In the world of professional food reviewing (a world which I emphatically don’t inhabit; sporadic word vomit about barbeque does not Ruth Reichl make), it can be easy to get so immersed tracking down the perfect truffle emulsion that the food world’s elite lose sight of the fact that eating is, above all, an issue of social justice. And while it’s fun to watch Tom Colicchio criticize wannabe “Top Chefs” and then spend $6 on yogurt at Fraiche (both key to the Stanford foodie lifestyle), one similarly loses sight of reality while practicing these habits. At the end of the day, access to nutritional, adequate supplies of food is a crucial challenge of survival for the world’s poor.

My senior year of high school, I won an essay contest and was able to attend Slow Food Nation. The event was a weekend-long, festival-meets-colloquium to promote reforms in a food system characterized by environmental destruction, 64-ounce Big Gulps, E. coli outbreaks, depreciation of local food cultures and the dismantlement of once sacrosanct family mealtimes. Slow Food, an international movement that works against perceived failings in modern food culture, hosted the weekend; the movement began in Italy in response to the proposed opening of a McDonald’s on the steps of the Vatican. Slow Food has since become a chief leader of this century’s burgeoning food movement. I spent a perfect Saturday afternoon at an improvised fairground overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. I sampled artisan-produced foods from around the world. I remember spending 20 minutes at a small-scale pickle grower out of the East Bay, learning about the horrors of industrial pickle production and munching on perfect cornichons. An olive oil sommelier (really, these exist) gave me a crash-course introduction to Northern California’s finest olive oils. One of the founders of a company selling the Tibetan elixir Kombucha urged me to try their strange yeast-based drink, which I embarrassingly spat out (word to the wise: don’t try Kombucha). It was the best day ever.

But eventually I had to leave the shiny white tents of Slow Food Nation and return home. Going from the event to the nearest bus stop, I walked past a homeless man digging through a trashcan for food. He’d just fished out a half-eaten piece of chocolate cake still in its Styrofoam packaging. I looked down at the sample pack of artisan pickles I’d managed to snag for free (retail value $12) and realized that somewhere along the way, something had gone terribly awry with the food movement.

It’s so trendy right now to love food–not just in a “gluttonous fast-food guzzling” way, but also in a “shopping at Whole Foods, knowing the names of celebrity chefs and blogging about the cupcakes you make in your Cowell Cluster kitchen” kind of way. Like so many others in the Stanford community and the greater Bay Area, I truly love food as a rarefied aesthetic experience. But it’s important to look up from your cup of freshly brewed Blue Bottle coffee (handcrafted in Emeryville using 19th century roasting techniques, $18 a pound) and remember that one in six people on Earth are undernourished. Today alone, 25,000 people will die of hunger. Rates of Type-II diabetes and obesity have risen stratospherically, especially among children in less privileged American communities.

As my final food article this year, I sat down to write not this long-winded diatribe, but about the small taco counter at Mi Pueblo Supermarket. Mi Pueblo is the first grocery store to operate in East Palo Alto in three decades. Before Mi Pueblo opened this past November, East Palo Alto residents had little to no access to fresh produce within a community that has long struggled with poverty and high crime rates. The town now has easy access to fresh fruit, vegetables and everything else you could possibly want in a grocery store, including pretty good tacos that everyone should go check out. It’s proof that even in Stanford’s backyard, access to nutritious food is a critical social justice issue. I hope my foray into restaurant reviewing has highlighted a few really good places to eat around campus and maybe even sparked a love of food in a few unsuspecting Daily readers. It’s certainly taken me to a lot of cool new restaurants and given me the chance to share some old favorites. But at the end of the day, I hope the Stanford community understands that food is so much more than an aesthetic pleasure. Reforming the food system may well be the social justice issue of our generation.

Students interested in learning more about ending global hunger should visit www.freerice.com, or www.thehungersite.com. For more information about Slow Food, check out www.slowfood.com. Mi Pueblo Supermarket is located at 1731 East Bayshore Road in East Palo Alto. It’s open from 6:00 a.m. until 10 p.m. and shopping there helps support a real asset to the East Palo Alto community.