Julia Turshen believes that every person has the right to nourishing food. She also believes in the power of representation and stories that we can all see ourselves in. She works towards these beliefs in a variety of ways.

Close to home, Julia regularly works with food-related nonprofits including Angel Food East, the Kingston YMCA Farm Project, the Town of Rochester Food Pantry, and UlsterCorps. She also works closely with God's Love We Deliver, where she used to volunteer when she lived in New York City, and sits on their Culinary Council.

Julia is committed to expanding inclusivity in food media. In 2017, Julia published Feed the Resistance: Recipes + Ideas for Getting Involved, Eater's Book of the Year, which included contributions from over twenty contributors and raised over $20,000 for the ACLU.  In 2018, she founded Equity at the Table (EATT) along with support and guidance from a diverse, six-person advisory board. EATT is an easy-to-navigate digital directory inspired by the aphorism that it’s better to “build a longer table, not a higher fence.” EATT features only women/gender non-conforming individuals in and around the food industry and focuses primarily on POC and the LGBTQIA community.

Julia frequently speaks about issues connected to food equity at conferences and in interviews, whether it's on panels she moderates for institutions like the Smithsonian National Museum of History, in conversations on her podcast Keep Calm and Cook On, or in feature stories and op-eds for outlets like The New York Times.