Food-related conditions – cancer, heart disease, and strokes – are the leading causes of preventable deaths in the UK. Common wisdom is that health reflects personal choices and will power. The reality is that law and policy determine individual access to healthy food and contribute to the racial disparities that exist in all these conditions.
Partnerships between the government and the food and agricultural industries prioritise profit over personal well-being and disproportionately harm marginalised communities.
This is food oppression.
In partnership with the Fulbright Commission
Andrea is Professor of Law at the University of Hawaii.
She writes and researches at the intersection of critical race theory and food policy, health, and consumer credit. Much of her work explores her pioneering theory of food oppression, which examines how facially neutral food-related law and policy, influenced by corporate interests, disproportionately harm marginalised communities.
She is the author of Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice and the recipient of the 2020-21 Fulbright King's College London US Scholar Award.
