UCLA Resnick Center’s “On Food Law”: Our Seat at the Table Feature
Our Founder Marin was invited by Deputy Director Diana Winters to pen an article/blog post about her initiative for the UCLA Resnick Center’s “On Food Law,” a space for food law scholars, policymakers, media, the food industry, and the interested public to engage and discuss research and ideas about food law and policy. Read Our Seat at the Table’s feature below:
Inspired by the meals I made for my family and friends during the pandemic, I founded Our Seat at the Table to engage with questions of food, community and belonging. Though there are various food-related initiatives that Our Seat will continue to tackle through its programming, I wanted our first endeavor to help with the widespread national issue of food insecurity. Food insecurity, in simplest terms, is when people neither have enough to eat, nor know where their next meal is coming from. The latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report indicates that in comparison to 2019, the number of people worldwide affected by hunger has risen by over 122 million. In the United States, food insecurity is addressed through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, which aim supplement low-income families’ groceries, so that they can access the food that they need to be food secure. But key findings in a recent report from the Robert Wood Johnson foundation highlight and demonstrate that SNAP benefits don’t cover the cost of moderately priced meals in 78% of US counties. With this statistic in mind, it’s unlikely that SNAP benefits are able to cover the costs of healthier options, such as organic produce. Programs such as SNAP – and its inability to adequately address the food needs for so many in this country – highlight a large systemic gap between those who are food insecure and food secure, despite SNAP being touted as a successful safety net for those who are food insecure.
To help combat food insecurity, scholars and legislators have developed the term “food equity,” which is defined as the, “expansive concept that all people have the ability and opportunity to grow and to consume healthful, affordable, and culturally significant foods.” In other words, food equity is the vehicle to transform food insecurity into food security. And while there are various food equity initiatives that have been launched – including the USDA’s Permanent Summer EBT program, which estimates that nearly 21 million children will receive grocery benefits by summer of 2024 – many of these legislative changes do not take into consideration the factors that contribute to food insecurity, and aim to treat an outcome rather than a systemic cause.
In fact, as research indicates, food equity isn’t just about access to healthy and affordable foods. Food equity is also about access to comprehensible and accurate nutritional information, a concept also known as nutritional literacy. According to the National Institute of Health, lack of adequate nutritional literacy often contributes to and exacerbates food inequality. This creates a cycle: a lack of equitable access begets a lack of equitable food literacy, which informs a continuation of unhealthy food choices amidst already scarce resources.
By combining exercises to improve nutritional literacy with a foundational mission to provide healthy options to those who are otherwise food insecure, Our Seat is doing our part to help transform research into action to help bridge the gap between food insecurity and security, and provide truly equitable options. This past November, Our Seat hosted a Community Thanksgiving dinner with FosterNation, a nonprofit that supports and empowers foster youth aging out of the system to become self-sufficient adults. I led the FosterNation youth through a grocery store trip together, where I taught them how to pick produce and check expiration dates. I also created individual packets of recipes and meat and sanitation safety kits for the youth to take home. We prepped and cooked nine different recipes, before sharing dinner together. Inspired by this experience, I launched an online “masterclass” to teach basic cooking skills and nutrition literacy to at-risk youth, as part of Our Seat’s effort to help combat the over 2 million people in Los Angeles who face food insecurity.
But beyond the physical recipes we distributed and the master class module we are creating, Our Seat is all about changing the narrative of community, belonging, and action. Putting this teaching into action helps ensure that the lessons are more meaningfully incorporated into each person’s life. While policy often aims to produce tangible measurements, nothing compares to the smiles that lit up the table at communal Thanksgiving, a testament to everyone’s sense of agency, nourishment and belonging.
by Marin Milken
To see the full article on the "On Food Law” website, visit this link: https://onfoodlaw.org/2024/02/22/food-community-and-belonging-our-seat-at-the-table/
