Working with people as a nutritionist, I’m often met with resistance.
I try to explain how to make healthful food choices without using trigger
words like “organic,” “sustainable,” or even “local.”

“When I hear the word
organic I think of Birkenstock-wearing hippies in Cambridge or Berkeley,” one of my clients told me
recently. Other clients have referred to whole, organic foods as “yuppie
food.”

There’s no doubt that food choice and diet is an indicator of
class and culture. But what perplexes me is this notion that eating a
diet of processed, sugary junk foods is what “real Americans” eat.

According to food historian Felipe Fernandez-Arsmesto, author of
Near a Thousand Tables, food has
always been a marker of class and rank in any particular society. “Food became a social differentiator at a remote,
undocumented moment when some people started to command more food
resources than others,” he writes, and later: “Class differentiation
starts with the crudities of basic economics. People eat the best food
they can afford: the preferred food of the rich therefore becomes a
signifier of social aspirations.”

But this isn’t true in modern-day America. The preferred food of the
rich is now considered elitist and scoffed at by many Americans. In
fact, there is data to suggest that even though many Americans can
afford higher-quality foods, they chose to eat cheaper and less
nutritious foods.