sacred grove ambassador

u were diminished by the waning moon 107 times!

u were emboldened by the waxing moon 87 times!

So are we noticing a pattern yet

So are we noticing a pattern yet

So are we noticing a pattern yet

The question of who is responsible for feeding people — and how — is back on the table. Nourish Scotland has been making the most rigorous case for public restaurants in the UK (and increasingly beyond i) — and Abigail McCall has helped bring that work into wider food-systems conversations, engaging many of us thinking about public restaurants as part of the food infrastructure we need. Their argument is straightforward: food needs public infrastructure, just as transport, healthcare, and education do. We build hospitals because the market alone does not guarantee health. We build schools because access to education cannot depend on what families can afford. We build public libraries, public parks, public transit. Why not public restaurants? Food is as essential as any of these — more so, arguably, since we need it three times a day. And yet we largely leave its provision to market forces that have consistently failed to make healthy, sustainable, delicious food accessible and affordable to everyone.

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If you prefer to frame it in terms of efficiency rather than rights: unhealthy diets cost billions in healthcare spending every year. Malnourished children learn less and earn less. And though this argument strikes me as overly productivist, I’ll leave it here anyway: workers who cannot afford a decent lunch are less productive. And market forces have not aligned profit with population wellbeing when it comes to food. The food industry has been extraordinarily effective at making ultraprocessed, nutrient-poor food cheap, convenient, and omnipresent. Making nutritious, sustainable food affordable has been far less of a priority. That’s not a moral failure of the market — it’s how markets work. Public restaurants are one tool in a much larger set of policies to improve food environments — alongside front-of-package labeling, taxes on ultraprocessed foods, subsidies for fresh produce, stronger school feeding programs. All of this can work together, with public restaurants anchoring a procurement system that sources from smallholder farmers and supports an agroecological transition. What public restaurants add is a physical space where good food is not a privilege.