Marion Nestle

Link Food Supplies to Public Health

MARION NESTLE is professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health, emerita, at New York University, and the author of the forthcoming Let’s Ask Marion: What You Need to Know about the Politics of Food, Nutrition, and Health. 

The problems in food systems are particularly evident in meatpacking plants as viral epicenters, staffed by low wage, largely minority and immigrant employees often without sick leave or health care benefits, now considered essential and forced to work by government invocation of the Defense Emergency Act. Problems are also evident in farmers’ destruction of animals, eggs, milk, potatoes, and other vegetables, while food banks are overwhelmed by demands for food that they cannot meet. These situations call for nothing less than major reform of our food system to make it more resilient and sustainable. This means decentralization, regionalization, and localization of food production, and implementation of policies to link food production to public health and environmental protection.

What kinds of policies? How about a universal basic income, universal school meals, and federal subsidies for local and regional small- and mid-size producers, and fair wages (with benefits) for all those essential workers. Our country has plenty of money to do this; what’s lacking is political will. How do we get political will? Advocate! Vote! Start now!

Now. Next.

The articles in this special section:

The Ethos of Rural Life Is Everyone’s Ethos Now

Rabbi Rachel Isaacs

In the years to come, more of us will be growing our own potatoes.

Link Food Supplies to Public Health

Marion Nestle

How do we get political will? Advocate! Vote! Start now!

I Want Us to View Art Through a New Lens

Jillian Steinhauer

To be clear, I miss art. I miss being moved and confronted and stretched by artists and their work. But I don’t really miss the apparatus that surrounds it.

White Allies Need to Step Up. Now.

Yavilah McCoy

As the CEO of a majority Jewish women of color led organization, I continue to learn how essential our work to expand racial equity in the world around us is to our very survival.

We’re Going to Witness a Surge in the Current Health Inequality

Marion Danis

Life lessons from the mythological Lilith. Betty Friedan on her feminine mystique & being Jewish. Those thorny Jewish women's organizations.

Abortion for Anyone Who Needs It

Steph Black

Telemedicine options for many kinds of healthcare have spiked. Yet this has not been true for abortion.

Global Tzedakah: Save for a Rainy Day? This Is a Downpour!

Ruth Messinger

The Jewish community must take a lead in looking at all the systemic inequities that are being laid bare by the pandemic

Reproductive Justice Instead of “Jewish Continuity.”

Michal Raucher

What would it mean to think about a Jewish future that does not revolve around Jewish women having Jewish babies?

Camp, Even When It’s Not Summer

Elana Rebitzer

 The non-summer months could be filled with much more camp content in years to come. 

Comedy? You Bet!

Laura Beatrix Newmark

Life lessons from the mythological Lilith. Betty Friedan on her feminine mystique & being Jewish. Those thorny Jewish women's organizations.

Labor Activism Has New Momentum

Amelia Dornbush

Life lessons from the mythological Lilith. Betty Friedan on her feminine mystique & being Jewish. Those thorny Jewish women's organizations.

Relative Privilege in a World of Suffering

Yael Schonbrun

Life lessons from the mythological Lilith. Betty Friedan on her feminine mystique & being Jewish. Those thorny Jewish women's organizations.

A Mirage of Hope for Israelis and Palestinians

Naomi Zeveloff

Life lessons from the mythological Lilith. Betty Friedan on her feminine mystique & being Jewish. Those thorny Jewish women's organizations.