Currently browsing posts about: Food-movement

Nick Freudenberg and I wrote this op-ed for Civil Eats to start a discussion of what we think is a topic that needs it.

Can the Food Justice Movement and MAHA Find Common Ground? A cross-cutting food justice movement could improve our diets, food systems, and health.

By Marion Nestle and Nicholas Freudenberg

February 23, 2026

During the past year, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement attracted positive public and media attention and provoked widespread discussion of the importance of diet to health. As academics who have written about and participated in food-and-diet advocacy for several decades, we have rarely witnessed such spirited public debate about the connections between the well-being of the American population and the system that produces the food we eat.

The food justice movement, which  emerged from the social movements of the 1960s, has long focused on reforming the food system and improving diets. Organizations  such as HEAL Food Alliance, Community Food Advocates, Food Chain Workers Alliance, and the National Black Food and Justice Alliance have fought for broad goals such as building more collective power to improve food policies and systems, changing food and farming practices to reduce pollution and carbon emissions, and making healthier food choices available to people of color. Together with local campaigns, these national organizations have also worked to win more specific changes such as making school lunches healthier and free for all children and increasing job benefits for low-wage food workers.

While the food justice and MAHA movements hold many of the same goals, they differ deeply in other ways. We believe food-justice advocates could benefit from a clearer understanding of where their objectives and approaches overlap but also diverge from those of MAHA, as well as a more defined strategy for how to interact with the movement and decide which MAHA messages to amplify and which to subject to public debate.

“Successful movements build power by winning over new constituencies in working toward common goals; the potential for forging a shared action plan is worth pursuing.”

What do food justice advocates and MAHA supporters have in common? Both believe that the current U.S. food system and the diets it produces contribute to poor health, especially as compared to other countries. Both believe that the profit-seeking and market practices of food and beverage producers, fast food chains, and food marketers actively promote chronic disease, obesity, premature death, and preventable illness.

Both agree that food companies must change their marketing practices, especially to children, and limit chemicals, dyes, and additives in food products. Both also agree that improvements in the rules for school food and federal food assistance programs can lead to improvements in diets and health.

How do the movements differ? Whereas food-justice activists stress the need for collective and public action and make reducing inequities in healthy food access a top priority, MAHA followers emphasize the importance of individual and parental responsibility for diet and health, even for the disadvantaged. While the social justice side views profit-driven markets as a key cause of the nation’s food and health problems, most MAHA leaders (if not its rank-and-filers) endorse market-based solutions to food and health problems.

The two movements also disagree on what constitutes evidence for changing policy. MAHA distrusts established science and often rejects the scientific process that most independent researchers and food justice advocates believe constitutes the basis for policy. By relying on “mom influencers” rather than scientists, MAHA adherents show their belief in the power of narratives of personal experience. And by using  evidence gathered by non-mainstream investigators, they tap into public distrust of established science.

Fifteen years ago, the food writer Michael Pollan wrote that food movements of the day were a “big lumpy tent”  in which the various factions beneath it sometimes worked at cross-purposes. We recognize that this remains true for the food justice movement. It is also true for the MAHA movement.

Today’s MAHA movement includes activist parents fighting to improve school food and get rid of pesticides, wellness industry influencers and entrepreneurs like Calley and Casey Means, anti-vaxxers, and, of course, President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Its contributors include major corporations and right-wing leaders.

In 2024, the  largest contributor to the group’s super-PAC, the MAHA Alliance,  was Elon Musk and his SpaceX, together contributing $6 million—and this year the MAHA Center, headed by Tony Lyons, a major financial supporter of RFK Jr.’s presidential campaign, funded the controversial  Mike Tyson “Eat Real Food” Super Bowl ad for a reported $8 million. Whether the private interests of wellness entrepreneurs like the Means, and billionaires like Musk, will take precedence over the MAHA mom influencers remains to be seen.

This heterogeneity poses both an opportunity and a challenge to those seeking alliances, raising the question: Is it possible to build on commonalities given the deep differences and this era’s sectarianism and polarization? We believe the food justice movement should pursue this chance for new partnerships, despite the risks in this path. Successful movements build power by winning over new constituencies in working toward common goals; the potential for forging a shared action plan is worth pursuing. To do so, we suggest six actions for food-justice advocates.

1. Talk to MAHA activists.The groups should create forums and spaces where they can discuss commonalities and differences openly without insulting or disrespecting those who differ. Open discussion is a prerequisite for exploring the possibility of shared goals.
2. Argue with respect.We acknowledge the risks of attempting to work with and win over MAHA supporters. In some cases, we will have to agree to disagree. In others, we will forcefully debate in public settings. In all situations, we must not lose sight of common goals or conflicting values.  By listening carefully to MAHA arguments, food justice proponents can better understand its supporters’ worldviews and engage them in finding opportunities for joint action.
3. Develop a common agenda of legal and regulatory reforms. The two movements’ shared distrust of corporations—and the legal and political systems in which Big Business exerts undue influence—present important opportunities for winning public support. Can the two groups establish clear goals for legal and regulatory reforms in food, agriculture, pesticides, and other industries? These could include strategies to reduce theconflicts of interestthat enable corporations to profit from public harm and promote new evidence-based and public-serving transparency rules for businesses, universities, and government. One example—agreeing that government has the right to set policies to keep toxic substances out of our food supply and the duty to enforce these policies—would be a big step forward.
4. Provide a clear rationale for a focus on food equity. A food system that offers healthy food to the well-off but not others can never make America healthier. To enlist MAHA followers in making the entire food system more equitable will require winning their support for reducing current socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, and gender inequities in access to healthy food and other basic human needs. It will require proposing they consider the “sum of us” argumentthat, for example, stronger food regulations and healthier supermarket food benefits all of us, not just the most disadvantaged.
5. Encourage MAHA followers to question the moral commitments and policies of MAGA and its leaders. The cruelty, corruption, disregard for science, and disdain for democracy that characterize MAGA leaders (but not necessarily MAHA followers) dismay Americans of varied political beliefs.

Last week, President Trump issued an executive order promoting production of glyphosate (Roundup), the widely used herbicide, claiming the weedkiller was needed to protect national economic and food security. Signaling the fragility of the MAHA/MAGA alliance, Vani Hari, an influential MAHA grassroots leader, told The Guardian, “This executive order reads like it was drafted in a chemical company boardroom. Calling it ‘national defense’ while expanding protections for toxic products is a dangerous misdirection. Real national security is protecting American families, farmers, and children.”

MAHA followers could also examine the conflicts of interests of their own wellness-industry aligned leaders. A MAHA/MAGA alliance is not inevitable. By finding specific and appealing ways to win over MAHA followers who genuinely want a healthier nation and food system, the food justice movement may help to build the political power needed for transformative changes.

6. Study successful MAHA initiatives. MAHA’s use of personal stories and narratives, its capture of public attention, its acceptance of internal differences in opinion, and its successes in rural communities are accomplishments worth emulating. MAHA has been strikingly effective in bringing public attention to our nation’s food system and food policies. Finding ways to capture the bully pulpit of public attention without ceding to the pulpits of bullies could provide lessons for other current political struggles. The food justice movement can extract relevant lessons from these experiences.

In our view, the prospect of a cross-cutting food justice movement that brings in new supporters and builds political power to win new measures to improve diets, food systems, and health is a risk worth exploring. At best, the food justice movement might open new doors for alliances between MAHA followers and activists in movements for environmental justice, women’s health, or universal health care.

Given the different worldviews of MAHA and food justice advocates, we are under no illusion that this process will inevitably or easily lead to meaningful changes in diet, food policy, or health. But we do believe that silence due to fear of criticism or conflict wins nothing. With eyes wide open, we invite others to join in the exploration of new principled alliances.

John Brueggemann.  Food for the Future: Beautiful Stories from the Alternative Agro-Food Movement.  Lexington Books, 2023.

I did a blurb for this book:

Sociologist John Brueggemann examines the stories of people actively engaged in today’s small-scale food and farming movement toward healthier and more sustainable food systems.  Their commitment, passion, and pragmatism is so inspiring that we will all want to join or support this movement in every way we can.

This brief excerpt explains at a glance why these stories matter.

A central claim of this book, however, is that there is also a Beautiful Story.  Against this vast, execrable current, there is a dramatic countertrend, a trickle of clean, life-giving freshness that is rapidly gaining strength…This includes, most importantly, farms.  From the people I spoke to directly, others they mention, and secondary research, it seems clear to me that many farmers care deeply about the land, what they produce how they produce it, and its consequences for consumers.

I love food and through this research have come to revere those who make it available.  I find this movement to be stirring, both in terms of what it is doing for our food system, but more importantly for all the lessons it offers for how neighbors can live together.  I think this story is both credible and wondrous….We’ve got to have faith in each other.

Margo Anne Kelley.  Foodtopia: Communities in Pursuit of Peace, Love & Homegrown Food.  Godine, 2022.  

I was asked to do a blurb for this book and readily agreed.

Foodtopia gives us a generous overview of Americans’ historic and contemporary involvement in utopian communities through the lens of their dietary beliefs and practices.  From Thoreau’s Walden to Penniman’s Soul Fire Farm, the search for agrarian values and food justice should inspire us to support—and join—these movements.

If you don’t know the history of  back-to-the-land movements, this is a great place to begin.

Some quick excerpts:

• Thoreau could dwell safely and comfortably on the outskirts of town not because his mom fed him or washed his clothes but because he was white, male, single, able-bodied, a local son, a keen observer, a practiced outdoorsman, a skilled forager and gardener, a capable craftsman, and friend of the landowner.  Without any one of those attributes, he’d have had a tougher go of it….He could move back to town whenever he wanted. 
• In turning away from mainstream food, many back-to-the-landers became vegetarian.  Some wanted to eat lower on the food chain for environmental, financial, ethical, or political reasons; others simply liked thumbing their nose at the meat-eating bourgeoisie.
• …each generation of back-to-the-land utopians has been personally connected to members of an earlier one, has learned from, admired, and often loved them….by enacting their beliefs, b dreaming into being a more capacious world, the changed the existing one for all of us.

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For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

This book was especially interesting to me because I know some of the players and reading it told me a lot about their backgrounds and accomplishments.  It deals with several New York City-based organizations, among them United Bronx Parents, the Park Slope Food Coop, God’s Love We Deliver, and, most prominently, the Community Food Resource Center.

Lana Dee Povitz.  Stirrings: How Activist New Yorkers Ignited a Movement for Food Justice.  University of North Carolina Press, 2019. 

I wrote a blurb for this one.

Stirrings uses the political history of food advocacy organizations in New York City to explain why such groups focus almost exclusively on feeding hungry people rather than on addressing the root cause of that hunger–poverty.  The lessons taught by this history make this book essential reading for anyone interested in ending hunger in America.

And here is a brief paragraph from the Introduction (p. 7):

Aside from its material value as a commodity essential to human life, food acts as a lens through which we can understand dominant social values.  How and by whom food is produced, which foods are government-subsidized, who is deemed eligible for food assistance, who becomes the gatekeepers for providing that food—such arrangements speak volumes about who and what is prioritized, especially by those with decision-making power.  By extension, the history of food activism is important because it tracks how these priorities might be rearranged, how people can work to challenge or temporarily overturn established hierarchies, especially of class and race.  Just as often, the history of food activism sheds light on how inequalities and hierarchies are preserved, defended, and even extended.

Friday October 11 was World Obesity Day, which explains why so many groups are issuing reports on obesity prevalence, risks, costs, and prevention strategies.

I wrote about the one from the Trust for America’s Health, The State of Obesity, a few weeks ago.

Here are three more, just in.

1.  The Heavy Burden of Obesity: The Economics of Prevention.

This one was produced by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).  It finds: “Almost one in four people in OECD countries is currently obese. This epidemic has far-reaching consequences for individuals, society and the economy. Using microsimulation modelling, this book analyses the burden of obesity and overweight in 52 countries (including OECD, European Union and G20 countries), showing how overweight reduces life expectancy, increases healthcare costs, decreases workers’ productivity and lowers GDP.”

2.  Time to Solve Childhood Obesity   This is “An Independent Report by the Chief Medical Officer, 2019, Professor Dame Sally Davies in the U.K.  The cover deals with both cause and effect:

3.  State of Childhood Obesity: Helping All Children Grow Up Healthy.  The Robert Wood Johnson produced this one.

Its key findings:

• Obesity rates for youth ages 10 to 17 did not change much from 2016 (15%-16%).
• Racial and ethnic disparities persist as do disparities by income.
• Mississippi had the highest overall youth obesity rate (25.4%); Utah had the lowest (8.7%).

Comment:  Obesity is a global problem, not just one for the U.S.  Plenty of policies exist that could help make healthier food choices easier and less expensive.  But as the Lancet Global Syndemic report so clearly explained, doing something about obesity is hampered by weak (corporate-captured) government, food industry opposition, and weak civil society.  The first two are difficult to do anything about without attention to the third.  The clear need: strengthen civil society.  Let’s get to work on that.

Early in March, I put out a call for information about agriculture, food, or nutrition coalitions working toward improving the food system in one way or another.

I did this because I think that if the thousands of organizations working on food issues are to gain real political power, they will need to unite around common goals.  Coalitions are a good way to begin.

So many responses came in that I recruited an NYU undergraduate student, Jennie Dockser, to put them in some kind of order, collect missing information, and try to make sense of them.

I did some editing of what she gave me, but here is a list of the coalitions I now know about.  Take a look.

Perhaps your organization can join?

Johsua Sbicca.  Food Justice Now!  Deepening the Roots of Social Struggle.  University of Minnesota Press, 2018.

This book is about how to turn the “eat-better” food movement into a movement for social justice.  It directly addresses the complaint that the food movement has no real power.

Sbicca, a sociologist at Colorado State, bases his analysis on three case studies of food justice activism focused on creating reasonably paid work for former prisoners and low-wage workers, many of them of color or immigrants.

He tells the stories of three programs, Planting Justice in Oakland, California; the San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project; and programs run by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770.

In writing this book, he investigates

the tensions between maintaining an “us” in the food movement and a “them” needed to keep the food system running.  This informs the prospects of a food politics that is capable of overcoming ethnoracial and citizenship boundaries…The ethnoracial and class makeup of food workers pushes labor organizers to challenge the race-to-the-bottom practices of food corporations.

He ends the book by calling for what is needed to create true food justice: land, labor, community development, health, self-determination, and environmental sustainability—exactly what is called for in food system reform.

This is an academic book but well worth reading for anyone who cares about building a movement with power to change food systems.

Ray Goldberg.  Food Citizenship: Food System Advocates in an Era of Distrust. Oxford University Press, 2018.

As should be obvious from this cover, I have a special interest in this book.  For more than 20 years, I’ve been attending an annual meeting of food industry executives, entrepreneurs, and a sprinkling of advocates, government officials, and academics brought together by its author, Ray Goldberg, to try to encourage mutual understanding if not agreement.

When the meeting started, Ray was an agribusiness professor at the Harvard Business School.  After his retirement, the meeting moved to the Kennedy School of Government.  It still continues.

This book consists of Ray’s interviews with dozens of people who have attended this meeting over the years.  Ray interviewed people with an enormous range of involvement in food as well as of opinion about what should be done to improve food systems.

If truth be told, I always felt like a spectator at this meeting, and I am enormously surprised and honored to see that my interview comes first in the book, and that Ray mentions it in his introduction and conclusion.

I think the book is worth reading.  Or, as it happens, watching.

Oxford has posted the videotaped interviews online.  Here’s mine.