Garrett Broad
Ph.D., Communication
Annenberg School for Communication
California is synonymous with healthy living, and finding a good quiet vegan restaurant in Los Angeles is as easy as hunting for a bagel in Manhattan, without all the hassle of street noise and empty calories. For Garrett Broad, a Ph.D. student in the Annenberg School for Communication, California’s infatuation with everything healthy has provided the perfect training ground for research into the future of what we eat, and why we eat it.
An avid vegan himself, and sometime expert tour guide of LA’s many excellent vegan restaurants, Garrett’s research takes an activist approach to eating. Garrett explains, “food issues in the sustainability debate are in many ways the “sacred cow” of a holistic approach to environmentally aware living, issues that have yet to be fully explored from an academic or political standpoint.”
As Garrett discovered early on, media has played a central role in steering public perception of just what constitutes healthy eating. Attending Rutgers University as an undergraduate fellow in the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Garrett worked closely with his mentor, Professor Richard Heffner, a founding member of PBS channel 13 in New York, and producer of The Open Mind, the longest running long format 1-on-1 interview show in television history. Working the green room with such notables as Alan Alda, the show opened up ideas for news analysis and politics, sparking his interest in the connections between media and activism.
While at Rutgers, Garrett got his first taste of activism by rising through the ranks of the New Jersey Folk Festival, first as a coordinator, and eventually as program director. This large scale festival, with over 10,000 attendees per year, provided a hands-on approach to community events and the value of intercultural communication and tradition sharing. After a semester abroad at Leiden University in the Netherlands, the center of the international sustainability movement, Garrett’s course was set. Now a newly converted vegetarian himself, he set out to bridge his interests in activism, media discourse, and environmental sustainability for his graduate work at USC.
For his undergraduate thesis research, Garrett conducted a survey on children’s perceptions of environmental issues, and while his sample showed an overall awareness of “big ticket” environmental issues such as global warming, few connected the idea of vegetarianism and sustainable living to the broader environmental and ecological issues. “The issue still remains on the level of awareness among socially conscious citizens,” notes Garrett,“ but media in particular has limited the perception of sustainable practices as belonging to a privileged class of individuals.”
Garrett sees the larger challenge of changing consumer habits as belonging to the overall intersection between vegetarianism, food production, and individual community environments. Moving away from the social stigma associated with such practices, Garrett hopes to push for a new perspective on the benefits of engaged dietary social consciousness. “My mission is to reorient the conversation about food and make healthy, sustainable food not a luxury, but a right that is available to all individuals; not just raising awareness, but more about reconnecting people to their food, always asking the question ‘How do we help people take control of what they eat?’”
When Garrett first started his tour of vegan dining in Los Angeles, he stumbled upon the perfect case study: the Los Angeles Vegan Soul Food Movement. Run by a group known as the African Hebrew Israelites, the movement is part of a larger effort to increase the overall social, spiritual, and physical health of its individual members, spreading the message of healthy living through its restaurants. Not surprisingly, as Garrett dug deeper into the group, he found that its members have virtually eliminated chronic health issues such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and other illnesses generally associated with unhealthy dietary practices. It was here that Garrett saw an opportunity to highlight the shifting boundaries of community awareness and activism on what has traditionally been associated with a certain amount of privilege and luxury.
Garrett approached the African Hebrew Israelites with a unique skill set brought about by his work at USC. As a research assistant for founding Annenberg faculty member Sandra Ball-Rokeach’s “Metamorphosis” project, Garrett has explored the ways that urban communication infrastructure help to shape social perceptions on issues such as healthy living and sustainability. As Metamorphosis has discovered, groups like the AHI are indicative of the positive reinforcement of civic engagement and communication, fostering a sense of neighborhood belonging and community action that engenders a positive approach to an issue such as healthy living. This approach has proven its effectiveness far beyond traditional “awareness,” and is the foundation for new methods of working within underprivileged urban areas to foster activism without forcing ideas on a community.
As Garrett has found, by its very geographical location, USC has provided one of the world’s most unique testing grounds for exploring issues of urban development, community activism, and neighborhood building. “Los Angeles is the ultimate challenge for these issues, it provides an opportunity to learn from the counterfactual and engage the urban community.”
With his experience in event planning, Garrett has taken his research a step further, and has planned several community events, including a “Vegetarian Barbeque for Life” this fall in Inglewood. Centered on an all-Vegan menu, this event will include a health fair with free screenings, speakers, and live music. Along with the event, Garrett will continue his research on urban communication of health issues, exploring the ways such events can foster what Metamorphosis describes as a “Community Action Context,” where individuals engage beyond awareness and take action with their own hands. And just maybe, their stomachs too.
If you have questions or comments, contact the Graduate Student in Residence
at:
gsir@usc.edu
