The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table

The contradiction between the abundance of food and the barriers America’s poorest citizens face in eating healthily is as old as America itself. In the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson observed that while the rich produced more fruits and vegetables than they could possibly consume, the poor subsisted on a “milk and animal diet” (10).

More than 200 years later, many Americans struggle with scarce nutrition. According to 2017 research by the US Department of Agriculture, roughly 15 million households are food insecure, meaning they lack access to adequate food. Nearly 40% of Americans are obese, often because of an unhealthy diet—and yet the country’s farm fields, supermarket storerooms, and produce wholesale markets are filled with fruits and vegetables. In not bridging this divide, McMillan argues, America is failing to live up to its basic promise as a land of plenty.

This theme manifests repeatedly in McMillan’s own experience. Working in California’s Central Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world—producing 8% of US agricultural output, in terms of value—McMillan is constantly hungry. This paradox is also evident in the low wages paid to McMillan and her fellow fieldworkers, which are often much less than minimum wage, despite the fact that the crops grown in the Central Valley are worth an estimated $17 billion—and despite the fact that farm wages are only about six cents worth of every dollar spent on produce, suggesting that increasing laborers’ wages would have little effect on overall price.