With every new semester at Cornell, students encounter evolving meal plans, nutritional trends and the latest “superfoods” that line our dining hall plates. But what happens when our food choices reflect our nutritional needs, cultural biases and global environmental challenges? As we swipe our meal cards, are we thinking about the global food systems that sustain us — or how we might inadvertently contribute to food insecurity and environmental damage?
Recently, we’ve also seen how our food can be politicized in damaging ways. The racist and xenophobic rhetoric about eating pets and illegal aliens that we witnessed during the second presidential debate must be condemned. Trump’s claims were based on “no credible reports according to city officials, and only serve to fuel anti-immigrant conspiracy theories.
To feed our ever-growing population, we must expand our definition of “normal” food. According to a 2023 Food and Agriculture Organization report, around 735 million people were undernourished globally in 2022. Additionally, 1 billion people suffer from inadequate protein intake, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, agriculture is contributing to severe environmental and ecological damage. You’ve likely heard about the deforestation of the Amazon to make way for beef farms, or the high emissions from livestock, land turnover and the agricultural supply chain.
Many of these issues are difficult to change — livestock requires land, and they produce methane. While research at Cornell is exploring solutions, the current environmental impact of animal agriculture is significant. However, one thing we can control is our openness to new food sources.
In recent years, we’ve seen a surge in protein bars, meal replacements, and questionable “greens” supplements — highly processed food aggregates marketed for their “macros” and supposed health benefits. If you enjoy eating these, more power to you, but know that if you live in a developed country, eat a diverse diet, and don’t have underlying medical problems, you probably don’t need them. However, let’s not judge other cultures for consuming foods that are accessible and culturally significant to them, even if they don’t have the sleek packaging or influencer endorsement that popular Western snacks do.
As we embrace new “superfoods” (like plant-based meat, spirulina, or Brazil nuts), we should also respect the non-trendy foods that sustain some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. Millions of people rely on bushmeat, with some rural communities deriving up to 90 percent of their total animal protein from this source. Bushmeat also supports local economies, often serving as a main source of income in these areas.
During a summer I spent in Ghana working with their Ministry of Food and Agriculture, I often traveled to rural areas and saw local markets full of bushmeat. People would offer it for sale on the roadside, advertising various types such as rat, antelope, and bat. That same summer, there was an Mpox outbreak, likely linked to bushmeat, which reminded the country of its previous devastation caused by Ebola, another zoonotic disease. But the same scrutiny isn’t applied to Western food trends, such as the rising popularity of raw milk, known to carry risks oflisteria and botulism. This suggests that it is not true concern over global health concerns, but a xenophobic food bias hiding under a guise of health.
I’m not advocating for bushmeat. There are valid ecological concerns, including the risk to endangered species, the social consequences of poaching, and the global health threats posed by zoonotic diseases. But until people have access to economically viable protein alternatives, bushmeat will remain a reality.
Ethically, I see no difference in consuming a pig versus a cat, or a dog versus a cow. There are numerous studies proving the intelligence of Western livestock, and as much as I love my pet cats, I don’t think they hold any more moral worth than other mammals. Our beloved furry meat-eaters further fuel the negative consequences of animal agriculture, yet rarely do we condemn the pet industry for its demand of meat.
Beyond bushmeat, around 130 countries regularly consume insects as a protein source. Insects appear to have far fewer ecological and health risks compared to bushmeat and can be farmed with minimal resources. With around 80 percent of global farmland dedicated to livestock, insects offer a sustainable alternative to traditional animal proteins. Even my use of the word “traditional” here reveals a Western bias. There is no shortage of “traditional” recipes utilizing insect protein, and the West should focus our food innovation on ecologically available recipes rather than lab or factory-produced nutritional supplements, mostly consumed by a population that is not truly deficient.
At Cornell, we see these choices play out daily in our meal plans. The rise of plant-based burgers and protein bowls might seem like a step in the right direction, but are we considering the broader implications of these choices? Whether it’s bushmeat in Ghana or insects in Southeast Asia, let’s think beyond what we’ve been conditioned to accept as “normal” and acknowledge the environmental and cultural dimensions of our food systems.
Whether you expand your palate to Peruvian guinea pig or consider whose pockets you line when purchasing probiotic gummies, let’s all try to reevaluate our moral relativism that labels some foods “good” and others “bad” based on our cultural consensus.