Publisher's Synopsis
"The first and definitive history of the use of food in American law and politics as a weapon of conquest and control, a Fast Food Nation for the Black Lives Matter era In 1789, to subjugate Indigenous tribes, George Washington ordered his troops to "ruin their crops on the ground and prevent them planting more." Destroying the sources of food is just one way that the United States has used nourishment as a political tool. To prevent enslaved people from or escaping or rising up, enslavers restricted their consumption, providing only the least desirable and nutritious foods. Since the Great Depression, school lunches have served as dumping grounds for unwanted agricultural surpluses. From frybread to government cheese, Ruin Their Crops on the Ground draws on fifteen years of research to argue that American food law and policy have historically been used to create and maintain racial and cultural inequality. In an epic, sweeping account,
