control, and economic constraints that make genuine food autonomy feel like an impossible dream.

But I have hope on this holiday, Martin Luther King Day (yes, I am ignoring that other big event). He said, “There are a lot of things you can't choose for yourself, but you have to keep moving forward.” And we will do just that.

Bodies upon the gears

The years between 1965 and 1974, also known as the long sixties, were a decade in which the U.S. and the world were in great turmoil, witnessing a complete cultural shift led by the “baby boomer generation.” America had just emerged from a Great Depression and two devastating world wars that toppled and reorganized world order. As a result, it arose as the world's foremost economic, political, and military power with a resulting illusion of great prosperity and hope for the future. But things began to unravel slowly. Just a few years prior, the young, charismatic President John F. Kennedy was gunned down in broad daylight in Dallas, Texas. His assassination shocked the nation and ended the optimism and innocence many, especially the youth, felt for the country’s future.

By 1965, the U.S. entrenched itself in what was to be a senseless war in faraway Southeast Asia, where we had very little business engaging in, a commonly held view around the world. Then came more nonsensical assassinations. The first was in 1965, when Malcolm X, an American Muslim minister and human and civil rights activist, was killed while giving a speech in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City (where Columbia University’s medical campus now sits). Just three years later, American Baptist minister, one of the most prominent civil rights leaders, Martin Luther King Jr., and a president’s brother and the former U.S. Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, were both gunned down in hotels in Memphis and Los Angeles, respectively. Then, from 1972 to 1974, the Watergate scandal plagued the country, leaving citizens wholly untrusting of its government and the lengths it would go to cover up crimes, no matter how inconsequential or considerable. The darkness fully engulfed the country when former president Nixon resigned from office before a certain impeachment because of the scandal.

Times were, to put it lightly, unhinged, and the country was fractured. Protests were an everyday occurrence. Students were being injured or killed on campuses for demonstrating, sometimes by the National Guard, the very institution meant to instill peace and protect citizens. On the other side of the world, young men were sacrificing their lives for a war without cause. Sound familiar? Indeed…

Many young people bucked convention by attempting to create a new future on their terms—an authentic counterculture movement. They took risks—running away from home to protest in the streets, joining a commune, or getting lost in the haze of the Haight. Even before the dark days of ‘68-69, students mobilized in incredible, organized, and purposeful ways. Check out Mario Savio, a student activist and leader of the Berkeley Free Speech movement in the video below making a speech in 1964 on the Berkeley campus named "Bodies Upon the Gears" (also known as the Operation of the Machine). His speech is highly relevant today.

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels ... upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

Dark days can breed creativity, and these times sparked new ways of thinking and living on this shared planet. Young people fought for a different and new world. A big part of that new world was about food and the beginning of climate and environmental justice movements. Some within the counterculture movement were deeply concerned about the direction of U.S. agriculture, its impacts on health and nature, and how the industrialization of the food system was moving more and more towards unhealthy, processed foods controlled by transnational conglomerates. These large-scale industries also spouted environmental contaminants and pollutants into ecosystems, further damaging the environment. There were also deep concerns about the unfailing violation of civil rights and the systemic social injustices domestically and abroad, much of that revealed through the U.S. food system. Democratizing food was a way to potentially address these myriad challenges and find a new, equitable future better for humans and the planet.

The counterculture movement explicitly used food to ignite a social revolution. They returned to the land and started communes to grow their food in organic, wholesome ways. They opened neighborhood co-operatives to sell and provide these foods to their communities. They (the Black Panthers) started safety net programs to feed children living in impoverished neighborhoods.

Putting the long sixties in the context with our world today, we are once more living in a highly polarized, fractured country, with significant loss of life on the domestic front due to everyday gun violence and shootings, drug and alcohol addiction, and unhealthy lifestyles. Our political position in the world is also uncertain, with increasing animosity and frustration towards America’s tactics to ensure its power and relevancy in a globalized society. At the same time, climate change is barreling down on the world because of powerhouse countries’ inability to commit seriously to mitigating global warming over the last 40 years. Diet and diet-related risk factors are now the top killers of disease and death in the country and the world. The U.S. is in the middle of a public health crisis with obesity and non-communicable diseases. For the first time, Americans’ life expectancy is one of the worst among high-income countries. Our food systems are unsustainable and fraught with fragility. So are the environment and the natural resources that agriculture depends on. The rights of citizens, particularly food system workers, marginalized groups, and women, continue to be violated across food systems and every other system.

They say one should study the past to know the future. In the world of food policy, where I spend my professional days, we keep repeating the past, reinventing the wheel of history, and not learning from what came before. Every so often, debates surface on how to feed a growing world, particularly when extreme weather events or conflicts spur food shortages, food price increases, and famines. Questions arise as to why our global food system is so fragile, why we trust international trade, and why we depend on just a handful of crops to feed the world. In addition, there are questions about tipping points related to population growth and climate change. Whether technology and innovation can keep pace or whether we are headed for a collapse. But on we go, with quick fixes that never entirely repair the problem but instead put band-aids on wounds that never entirely heal. That is why the challenges we face today as a global community are even more difficult. Food systems and a raging, changing climate show how fragile our society is and how much we could lose.

The counterculturalists wanted to transform food systems 60 years ago. Maybe their attempts at a social revolution did not work out as they envisioned. Still, they tried to create the foundation for a new society built on sustainable food systems that benefit human and planetary health, community cohesion, and global citizenry. They gave us enough to learn from, adopt, and adapt about how to better govern food systems and the environment while looking out for each other. They tried. Maybe it’s time to pick up where they left off and move forward.