Although the article is flawed with speciesism and wrong nutritional assumptions, about milk for example (portraying it as a healthy option), it got me thinking about how, when we consciously consume, we always perpetuate the class system. Especially by deciding to resist or oppose certain acts of food consumption in a capitalist market economy we contribute to class segregation.
We often speak of consumer choices. We go to the supermarket and we have a range of products to chose from. Similarly, we look at the menu of a take away place or restaurant and we chose one of the many options. It is easy to forget that actually, these are not choices we make. To make a choice implies to make an informed decision and to have a variety of alternatives to pick from. In this hyper-mediated world however, it is a luxury to have access to a variety of possibilities.
Trying not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, I want to stress, that this is all part of a well thought out system of propaganda and subliminal stimuli that construct our identities from the moment we are put into this world. There is this brilliant BBC documentary, called 'The Century of the Self: Happiness Machines' (click here to watch it), which traces the system of advertising and spin back to its roots in psychoanalysis. Turns out, we have very little chance to resist the machine.
Our abilities to oppose capitalist food culture very much depend on our access to other consumer products such as employment, education and health care. These are all socially constructed products of neoliberalism that are sold to us as universal human rights, granting us all an equal start into our lives. We all know however, that they aren't natural nor always accessible, like the air that we breath (pf...not even the air is safe from pollution by capitalist poison). The most basic rights like shelter, health care and freedom from starvation are turned into products that we have to buy with our labour. Even if we all had equal economic opportunities to begin with, we would have very diverse mental and physical capabilities which would make us excel at certain things and fail at others. In this society however, we aren't even granted the right to find an enjoyable, appropriate and healthy way of living that suits our individual needs. We are forced to play by the rules to gain access to the things that allow us to survive. The better we are at obeying these rules the more access are we granted to the world. And this is not due to our own rigour or persistence, as the American Dream version of capitalism has us believe, but rather mostly due to chance of the circumstances we are placed in.
When I say we gain access to the world, I mean that we discover alternatives and if we have gained enough privilege we just might understand what is wrong with the way we are taught to consume. This knowledge is not always the result of privilege, it can equally be the result of disillusionment due to the lack of privilege.
To bring the focus back to food choices, it is only the first step to reject the mainstream, convenient and easy to find products, whilst the second step would be to acknowledge that boycotting certain foods whilst investing into others still feeds the system. Organic and GMO, omni and vegan foods, vivisection goods and cruelty-free products, slave labour and fair trade produce, they are all part of the very same system. They are all sold by the same capitalism that perpetuates the hierarchy which places junk foods at the bottom of what is to be desired.
Instead of putting our efforts into judging those who buy unhealthy or cruel products, we should focus on making cruelty-free consumption possibilities more visible and accessible.
This can only happen with the absolute disapproval of capitalism and the organisation of non-profit economies within our communities. We are not going to make the world a better place by buying into 'certified' stuff, instead we need to create our own stuff. We need to learn to be independent of the machine that promises to supply us with everything we need.
There are many great possibilities everywhere, dumpster diving, food 'waste' festivals, transition towns, permacultural living, clothes swaps etc. We need to embrace these events and make them our lifestyles, as I firmly believe we cannot change anything from inside because every step forwards for us within this system always means that someone else is being stepped on by us. We need to stop judging what is happening inside the system as well as tweaking it with our 'better choices', and instead we need to organise from the outside until we are big enough to devour the whole thing in one bite!
I hope it's clear that with regards to cruelty-free consumer choices, I am not inferring in this post, that it is hard to be vegan or that veganism is not for everyone. And by no means am I justifying people's inabilities to be vegan or saying we should tolerate their choice. On the contrary - I think veganism, although first an foremost a choice I made for animals, is the only way to emancipation for humans. But that can be the topic for another time.
