“You don’t have to eat crap just cause you’re poor”, this quote struck me in reading a profile on Anna Bergman from Seattle.  She was on disability and did not have a whole lot of access to healthy food before becoming involved in a local community and urban garden.  She talks about that when she gained access to healthy food she began to want to eat healthier and also learn the ins and outs of vegetables, fruits, and all different kinds of plants.  I think that her quote should be told to many people in her similar situations.  Although access for healthy food can be limited to those living in poverty, there are also so many neat organizations that creatively bring access to people in need.  One of these is my organization I have been working for this summer, Bread for the City.  It has a rooftop garden that can be accessed by anyone in the community to harvest fresh produce for free any day of the week.  It is one of many programs in DC alone that gives access to fresh food to those in need.

Another aspect of access to healthy eating is that you can increase mood and state of mind by just simply getting involoved in your food system.  When Anna gained interests in cooking and nutrition it helped her to become informed and inolved in her health and also in her community.  The interest sparked a motivation to eat healthier and try new things that helped with her disability that deals with the fluctuations in energy and mood.  The food and gardening helped regulate and stimulate the energy and moods.I think that this is a great point to think about.  Food itself can have huge effects on your mood and state of mind.  Along with this, the agricultural side of the food systems can have positive effects on your mood as well.  Being directly involved in farming or even small scale gardening can enhance qualities like patience, mindfulness, and just get someone to become more in touch with themselves by the time spent gardening.

For me personally, becoming connected to the roots of food and having access to gardening and agriculture this summer has been an experience that I will always take with me.  The bug bites, scratches, and soaked shoes from rain will always be thought of when biting into an apple or when taking a bite of a kale salad.  I was connescted in this process and it is almost humbling knowing that I played a part in giving people access to fresh food.  Like Anna said, “when people have access to fresh food, theyre going to eat it”.  So being a part of this process will always be something I am thankful to have been a part of because I helped to get these people access to such an important and vital part of life.

Reading about the O’odham tribe that had a huge nutritional change from their roots makes me very disheartened.  I had never thought of such strong cultural and lifestyle roots in food like turtle, squashes, and seeds that make a wheat-like substance.  This made me sad that these people rarely practice or even know about their roots in this kind of diet.  This has correlatively led to a huge increase in health problems like diabetes, and honestly after reading about the past diet its not hard to believe that the shift to “anglo” food would change someone’s health and make it difficult for their bodies to adjust.

Adjust I think is a good word to use here.  Your body naturally adjusts to new food intake.  It gets accommodated to what you put into your system everyday.  Just like vegetarians that haven’t had meat in years get sick if they eat a lot of meat.  Your body only knows what you have made it accustomed to. The native indians are not accustomed to american cheeseburgers and greasy fried chicken, just like none of us naturally are.  The natives shouldn’t have to adjust to the anglos food.  They should be able to keep their culture through their own food alive, and this may cut down on the rates of diabetes and keep these people fed and fed with nutrition along with keeping their native culture in future generations.

I think this concept of keeping up with native foods can help with global hunger and the enrichment of native culture as well.  Each area of the world has native foods and things that other cultures don’t know about or don’t find in their environments.  Its important to keep these native foods alive and prosperous within their country or region or culture.  We all can learn from other cultures, as well as we can learn from our own.  We pass down recipes, stories, tales, tips, how-tos, literally so many different things through the sharing and topics of food from our culture. Its important to preserve the distinctions in different cultures and ethnicities and this can happen by keeping food native.  These kinds of foods and the stories that go along with native foods, well, It keeps community strong and deeply connected to the past and the future generations.

Reading Wendell Berry’s story made me not only think and remember, but also made me begin to crave a pie! He does such a great job describing this well known scene of a grandmother baking a pie.  I could almost smell my own grandmothers pie right in the dorm room. It put a big smile on my face to think of this.

I love his quote “But knowledge grows with age, and gratitude grows with knowledge”. This particularly makes me think and makes so much sense. I think he phrased that entirely too perfectly.  You learn so much as you grow up and age and you also develop a certain gratitude for things.  This is near and dear to me especially with experiences even this summer.

Working on an orchard and rooftop garden with no previous knowledge of planting, harvesting, and the work that goes into this process, I have not only gained so much knowledge which has come with the aging of days and hours spent at the orchard, but i have also grown a special gratitude in which I can truly be thankful and respect the fresh blackberries I got to take home this week and the a gratitude in the older lady I work with that can tell me what herbs exactly make a medicinal tea to help cure my sore throat, or which grass to rub on a blistering sunburn.  These ordinary facts of life for people like her, are almost a few years of knowledge and gratitude for me. Just like the grandma in this reading had such an ease and lifetime of skills that were a lifetime away from the grandson.  Its all a learning and sharing process through life, that a lot of times I think most people forget to acknowledge and think about.

Food Justice is a long and complicated topic.  It has always baffled me and has caused me to think, think more, and rethink my position and views on it.  Coming to D.C. in May, I did not have any clue how serious food deserts and poverty levels were.  I lived in my own bubble where the kroger and whole foods were a few minutes away and mom and dad would be able to drive there any day of the week to pick up the ingredient we were missing for dinner.

My job here in D.C. is for a place that helps serve people who cannot afford purchasing their own food, medical care, legal, social services. It helps provide these things with dignity and by trying to incorporate these people’s choice and control as much as possible.  I have really fallen into liking this way of doing things because people who need this kind of help do not want to be in this position.  They rarely have control over what life events have brought them to this point, so our company, Bread for the City, tries to create an eviornment which helps the clients feel as though they can make their own choices and therefore help control what kinds of foods they are getting and how they are being processed.

Clients are allowed to grow their own produce on the rooftop and also are given options in the food pantry, I like this idea of dignity and choices. This is a small scheme in food justice and is one company, but other places like Bread for the City are popping up all around the country.  These kinds of places give programs like educational programs, social programs, and networking programs to enable clients to get back on their feet.  This is ultimately the goal.  I think that feeding people and reacting in emergency programs is great, but I also think that we need to be directly focused on getting people on their feet and setting them up for long-term success and not just emergency situational feeding.

In response to the reading from Schlosser about fast food, I think that his writing was very relatable to most americans.  We all grew up surrounded by fast food no matter if we participated in eating this food or if we tried to avoid it.

I grew up loving McDonalds.  I would go to most restaurants and order “McNuggets” even if we were at a nice sit-down place.  It was like every kid in the neighborhood would go to preschool together and all go to McDonalds following a few hours of school.  It was a social event, we would play on the playground and eat happy meals.  Thats exactly what they were to us, “Happy. Meals.”.  The familiarity to a child is crucial.  I knew as a 4 year old child, that walking into a McDonalds I would get a 4 count chicken nugget and fries and Hi-C orange drink.  It was safe, familiar, and common.  Thats all a child really wants at this age

I think that the familiarity plays a huge part in the fast food industry like Schlosser said.  People like consistency.  That is why chains do so well, because people know what to expect.  Now as I have grown up, I have discovered the bad effects of fast-food restaurants.  They are usually not nutritionally valuable and also fail to acknowledge the local worker and producers.  Although the food we receive from these fast food restaurants is consistent, really how familiar is it? We don’t personally know the meat producers or packagers, we don’t know where the potatoes came from, or where your pickles on your burger were bought from? It could be one of the most foreign meals, yet we still consider a burger and fries from McDonalds a familiar meal.

I think that if we were to change the way we socialize our children from a young age we could change the focus from being on fast food to be on eating and buying nutritional foods.  I think it all really does start from childhood development and from there we can change what we consider “familiar”.  Familiar and consistent food can be buying fresh produce from the familiar face of a farmer down the street or eating a cheeseburger knowing the meat came from a local farm that has quality conditions.  Educating children on where food comes from and even showing them gardens, farms, and even farmers markets could help this become the most familiar thing.  I think this could be a much better consistency than just grabbing some nuggets from the convenient McDonalds down the street.  This could help not only nutritional values, but also economy, and overall sense of knowledge and community.