Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Civil Eats
In New York, immigrant farmworkers are advocating for a bill that would allow residents to register for a driver’s license regardless of their immigration status. “The campaign in New York is part of a larger movement that has been picking up speed across the country, and it’s being seen as a crucial way to provide farmworkers and other undocumented people with more agency, mobility, and rights,” writes Lisa Held. “Twelve other states and Washington, D.C., now allow residents to obtain licenses regardless of immigration status, and nearly all those policy changes went into effect within the last five years.” But in some states, the DMV officials have passed along information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, adding to immigrants’ precarity.
Eater
“Hunger strikes appeal to the most mundane physical experience. Everyone knows how hunger feels, and most people organize their time around staving it off,” writes Stephen Lurie. “When someone chooses to go hungry, it’s a forceful rejection of biological normalcy. That may be why it’s taken less than 150 years for the tactic to go global, to make hunger a recognizable form of potential power for the powerless. A 2008 study of hunger strikes between 1906 and 2004 found examples in ‘127 different countries and representing numerous cultures, political and economic systems, and levels of economic development.’”
Is pay-what-you-can part of the answer to America’s food-insecurity problem?
Gravy (podcast)
At the Farm Cafe in Boone, North Carolina, a college town where living expenses are rising, “a suggested price of $10 will get you a large plate of the day’s offerings,” reports Irina Zhorov. “If you can’t swing that, you can pay less. If you can’t pay anything at all, you can volunteer some time at the cafe to cover the cost. It’s a model adopted by more than 60 similar cafes around the country.”
How I learned to respect, if not exactly love, callaloo
Slate
Callaloo, a bright-green stew made from taro leaves, has been central the Caribbean diet since it arrived with the African slave trade. Brigid Ransome Washington grew up hating the stuff—until one Sunday when she had to fill in for her mother to make the family lunch. “With a reverence that I had never witnessed from Mum regarding any type of food, she expounded on the history of callaloo,” she writes. “She challenged me to … imagine a time back when our ancestors crossed the Middle Passage, bound, beaten, and branded; a time when choice wasn’t an option. She reminded me of callaloo’s civic prestige—as Trinidad and Tobago’s national dish—duly designated by emancipated slaves-turned-citizens-turned-statesmen, acquainted with its place in the nation’s history.”
An argument for overhauling the dietary guidelines
The Washington Post
“In the two decades I’ve been writing about nutrition, my confidence in what we know about food and health has eroded,” writes Tamar Haspel. “What have we learned, unequivocally enough to build a consensus in the nutrition community, about how diet affects health? Well, trans-fats are bad. Anything else, and you get pushback from one camp or another.” Instead? “Let’s give up on evidence-based eating.”