Evaluating the meaning of food:
A three step process
Quality
Taste
Health
Beauty
Usefulness
Endurance
Complicity
Conditions of those who grew the food or made the product.
Wages. Do workers earn a livable wage, or are they and their families malnourished, undereducated, without decent medical care?
Working conditions. Are they exploitative or decent? Are they dangerous or safe?
Environmental impact
Are environmental standards more lax in than in the U.S.?
Justice of the businesses or corporations. Are the needs and interests of the lower class taken into account? Are profits distributed fairly?
Implicity
Impact on society. Are communities strengthened or is society more mechanical and superficial?
Level of care. Why was the food produced: for money, necessity, greed, glory, and security; or for enjoyment, love, creativity?
Effect on the humanity of the producers. Does it reduce them to objects, or does it brighten, strengthen, refine, or form a living spirit?
Effect on the humanity of the users. Does it nurture what is best and most beautiful. Does it produce healthy, whole, and holy human beings?
Actual value of the product. Does it serve humanity, life, nature, and truth?
“It is not that men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure....There is not wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, and joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.”
John Ruskin