Time for corporations to be removed from US food law and policy, college professor says

Andrea Freeman, a professor at the University of Hawai'i, takes a deep-dive into how U.S. food policy has limited marginalized communities' access to healthy foods since the 1930s in her new book, "Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States From the Trail of Tears, to School Lunch."

Taking its title from George Washington's 1779 order to destroy the food sources of Indigenous people, the book examines how the U.S government -- through farm subsidies, schools and nutrition programs -- can sometimes determine how certain groups eat.

ABC News sat down with Freeman, who detailed how the government and corporations influence people's food choices.

ABC NEWS: Have you ever wondered how the history of U.S. food law impacted the way Americans eat? Well, with over 15 years of research, Andrea Freeman dismantles and argues how the longstanding alliance between the U.S. government and food industries has created health disparities in marginalized communities. It's all in her new book, "Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, From the Trail of Tears to School Lunch." Andrea, thanks so much for joining us.

FREEMAN: Thank you for having me.

ABC NEWS: Well, it's an impressive book. It's a mouthful for a title. Where did the name of the book come from?

FREEMAN: "Ruin Their Crops on the Ground," came from an order that George Washington gave his troops on how to deal with indigenous people. He wanted them to destroy all of their food sources so that they would have to leave, and settlers could take over the land.

ABC NEWS: And I guess that's a form of food oppression. We've heard about food deserts, but you talk about food oppression. And what is that that people may not know about?

FREEMAN: Yeah, it's about the way that corporations and governments ally together to make laws and policies that have disproportionately harmful effects on marginalized communities.

ABC NEWS: So give us some examples on how federal laws -- for example, subsidies, farm subsidies, school subsidies or nutrition programs -- and food policies that sometimes decide what people eat for them.

FREEMAN: Absolutely. Two of the main programs that do this are the food distribution program for Indian reservations, which sends boxes of what are called "commods" or basically commodity surpluses to reservations for people who can't access the benefits of SNAP because they don't have enough good grocery stores there. And so those boxes become what people have to eat. They don't really have much choice, and the boxes are not filled with nutritious foods.

We see the same thing with the school lunch program, where a large part of the foods that are included in it come from commodity surpluses that are a result of the subsidies that we give to certain crops. And so the school lunches end up looking pretty unhealthy. So tater tots and chicken nuggets and, you know, a lot of the things that the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] is trying to get rid of.

ABC NEWS: I mentioned that you've spent decades looking at this. Give us some of the ties between the food industry and the federal government.

FREEMAN: Sure. Well, the ... OK, so in the 1930s, we started the Farm Bill, and that created subsidies for certain agricultural corporations. And then those corporations, by focusing on producing the crops that were subsidized, were able to get larger, amass a lot of money, and then amass a lot of power. So even though our nutritional needs have changed a lot -- in the 1930s, it was all about hunger and trying to make people full.

Then we saw this shift, and now we have problems of malnutrition, diabetes, obesity and the things that come with that. But the subsidies haven't shifted to healthier foods that would help solve that problem.

ABC NEWS: And how do those federal and state laws impact certain Black and Indigenous communities?

FREEMAN: So the Indigenous communities, particularly on Indian reservations, are impacted by that program. And in our public schools, we are seeing that in a lot of districts -- for example, where I am in Los Angeles right now -- it's 94% black, Latina, indigenous, student body, only 6% white. So the impacts of having unhealthy food in public school lunches fall very heavily onto those communities.

ABC NEWS: We have a very short amount of time left, Andrea, but is there a solution?

FREEMAN: I really think we need to get corporations out of our food law and policy. We need to separate those things. We need to separate support of agriculture and health of people.

ABC NEWS: It's time to examine those subsidies. Andrea, thank you so much for joining us. And of course, you can purchase "Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, From the Trail of Tears to School Lunch" wherever books are sold.