The intersection between food and culture is one of the most powerful evolutionary forces running through our food system. In many ways, it’s the changing of culture over time that has led to a transformation in the way we produce food and in the kinds of foods we eat. From hunter-gather societies to the rise of the fertile crescent to the modern industrialized global food system, culture is a powerful force enabling wide sweeping changes in our food system.

In the last century, popular culture has had a tremendously influential role in the widespread public acceptance of the industrialized food system and the new, often processed, foods that it has introduced. As these foods have become increasingly marketed through powerful popular cultural mediums, we as eaters have adopted them into our own cultural ways, often to such an extent that we now take these foods for granted as being a part of who we are and how we live.

While this path of cultural food evolution has led to a vast array of modern food products, it has also led to a national crisis in which we now face skyrocketing rates of diet-related chronic diseases. Many of the very ingredients that our industrial food system has so wondrously created in cheap abundance are now making us sick. As a result, there’s a growing consensus that we must change the way eat if we’re to stave off an even greater crisis that could not only have a devastating toll on the health of millions of Americans, but could overwhelm our already fragile national economy with skyrocketing healthcare costs.

While the need for change is largely accepted, the critical role of culture in solving the problem has not yet been fully embraced. Many health advocates and practitioners tend to focus on behavioral interventions, such as counseling and education about healthier eating. The same applies to food retailers who, in addition to education, are beginning to provide monetary incentives, such as discounts and specials, to encourage their customers to buy healthier foods.

But the fact is that, despite these efforts to educate and incentivize the public to eat healthier, our nation is not yet seeing big improvements toward healthier eating. According to the CDC’s September 2010 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, in 2009 only 32.5 percent of adults ate fruit more than two times daily and only 26.3 percent ate vegetables more than three times per day. As a result, according to a recent report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a dozen states reached 30 percent obesity rates in 2010. In contrast, Mississippi was the only state above 30 percent just five years prior.

One reason why there appears to be little progress in changing eating behaviors is that it simply takes a long time to undo behavioral patterns that have become entrenched and commonplace. Another is that access to healthier foods is still not widespread enough for many individuals to conveniently make healthier food choices. However, a third and very critical factor is that culture is still not being deployed as a central intervention by most efforts in the public health, healthcare and food retail sectors.

Given that culture has been instrumental in leading our nation down a path of industrialization and resulting chronic disease, it seems logical that culture must be used to help get us onto a healthier path. In my work, both as an IATP Food and Community Fellow and as Founder/CEO of People’s Community Market, I’m deeply engaged in thinking about how culture can play a central role in the changes we seek and how community food stores can more effectively use culture to achieve both positive impact and better business performance. I have been contemplating two interrelated questions:

1) What is or could be the role of culture in the goals, operating models and marketing strategies of community grocery stores?

2) What is or could be the role of grocery stores in preserving, promoting and creating culture within their communities and customer base?

People’s Community Market is being designed from a particular cultural perspective that will, without any outside influence, inherently cause our store to look and operate differently from other stores. By allowing ourselves to be led by our cultural values and perspectives, we’re developing goals and strategies that may not normally be found in a conventional retail business. 

Understanding that our cultural views contribute to the design of our social enterprise, we have taken steps to limit the influence of industry standard practices on our plans. We do this to ensure that there’s space for culture to influence the way we design and operate our business. I believe that this allows for greater innovation and better access to fresh ideas that fall outside of the cultural norm of the status quo. This approach also ensures that culture is always central to the way we do business and go about advancing our company’s social mission.

With regard to the role that grocery stores can have in preserving, promoting and creating culture, we’re designing People’s Community Market to help ignite a dynamic cultural food renaissance in the community of West Oakland, CA. This low-income community has a rich and vast array of cultures, social networks and food traditions that reach back at least several generations and were brought to West Oakland from places such as the Southern States, Latin America and Asia. Over the last few generations, these food traditions have begun to slip away as residents increasingly depend on an industrial food system and a supermarket industry that’s largely void of these traditional cultural values. Yet, as we interact with the community, it's clear that there’s a strong desire among many residents to be more connected with their food cultures and traditions.

This desire presents an opportunity for our food store to play a role in rebuilding the community's cultural relationship to food. We’re planning a variety of creative ways to stimulate and provoke conversation and awareness about West Oakland's food cultures. From offering culturally-oriented food products to hosting workshops, classes and guest speakers about food cultures to using performance art and other forms of creative expression to explore the rich landscape of ideas and issues pertaining to food in the community, our store will support the community's desire for a meaningful and interesting relationship to food that connects to cultural traditions, histories and values.

A key aspect is that this will all take place right in the grocery store itself so that customers can, if desired, conveniently attend a class, performance or other activity while on their shopping trip. This convenience is critical in creating a cultural connection that’s both easy and habitual, two factors that are important in adopting anything new or different. We believe that food stores can become cultural centers and hubs for social activity and interaction; that food stores can help facilitate meaningful interactions between eaters, their food and the people who grew and provided the food; and that they can become centers of inspiration for re-inventing the way we feed ourselves and the kinds of foods we eat.

A food culture revolution is taking place in this country at the same time that a health crisis is taking place. Giving attention and space to culture in the aisles of grocery stores is an essential step toward mending the food traditions and cultures that have been damaged in our race toward industrialization. So the next time you go to the grocery store, ask about whether or how the store supports the connection between food and culture. Hopefully, the answer will be more than just “In Aisle 7”.