Hunger/Food Security through a Trauma-Informed Lens

Syndemic Theory (ST) provides a framework to examine mutually enhancing diseases/health issues under conditions of social inequality and inequity. ST has been used in multiple disciplines to address interacting infectious diseases, noncommunicable diseases, and mental health conditions. The theory has been critiqued for its inability to measure disease interactions and their individual and combined health outcomes. This article reviews literature that strongly suggests a syndemic between...

"About three months after I was born, my father was incarcerated. As a toddler, I was poor but housed. Mom and I stayed with a paraplegic meth dealer named Tony who used to employ my father. After that, up until the age of 14, life depended on Mom’s relationship with a man who sold insurance. When they were on, there was money. When they were off, there wasn’t. Through high school, it was all poverty — abject, uninterrupted and more severe than what had preceded it. I was on the margin’s...

I've started and scrapped and restarted this essay several times. Imagine the camera zooming in on a wastebasket filled with crumpled typewritten pages, my thoughts written in red pen across the top. Too mean , this introduction about how teaching people a new recipe won't help them eat more vegetables. Too accusatory , this one asking if the skills you are teaching were requested by the people you teach. Be more human . Because the desire to teach is at the core of being human. We want to...

Americans today are both obese and starving. We’re spending more than ever on an ever-widening array of diets, and yet hunger and obesity are increasingly driven by a web of overlapping factors. According to the latest data, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in March 2018, some 40 percent of American adults are obese. Meanwhile, nearly 15 percent of Americans live in food-insecure households, unsure where their next meal will come from. We have a tendency in this...

Between 30 and 40 percent of the US food supply goes to waste each year. The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that nearly 80 billion pounds of food end up in landfills annually. This figure takes on a greater significance in the context of another food crisis: food insecurity. More than 10 percent of US households are food insecure, and the nonprofit Feeding America reports that this number will increase due to the economic and unemployment consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Access to food is a human right, [1] yet in the United States, an estimated 13 million children may experience food insecurity in 2021, [2] which means they lack consistent access to adequate and nutritious food for a healthy, active life. [3] The nation’s history of systemic racism, including discriminatory employment and housing practices, has kept Black families from acquiring equal wealth and access to resources (e.g., grocery stores) compared to their White counterparts. [4] As a...

"ANN ARBOR—Parents who experience food insecurity might think they’re protecting their children from their family’s food situation by eating less or different foods so their children can be spared. But a new study led by University of Michigan researchers shows that children know more about food insecurity—the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food—than their parents give them credit for." Finish reading here : ...

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/hunger/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=812615ed-442c-498c-9566-a056b331bb0a

Jammella Anderson kneels beside a bright pink refrigerator on a sidewalk in Albany, New York, stocking its shelves with fresh loaves of bread and heads of lettuce—food that is free for the taking. A passerby stops to ask how to donate. She tells them where and how to sign up to give veggies, dairy, or prepared meals. They continue walking, then double back and ask Anderson whether they can donate the stale contents of their apartment fridge ahead of a move. The answer is an emphatic “no.” To...

Excerpted from Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries: New Tools to End Hunger by Katie Martin. Copyright © 2021 by Katie Martin. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, DC. The following section draws from portions of Chapter 3, “A Paradigm Shift in How We Talk about Hunger,” pp. 46–50, 52–53. Scarcity Mentality: How to Move from Deficit-Based to Strength-Based Language A key issue that is holding us back from really tackling and ending hunger is the focus on not having enough.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected diverse communities due largely in part to social factors such as inadequate access to housing, income, dietary options, education and employment — all of which have been shown to affect people's physical health. Recognizing that inequity, Harlem-based chef JJ Johnson sought out to help his community maximize its health during the pandemic — one grain at a time. Johnson manages FIELDTRIP , a health-focused restaurant that strives to bring...

Late last month, California’s food stamps program, CalFresh, began allowing beneficiaries to buy groceries online at participating stores—a recent upgrade to the program that lets families skip potentially perilous grocery shopping trips during the coronavirus pandemic and limit the spread of the disease. Now, food policy advocates are asking the state to provide the same purchasing opportunity for pregnant women and families with young children who get benefits through WIC . “We applaud the...