Mark Bittman gave a shout-out to my old friend, Maggie Grey, yesterday. In Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic, Maggie questions the ethics of the foodie movement that seems to care more out kale than people. We have to care about the people who grow the vegetables. We have to care that good food is affordable and accessable to everyone.

As Margaret Gray discusses in her excellent book, “Labor and the Locavore,” we cannot achieve ethical consistency in producing food without paying attention to labor. (Animals are important too, but I suppose I’m an anthro-chauvinist.) For food to be affordable, people — all people — must earn living wages; alternatively, good food must be subsidized. Both conditions would be even better. (As almost every foodie knows, we’re currently subsidizing bad food.)

Some of these qualities can be controlled by individuals: Most of us can eat real and healthier food easily enough, and, as it happens, growing such food tends to be more sustainable. On a grand scale, we need societal changes and government support to make this more accessible to everyone. But — and this is the part I like best — making good food fair and affordable cannot be achieved without affecting the whole system. These are not just food questions; they are questions of justice and equality and rights, of enhancing rather than restricting democracy, of making a more rational, legitimate economy. In other words, working to make food fair and affordable is an opportunity for this country to live up to its founding principles.

To be a true food activist, one has to do more than buy organic strawberries at Whole Foods.