Food is much more than mere nutrition and sustenance, it defines our identities and is thus an important element of culture, our past, present and future. From cornbread to corn liquor, forages to hunts, cattle runs to canning factories, the history of the production and consumption of food in these hills are key elements of an Appalachian identity that is oft appropriated, misrepresented, or at best underexplored. Appalachian foodways are extremely diverse, reflecting encounters between this land and the many different people groups that have come to encounter it over time. As the resurgence of Appalachian food finds its way into celebrity chef kitchens and food publications across the United States and beyond, it is important for the people of this place to be at the forefront of shaping the narrative about their food heritage. Historically, the struggle for survival in these hills has bound rural, working class, urban, Indigenous, Black, immigrant, new and old settler communities together in particular ways, at times it has also driven them apart. While certain notions of Appalachian food might be romanticized and captured as an imaginary to be sold and packaged to feed a growing market for curated cultural consumption, Food Justice activists across the region are working to remain attuned to the diversity and nuance of these foodways, the relationship between food environments and identity forged out of the rich abundance of food (and medicine) in the biodiverse mixed mysophytic forests, but also in the government cheese distributed at local food pantries, the dollar stores now peppering our landscape, the food distributions organized during labor strikes, the farmer networks working to retain and promulgate heirloom seed varieties and the foster grandmother eager to pass her vinegar pie recipe to the next generation. These stories must be told, they are complex, can be uncomfortable, but they are kernels whose sprouts hold the potential for imagining new food futures out of a complicated past.
Text courtesy - WVU Food Justice Lab.