I’ve moved from just thinking about eating healthily to seeing food as an issue that demands activism. It didn’t happen by accident. I was invited to a government forum on the problem of childhood obesity in in the United States. This was a life-changing experience, although probably not in the way the organizers of this event wanted it to be. The childhood obesity forum brought together people from different areas to address this pressing issue. There were political officials, nutritionists, and school superintendents on the scene, but there were also representatives from McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi. I was sitting there, listening, taking it all in—and slowly I started to get irate, like I could’ve taken a shit on the table, I was so mad. The people from McDonald’s, Coke, and Pepsi were talking about kids as the source of the problem, as if kids were stupid for choosing to consume the companies’ products: the nasty crap they push kids to eat and drink. I was thinking, They are talking about me. If I were still a kid, I would be the very stereotype they are branding as the source of the problem of this national health crisis.
Imagine the nerve: here’s McDonald’s and Coca-Cola talking about how they want to help these kids to not be a problem. I’m thinking, You guys are the problem! How are you even here at a roundtable to discuss nutrition? Who the fuck let you in?!? I had to speak right then and there. I started chewing their asses out in that room. I said, “What you guys are saying is not true! If given the opportunity and the right resources, these kids would eat right. I don’t care what y’all are saying. They drink sixty-four-ounce cups of soda because this is what they have, and what you guys are pushing on them.”
That day I was so damn mad, I decided to start my foundation. I went straight home to Pele and said, “Did you know this is going on? The fucking people sitting in a room making decisions about childhood nutrition are the ones who benefit from obesity.” That’s why my foundation deals with every aspect of food, from the earth to the plate. I do it because it needs to be done.
I feel like I’m on a mission to share how food can be a tool for personal and community liberation with people who don’t get to hear this kind of talk; people who don’t learn about nutrition in school, at home, or in daily life; people who are never taught how veggies can help prevent disease or how a balanced meal can make the difference as to whether your children can concentrate in school. Our ancestors knew what type of food to prepare when people were sick or needed comfort. They used specific foods at certain times of the year to fortify immune system defenses. We have forgotten these lessons—or they have been stamped out of our heads by processed food giants—at the cost of our health and our happiness.
We’ve got goals for our foundation. Big picture, I want to end food deserts. Not desserts. Not sweets. Deserts. The definition of a desert is land that is “usually waterless and without vegetation.” If you’ve ever lived in a food desert, you know what they are without my having to explain it to you. A food desert is an entire neighborhood, a place segregated by poverty and race, with nowhere to find cheap and healthy food. Food deserts are when adequate nutrition is absent in your community and you need a car to get to a real grocery store. It’s when the closest thing to fresh produce is Cheeto-dusted pork rinds. It’s when food is fast food and ordering off the McDonald’s dollar menu on your corner makes more sense than five dollars in bus fare and an hour in traffic just to get to a quality supermarket. It’s when a liquor store with a spinning bulletproof-glass cash register to pay for cigarettes and Skittles is your version of Whole Foods.
When you eat that way, it doesn’t just slow you down. It makes you not want to live. There are too many communities like this, and if you are not eating properly, forget about after-school programs. Forget about learning at all. Ask a room of poor kids how many have eaten fast food five times that week. Then ask how many in their families have colon cancer or diabetes. You’ll see a roomful of hands go high after both questions.
More than money, more than cars, more than shoes, it’s food that’s the essence of everything in your body. Without food, your ass is going to die. If you don’t have a goddamn piece of protein and a plate of veggies when you need some protein and veggies, that’s your death sentence. It’s a twenty-first-century version of oppression—it’s new, and we haven’t figured out how to discuss it or break the conversation as wide open as it needs to be. Even during slavery, we may have been getting our asses beat, but we were better nourished back then because everything we ate was grown in front of us, even if it was the scraps. The soil was rich. The nutrients were plentiful. The toxic element was the slave system itself. We were brought here from the African continent, where we
