Now that Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the United States, it’s time to shift the political conversation to food. This is especially timely with the holidays on the horizon, when food and politics are what extended families talk about when they run out of things to say about football.
As a vegetarian until my early 20s, my conservative uncles felt they could tell how I voted just by looking at the greens on my plate. Back then, we discussed politics with the defensive anticipation of pushback. When I eat the same meat and potatoes as them now, they let their opinions out more casually and less combatively.
Eating your vegetables should not be an ideological stance, but since food is such an integral part of our social fabric, it can be interpreted as such. This is far from a new phenomenon. Experts like Dawn Matusz, a nutrition and dietetics technician, suspect that political division across the dinner table has existed since the origin of politics. While there are other potential explanations for the animal-plant divide, she thinks the current dichotomy has a lot to do with the fact that plant-based diets are indicative of a person who cares about animals or the environment.
“It tends to be liberals that favor these viewpoints,” explains Matusz, who is also an instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the Nutrition Sciences program.
But regardless of the toll that meat and dairy production can take on the environment, animal agriculture is crucial for the economic survival of many rural communities, which tend to lean conservative. “It’s no secret that many conservatives see issues like climate change as largely made up,” Matusz adds, despite the scientific consensus around human-caused climate change. If right-leaning individuals see veganism or vegetarianism as an attack on their jobs, “[then] promoting meat and dairy over fruits and vegetables would be, in a way, defending their way of life, and thus the conservative thing to do.”
The Nutrition Tradition That All Households Should Try
Sometimes the simplest weekly rituals are the ones you end up looking forward to mostThere are many other factors at play when it comes to the modern politicalization of food. Research has revealed that food neophobia, or the fear of unknown foods, is correlated with social conservatism. Other studies suggest that conservatives may be more open to vegan and vegetarian diets if arguments in favor of them weren’t framed around moral superiority and climate change. Vegetables, meanwhile, have been unflatteringly tied to fascism at certain points in history. Believe it or not, Hitler once advocated for plant-based diets in Nazi Germany and demonized meat-eating as the downfall of civilization. More recently, the Covid-19 pandemic sparked extremism from some health obsessives, which has been referred to as the “wellness-to-fascism pipeline.”
Diet is certainly a concern of conservatives today, particularly supporters of the MAHA movement, Trump’s platform inspired by third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “make America healthy again.” And yet, fruits and vegetables are conveniently left out of many of these conversations. Instead, the right continues to push meat-centric, carnivore diets. Apparently produce is still liberal and meat is still conservative. Some proponents of the carnivore lifestyle have even perpetuated the false notion that animal organs are a superior source of nutrients compared to vegetables, which are, in their view, riddled with toxins. These erroneous views are concerning to Matusz because they’re not based on science, and there are decades of peer-reviewed research proving that “vegetables contain many essential nutrients that are necessary for health, as well as a plethora of phytochemicals that are beneficial for health.”
Ultimately, the one bipartisan nutrition issue that was apparent in the 2024 election was food insecurity. No matter their previous voting record, many people are concerned about their ability to feed themselves and their families. The MAHA movement promises to hold corporations accountable for the chemicals put in processed foods, which sounds great as a slogan, but without affordable alternatives, Matusz stresses that demonizing certain foods will lead to further food insecurity. “It puts people who are already in a tough situation in an even tougher spot,” she says.
Affordable fruits and vegetables are healthier than processed food, but “processed food” is a vast category that includes everything from canned corn to McDonald’s. Furthermore, it doesn’t mean the processed food that many people consume is the equivalent of poison. “The dose makes the poison,” Matusz notes. “The dosages of these chemicals present in our foods are about 1,000-times lower than an amount that is deemed safe for human consumption.”
Instead of lofty promises to make processed foods in the U.S. more like the ones in Europe, programs that distribute free or more affordable fruits and vegetables would be a better place to start. A review of 30 studies on the subject found that when people are provided with financial incentives to offset the costs of fruits and vegetables, they ate more of both — and more importantly, it improved their “food security status” and health outcomes in their communities. Regardless of where someone stands politically, the consensus is that it will be pretty difficult, if not impossible, to “make America healthy again” without promoting a diet consisting of more fruits and vegetables.
Under ideal circumstances, the best way to improve the American diet would be to remove politics from food. Unfortunately, Matusz does not see that happening when so many people no longer trust the food system or science, yet freely consume health misinformation.
“My fear is that it will take massive negative consequences before trust is placed back with the experts,” she says.
If that’s the case, then we’re going to have a lot more to worry about than uncomfortable political conversations at dinner.
More Like This
Whether you’re looking to get into shape, or just get out of a funk, The Charge has got you covered. Sign up for our new wellness newsletter today.