What started as work around school gardens, has expanded into an agenda to promote food equity by investigating structural and covert racism.

 

School gardens are one way to promote community engagement in growing and accessing healthy, culturally appropriate food locally. Successful school gardens, in particular, are those that are well-integrated into schools and create opportunities for students to engage with the gardens academically. With community gardens, and urban farms, they are one strategy to engage communities around food.

 

This research led to some concerning questions, such as “are dietitians and food experts’ efforts to promote locally grown food, like farmers markets, white led and dominated spaces?" "Whose voices are being heard in food, nutrition and dietetics more broadly?” It led us to consider how policies and practices governing dietetics perpetuate structural and covert racism and maintain the normativity of whiteness. And with this interest, we explore how structural oppression impacts the profession and practice of dietetics.