Author Fred Opie uses Arjun Appadurai’s theory of “Gastro-Politics,” meaning, “food related politics in which hierarchies, status and traditions are created and contested” to look at changes in hiring and promotion practices in the US food industry between the 1920s and 1970s. Opie talk is set in the first chapter of his book Southern Food and Civil Rights which looks at the transition from conciliatory strategies for change before the 1920s and the introduction of the radical direct action strategy which he links to India’s independence movement and the 1917 salt March against British mercantilism.