Ask yourself a few questions: why is it that the only foods in your local supermarket that make health claims are the ultra-processed ones? If your supermarket has a “health food section,” then what does that make the rest of the store? Why are those “health foods” so expensive? Why is even fast food becoming unaffordable? And why are more and more people in the West shoplifting food in supermarkets?

Capitalism commodified food in manner never before seen in human history. In fact, many of the disgraced American tobacco companies who peddled their carcinogenic products to the public through ubiquitous marketing campaigns, went to the Big Food industry and applied the same principles to peddling processed food products. Pushing food that is as addictive as any cigarette, and just as damaging. Companies pay lots of money for the marketing firms that mark chips or cereal boxes “heart healthy.” You won’t see a bunch of spinach, or bananas, or avocadoes, or lemons with such claims.

And America has exported its fast food model around the world. This form of imperialism has made human beings less healthy, more depressed and economically enslaved to an omnicidal system. Thousands of acres of rainforest and other vital ecosystems are razed to the ground each day around the world to make room for lucrative monocrops. Hundreds of thousands of tons of food is wasted every day. And the health of billions of people around the world is declining alongside the biosphere we all depend upon.

None of this is new. Colonialism brought cash crops to Africa, displacing traditional methods of food cultivation, land use and trade norms. It brought slash and burn methods to the lush rainforests of Southeast Asia. It also allowed white European settlers to wipe out the buffalo in North America, Russian imperialists to ruin ancient farming practices in Ukraine, and Israeli settlers to burn down thousand year old olive groves. To dominate the land is to dominate the people who live on it. To settle it and exploit it for every dime they could get. And, in many cases, to eradicate the Indigenous people who stood in their way.

Today, the nation of Nauru is a modern example of how food imperialism has almost destroyed an entire people. Denuded of its natural phosphates for the profit of Western multinational agri-corporations, the little South Pacific island of Nauru became temporarily wealthy. But it lost virtually all of that economic gain through corrupt leaders and the predatory practices of international capital investment firms.

With a fishing industry in tatters, farmland polluted and many old practices abandoned for convenience, Nauru became dependent upon cheap, processed, imported foods. Many foods considered inedible were exported there, from turkey tail to lamb flaps. The result: diabetes has skyrocketed as life expectancy has plummeted.

Blaming the people of Nauru or any other people for their collective health plight is like blaming a drowning person for being in a flood. They have been impacted by the dire effects of food imperialism in the exact same way every other working class person on the planet has been impacted. From highly toxic and addictive additives to aggressive marketing to the unavailability of affordable healthy options, they are victims of a system predicated on maximum profit for the few at the expense of the many. In other words, 99% of us human beings on earth.

Food imperialism impacts our local food markets as well. There is little to no choice what food is made available to us. And this is especially true for where we live. Poorer and more racialized communities are routinely neglected and now prices are exploding for everyone thanks to price gouging from the industry and financial speculators.

Even the highly processed, fast foods are becoming exorbitant. Indeed, the stress of buying modest groceries, even in traditionally “middle class” areas, has increased exponentially. Simply put, we are being priced out of living even a modestly decent life on this planet by wealthy and powerful companies and their lobbyists.

While it is incredibly easy to blame individuals for their food insecurity, obesity or health struggles, it is also incredibly lazy. To make these people the butt of a joke is very convenient. It is also punching down. Even shows like “My 600-Lb Life” end up shaming, otherizing and ostracizing people who are in deep crisis for ratings.

Employing judgmental superiority on those who are faced health issues or lack of access to affordable and good food, and weaponizing compassion in service to capitalist spectacle, has become a national pass time in the US. It has become a virtue in some circles. Just look at many of the recent posts or comments from various people about the Trump regime’s denial of assistance for SNAP benefits. Those individuals bought into the lie that lack of money for food is a personal failure, not a systemic one.

But no matter what lies capitalists and their sycophants tell, everyone deserves healthcare and food. And it is not enough to say that these things alone are human rights. Good, quality, affordable healthcare and food are universal human rights.

So, although it has been said many times before, the answer to what do you do the next time you see someone stealing food is: no you didn’t. Instead, fight against imperialism in all of its forms, and fight for the things we all deserve, not only to survive, but to live this life to the fullest.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025