Nourishing the Future: Addressing Health, Sustainability, and Human Rights through Food Justice

By Micaela Jackson

Picture this: in the center of a bustling city, boldly colored houses sit behind perfectly paved sidewalks, surrounded by urban gardens that bloom between white picket fences. A street over, a fast food sign glows, “$1 cheeseburger meal deal,” a dollar that stretches further than any grocery budget, while the 5-star restaurant next door is going out of business because of rising food prices. A town over, in the center of a food swamp, a family struggles to make ends meet without access to affordable and nutritious food. In Indigenous homelands a hundred miles away, a native community gathers, trying to reclaim lost foodways and revive cultural traditions that have been lost due to colonization. In a rural town, migrant farm workers put their health at risk to grow food they can’t afford to eat. Although these scenes feel disconnected, they share a common factor: the struggle for food justice. This is a world where food is abundant but inequitably distributed, where climate change and unsustainable agricultural practices threaten the nutrient content of the soil, where Indigenous cultures are separated from food sovereignty, and where farm workers and millions of other people live in food insecurity. This injustice raises the question: who gets to eat well, and who decides? In this collection, we answer this question through the lenses of public health, environmental sustainability, and human rights. We take our definition of food justice from FoodPrint, “a holistic and structural view of the food system that sees healthy food as a human right and addresses structural barriers to that right” (2018).

Food Justice Regarding Public Health

Many individuals, communities, and even those in the restaurant industry struggle to find affordable, nutrient-dense foods. There is a negative correlation between age to ultra-processed food consumption. Children, adolescents, and young adults consume ultra-processed foods at higher rates than adults (Vignola et al., 2021, p. 143). There is also a connection between socioeconomic status and ultra-processed food consumption. We see the prevalence of obesity in Hispanic/Latino children is 21.1%, in non-Hispanic Black children is 12.1%, and in non-Hispanic white children is 10.8%, which correlates to the fact that communities in poverty have certain limitations and economic constraints that may explain this gap (Heerman et al., 2023). Restaurants are struggling to stay open because they can’t afford to maintain the integrity of a restaurant that serves healthful options. An example of this is during the COVID-19 pandemic, Thai Ha, a restaurant owner based in Seattle, was selling chicken wings and boba tea out of the red, boat-shaped Pho Bac restaurant. Ha struggled to keep up with the soaring cost of chicken wings and was eventually left with no other option than to shut down his restaurant. He is now only able to sell drinks at higher prices than he could at a permanent location at music festivals around Washington (Stewart, 2021).

A very important feature of food justice is the availability of healthy food for all. Unfortunately, many people experience barriers like cost, geography, and the overabundance of processed foods in their community. There are a wide variety of factors that contribute to an increased consumption of ultra-processed foods. Ultra-processed foods allow for convenience, pre-packaged meals reduce cooking time, and food marketing influences food preference, purchase, and consumption – oftentimes, ultra-processed foods are marketed to specifically appeal to children (Adams, 2020, p. 2). This concept is especially dangerous for marginalized communities because they can be centered in food swamps. A food swamp is a term used to describe an area dominated by an abundance of fast-food chains and convenience stores that only sell “junk” or ultra-processed food (Balcaen & Storie, 2018, p.15). Food swamps come out of food deserts, where people experience exclusion and economic barriers to accessing healthy foods. Food swamps develop from restaurants filling supermarkets’ open gap (Balcaen & Storie, 2018, p. 15). Living in a food swamp limits access to nutritious and organically grown foods.

The restaurant industry is affected by increased prices of food and easier access to convenient meals like fast food. The availability of high-quality crops is decreasing due to the higher demand for ultra-processed foods. According to a study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 92.3% of individuals choose fast food for its speed and convenience, 80.1% for its accessibility, and 63.6% for its affordability (Rydell et al., 2008). More Americans are choosing fast food because it’s cheaper and more convenient, which decreases the demand for nutritious food and increases the prices. The total price of aggregate crops increased by 18% in 2020, by another 14% in 2021, and reached its record high in 2022 with another 8% increase (Williams & Miller, 2024). Prices increase for both the restaurant and what the consumer sees on the menu.

A current issue we will see in the restaurant industry is with tariffs, with consumers already being sensitive about menu prices, restaurants will have to navigate around high food and packaging costs (Adelstone & Harris, 2025). Although many restaurants try to source ingredients domestically, the farmers of America can’t produce enough food for the amount of consumer demand. Between 2014 and 2024 United States’ agricultural importance grew by 6% due to a rise in customer demand, with about half of that growth being in products like fruits, vegetables, alcoholic beverages, essential oils, tree nuts, and nursery stock (Kaufman, 2024). This leads restaurants to rethink how they manage their costs as prices for the restaurant and the consumer go up. The price increase can lead to food swamps that disproportionately impact marginalized or low-income communities as grocery stores leave a given area and are replaced by fast-food restaurants and convenience stores. Ethnic minorities and low-income communities have become concentrated, which causes a phenomenon called “red-lining,” which refers to the decreasing number of supermarkets in an area, which greatly affects food availability to these communities (Eisenhauer, 2001). With fewer healthy food options, these communities are more vulnerable to food-related diseases and limited in their ability to eat healthy and culturally appropriate food and choose how they want to prepare it through environmentally sustainable methods. In any community, food represents more than just sustenance— it represents a connection to home, culture, and identity. Living in a food swamp means these connections are severed, further highlighting the need for food justice.

Being in a food swamp can lead to a higher preference for ultra-processed foods in children. Food consumption when a fetus is in utero can shape a baby’s or toddler’s taste preferences. This concept, called “flavor conditioning,” explains how being exposed to artificial flavors in utero increases the chance that postnatal children will lean toward a preference for ultra-processed foods (Calcaterra et al., 2023). The cost of nutritious food and easy access to ultra-processed options contribute to a lack of food security within many communities, especially low-income communities. It’s important that everyone has equitable access to healthful foods.

Food Justice and Environmental Sustainability

Before food is brought to the consumer, it must be grown. Food production and nutrient content are highly dependent on the composition of the soil. Through unsustainable agricultural practices that contribute to climate change, the soil is becoming eroded and degraded, changing the nutrient density of crops that are grown there. Through agricultural uses, 33% of the world’s soil has experienced degradation, which threatens food production and is connected to many other environmental issues (Turner, 2023, p.81). Our world is stuck in a never-ending, harmful loop where soil degradation contributes to climate change, and climate change harms crop availability. Agricultural practices like tilling, the process of overturning soil, monocropping, growing one crop repeatedly on the same land, and chemical use like pesticides and herbicides contribute to the increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, causing the temperature of the atmosphere to rise. Soil is the backbone of food production and food security. It is rich in organic materials and contains high amounts of carbon. When these unsustainable agricultural practices, like excessive tillage, occur, layers of topsoil are removed and release carbon into the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 20-60% of cropland soil’s original carbon content has been lost (Montgomery, 2019). In the late 1920’s to the 1930’s the millions of tons of topsoil from the western Great Plains of the United States blew miles through the air, what we now know as the Dust Bowl. This occurred at the end of a drought, but these dust storms were also the result of overgrazing and excessive tillage methods that left the soil dry, sterile, and unable to grow food (Rice, 2009, p. 127). The days were darkened from the dust particles suspended in the air, and unfortunately, some people died from dust inhalation. The Dust Bowl is only one example of how unsustainable agricultural practices can affect the food supply and the surrounding communities.

Continuing these practices contributes to climate change, and much like the Dust Bowl, highlights the consequences of our constantly changing climate, which amplifies the risk to agriculture and food production. Some interesting economic implications follow climate change. Climate change affects everything from crops to livestock to soil to water resources. The cost of everything regarding production will increase with temperature. Extreme weather phenomena like drought can damage crops or delay harvest, which causes shortages of certain crops. Between 2010 and 2015, the number of migrants that showed up on the United States and Mexico border from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras increased five times because of a dry period that left many people without access to food (Flavelle, 2019). As the temperature of the atmosphere increases, the danger of food shortages increases with it. Droughts, flooding, heat waves like we saw in Central America, wildfires, and other weather patterns are becoming more intense. Things become higher in demand as they become harder to produce, causing price spikes. Energy production costs go up, for example, soil won’t absorb water as well, so farmers need to spend more money on high-quality irrigation. If the farmer has to spend more money and still needs to make a profit, then he will have to sell his crops at higher prices than they had been previously.

Food Justice and Policy

Many marginalized communities have fought for legal support and protection. However, there’s still work that needs to be done for these communities, like indigenous communities who fight to defend their food sovereignty, and farm workers who fight for fair wages and food security. An example of successful activism is the February 12, 1974, Boldt Treaty. The Treaty of Point Elliott, concluded in 1855, guaranteed the Puget Sound Tribes’ fishing rights and reservations (Rapaport, 2024). Conflict arose between the Native Tribes and commercial fishing interests, so the state-enforced fishing regulations against tribal members. After protests on the Puyallup River, a U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington filed on behalf of the United States and as trustee for Native Tribes against the State of Washington. George Boldt, the judge assigned to the case, ruled that the tribes involved in the original treaty of 1855 would have the right to half of the fish harvest that passed through their recognized fishing grounds (Website: Indian & Tribal Law: United States v. Washington (Boldt Decision), 2024). The Boldt decision reaffirmed tribal treaty rights and is a significant recognition of Indigenous food sovereignty. It is important to support food sovereignty because it allows these communities to preserve their traditions through culturally appropriate foods and sustainable agricultural practices that support a healthful diet, which is an integral part of food justice. Culturally appropriate food is very broad to conceptualize, and it is hard to understand. House et al. conceptualize culturally appropriate food through six lenses: existing diets, substitutability, acceptability, alignment with cultural preferences, eating, and food acquisition and preparation. These address traditional dietary patterns, replacing foods with similar alternatives without losing cultural meaning, are enjoyable and socially acceptable, respect cultural preferences and traditions, and allow a choice in how food is gathered and prepared (2023). All individuals deserve access to culturally appropriate food and to acquire it through their chosen methods.

Just as Indigenous communities should have the right to reclaim traditional foodways, those who put food on our tables should be promised fair and safe working conditions. Food workers’ rights should also be addressed legally, or working conditions and pay rates will remain poor. Historically, workers have been treated extremely unfairly and forced to work in hazardous conditions for low wages. Immigrants from Eastern Europe were being abused in the meat-packing industry and were not protected by any governmental regulation from the horrible disfiguring injuries and deaths that occurred (Kenner, 2025). This was a pattern of constant neglect that food workers experienced until people started to look for change. For example, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), when first enacted in 1938, excluded farm workers. Later, it was found unconstitutional in a 5-4 ruling, providing dairy workers with overtime if they worked more than 40 hours a week (The Associated Press, 2020). Rulings like these allow workers to “close the gap” and give them a fairer opportunity to live in food security and provide for their families.  Without rulings and movements to support these marginalized groups of people, structuralized inequalities in the food system will continue to exist. Indigenous communities would lose their traditionally important foodways, and farm workers would spend their lives producing massive amounts of food and never see it touch their table. For some, these legal decisions are lifelines that ensure fair working wages, safe conditions, and access to traditional foodways, which collectively contribute to the integrity and sustainability of the food system. Addressing workers’ rights and Indigenous food sovereignty is a necessary step towards equity and food justice.

Both groups want equitable access to food security and food sovereignty. Indigenous communities wish to have more control over their food systems and to revive ancestral traditions. This can prove to be very difficult, Jasmine Dalida notes in the chapter Reclaiming Food Systems: Indigenous Food Sovereignty and the Path to Food Justice, that getting an organic certification can be hard for Indigenous farmers, but it’s essential in helping them sell food. Their land is significant to them because to choose how they grow crops and keep traditions alive. Indigenous farmers have a knowledge that has been passed down through generations that is incredibly unique compared to the practices we use now. This knowledge helps them grow food in ways that are culturally important, but also sustainable, and helps to maintain a good relationship with the earth. A different side of this is migrant farm workers, who put delicious food on everyone’s table except their own. Farm workers have been undermined and pushed to the side while under the stress of horrendous working conditions and unfair pay. For example, Sarah D. Wald explains how Michael Pollan’s best-selling Omnivore’s Dilemma about the food movement, simply bypasses food workers’ involvement and dehumanizes them by implying that they are simply machines and ignores their human qualities (2011, p. 570-571), which is a pattern we’ve seen through history. In a way, both these groups of people are getting their culture and humanity taken from them by being forced into conditions they don’t want.

Fight for Food Justice

This book is a collection of essays that elucidate the importance of promoting affordable and nutrient-dense foods through sustainable farming practices that provide safe conditions for farm workers and allow Indigenous communities to reclaim food sovereignty. Food justice is more than a call for equitable access to affordable and nutritious food, but is a movement that recognizes that food sovereignty, health, and sustainably produced food are rights, not privileges. Food justice is a fight for systemic change. It is an aim for all communities to have equitable access to nutritious and affordable food, rather than systemic racism and classism deciding which communities are trapped in food swamps, who has access to organically grown, nutritious foods, and who is dependent on ultra-processed foods. Addressing farmworker exploitation and the economic system that puts money in the pockets of supermarket owners and raises prices, putting restaurants out of business, and disproportionately affecting BIPOC and low-income communities is essential for creating a more just food system and cultivating food justice. Building communities rooted in safe urban gardening practices and sustainable agriculture will help reduce the environmental degradation that has occurred through years of unsustainable agricultural practices like tillage, monoculture, pesticide use, and climate change. All of which negatively impact the nutrient contents and crop yield of food. We must put power in the hands of Indigenous communities and help them reclaim their food sovereignty by restoring traditional and culturally important practices that have been erased due to colonization and expansion. Food security, labor movements, and urban gardening all connect across race, class, labor, culture, and environment – food justice is a fight for collective liberation.

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