After a couple of cocktails and over an order of noodles from Mai Pen Rai last week, I began talking about the real inspiration for a piece I’d just filed that’s not yet published about the post-2016 branding of bake sales: exhaustion with pronouncements that “food is political” and how people respond to that phrase with a sense of solemn duty, without defining what the politics are and minimal acknowledgement of how food’s politics manifest in the world. I am constantly asking myself: What the hell does anyone mean when they say “food is political”?