Students and campus food workers unite for Food Day.

This Food Day story illuminates our national food conversation from several angles, from fresh food preparation to food insecurity and food justice:

"They took our knives and gave us scissors to open bags of frozen food. I want my knives back so I can cook again." That's what a kitchen worker at a prominent university told me recently at one of a dozen of gatherings around the country convened by our union, Unite Here. The idea was to bring food service workers and college students together to discuss the intersection of food and work in anticipation of Food Day, a national day designed to "bring together Americans from all walks of life to push for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way."

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"Food is love," said one cook at a university in Chicago. "Bringing in packaged food ... is sort of an insult. We actually want to chop, we want to make sauces and make our own stocks, we want to make food with our hands."

But this widely felt sentiment is only one reason we're drawing attention to food service workers on Food Day. After spending so much time in campus kitchens, we know that workers are important allies in transforming our food system and we want to bring that to the foreground of this important national event. They're allies in part because they have so much at stake: Food workers are among those most affected by the food crisis. They are frequently underpaid and they suffer from food insecurity and diet-related illnesses at alarming rates.

Read more at Grist.org.