Tagged With "comfort food"
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10 Stories of Transition in the US: Transition Milwaukee and the Victory Garden Initiative (transistionus.org)
The following story is the seventh installment in a new series we’re calling "10 Stories of Transition in the US." Throughout 2018, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Transition Movement here in the United States, we will explore 10 diverse and resilient Transition projects from all over the country, in the hope that they will inspire you to take similar actions in your local community. During the first two world wars, governments in the US, Europe, and Australia promoted the...
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34 Affirmations for Healthy Living (dailygood.org)
Try positive self-talk to eat better, feel stronger, and rejuvenate your body. When day-to-day life seems to revolve around providing for others, we can forget to nourish our own bodies and spirits. And yet, self-care is what empowers us to give back to the world, fully and joyfully. Start your practice by taking just a few moments each day to affirm your commitment to eat well and live a healthful life. Each bite of food contains the life of the sun and the earth. The whole universe is in a...
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A Different Kind of Food Trauma - Surviving Meanness
It is traumatic when your family does not share the food they have. Not because it is in short supply rather it is done out of meanness of spirit. However, as a child, you conclude you are not good enough, you do not belong. It is painful to be excluded.
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Access to Food Stamps Improves Children’s Health and Reduces Medical Spending [poverty.ucdavis.edu]
The Food Stamp Program (FSP, known since 2008 as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) is one of the largest safety-net programs in the United States. It is especially important for families with children. However, the FSP eligibility of documented immigrants has shifted on multiple occasions in recent decades. When I studied the health outcomes of children in documented immigrant families affected by such shifts between 1996 and 2003, I found that just one extra year of...
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After WIC Offered Better Food Options, Maternal And Infant Health Improved (scienceblog.com)
A major 2009 revision to a federal nutrition program for low-income pregnant women and children improved recipients’ health on several key measures, researchers at UC San Francisco have found. The study is the first to analyze the health effects of the changes to the U.S. Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which serves half of all infants and more than a quarter of all pregnant and postpartum women in the U.S. It comes amid renewed attention to poor...
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Being Black in America Can Be Hazardous to Your Health
Kiarra’s struggles with her weight are imbued with this sense, that getting thin is a mystery she might never solve, that diet secrets are literally secret. On a Sunday, she might diligently make a meal plan for the week, only to find herself reaching for Popeyes fried chicken by Wednesday. She blames herself for her poor health—as do many of the people I met in her community, where obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are ubiquitous. They said they’d made bad choices. They used food, and...
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Beyond Pantries: This Food Bank Invests In The Local Community (Rochester, NY)
Great article from NPR last year ( August 1, 2017 ) about Rochester, NY, food bank Foodlink's partnership with their local school district to provide locally grown slice apples for school lunches. by ANYA SACHAROW Wayne County, New York, is the biggest producer of apples in the Empire State. Yet, in 2013 public school children in the county were being served apples from Washington on their lunch trays. At the end of the lunch period, the lovely, whole Washington apples ended up mostly...
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Bringing meals to people with food insecurity may deliver savings to the healthcare system [latimes.com]
Imagine you are the tightfisted potentate of a small republic, plotting the least expensive way to care for subjects in fragile health who depend on your beneficence. You could watch while your subjects who are elderly or disabled (or both) scramble to find and pay for healthy meals. And you could open your checkbook each time one of these subjects lapses into a health crisis that calls for a trip to a hospital's emergency department in an ambulance. But you might just try feeding these...
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Can What We Eat Affect How We Feel?
I think it is important to tread carefully around using food to address mood disorders. However, a balanced diet is important for much more than weight management. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/well/eat/food-mood-depression-anxiety-nutrition-psychiatry.html?action=click&module=Editors+Picks&pgtype=Homepage&fbclid=IwAR2JhXu7b7TZ-_cM-v-Txpx5Z5bnad1p3-ZOWskI4MpCtj3a55BGu0VjMHI
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Churches Own Thousands of Acres of Land Across the U.S., and Some See That as an Opportunities for Farming Projects to Help Students and Families (NationSwell.com)
Over the past decade, there has been a push for ecological conservation within the Christian faith , motivated by concerns over how climate change might impact human welfare. That movement has coincided with an uptick in the number of faith-based farms , many of which equate divinity with sweat equity and its bountiful results. Where those two movements intersect sits Plainsong Farm & Ministry , a community-supported agriculture farm and ministry, located outside of Rockford, Michigan.
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College Students, Seniors and Immigrants Miss Out on Food Stamps. Here's Why. [calmatters.org]
By Jackie Botts and Felicia Mello, Cal Matters, November 6, 2019 A college student in Fresno who struggles with hunger has applied for food stamps three times. Another student, who is homeless in Sacramento, has applied twice. Each time, they were denied. A 61-year-old in-home caretaker in Oakland was cut off from food stamps last year when her paperwork got lost. Out of work, she can’t afford groceries. While picking up a monthly box of free food, a 62-year-old senior in San Diego told...
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Conversation with Ijeoma Oluo about body size, relationship to food, and growing up food insecure
A great discussion with writer and activist Ijeoma Oluo among other things: Ijeoma’s relationship with food growing up, including her experience with food insecurity The issues with food access for low-income people Food hoarding as a response to deprivation The impact of sexual assault on our eating behaviors The invisibility of fat bodies and the privileges of thin bodies The myth that weight loss is the cure to all ills Size discrimination Systemic injustice The impact of weight loss...
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Cooking with Kids: A Recipe for Family Bonding (stresshealth.org)
One of the best ways to get kids excited about good food is to get them into the kitchen. Besides the fun of making a meal, you’ll be cooking up some family togetherness. This is especially important if kids have experienced trauma or adversity, which increases the risk of anxiety and depression. Not only does nutritious food lower that risk, but cooking it together provides a sense of connection and belonging. It’s especially powerful when making a beloved dish passed down through...
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Detroit Entrepreneurs Fight Food Insecurity With Lessons Of The Past
This is an excellent example of using trauma-informed principles to shape a nutrition security initiative. Community voice, empowerment, and peer leadership are essential aspects of trauma-informed services and programs. It also pays attention to food quality, the store experience, and racial equity--things that are often missing from efforts to address food insecurity. ...
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Diet and Depression
The new study adds to a growing body of research that supports the connection between diet and mental health. "We have a highly consistent and extensive evidence base from around the globe linking healthier diets to reduced depression risk," says Felice Jacka , a professor of nutritional and epidemiological psychiatry at Deakin University's Food & Mood Centre in Australia. ...
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Drexel research links racism and hunger [thecourierexpress.com]
New research out of Drexel University finds that racism can be a catalyst for food insecurity. Released Monday by the school’s Center for Hunger Free Communities, the report shows that people who experienced discrimination firsthand struggled with hunger twice as often as others. When — or where — that discrimination occurred didn’t matter. However, food insecurity was more likely the more someone had experienced racism. [For more on this story by Aaron Moselle, go to...
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Eat, Eat, Eat: Forced to overeat as a child, Sharon Suh finally learns for herself what is enough
A rich and powerful accounting of how the author's relationship to food developed through the lens of family adversity. "My struggle to feel my body and to discern whether I am hungry or full began quite young. I grew up in the 1970s, a second-generation Korean American in New York with a mentally ill mother who suffered from anorexia and bulimia. Throughout my formative years, she projected her body dysmorphia onto me, shaming me for my weight and my Asian features. I was never allowed to...
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Family Resiliency and Childhood Obesity
Abstract Background: Traditional research primarily details child obesity from a risk perspective. Risk factors are disproportionately higher in children raised in poverty, thus negatively influencing the weight status of low-income children. Borrowing from the field of family studies, the concept of family resiliency might provide a unique perspective for discussions regarding childhood obesity, by helping to identify mediating or moderating protective mechanisms that are present within the...
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Farm to Hospital Bed: This Hospital Uses it's Roof to Feed Thousands (nationswell.com)
When Boston Medical Center needed a way for patients to access healthy, fresh food, it turned to its roof. The hospital’s 2,658-square-foot rooftop farm grows fresh produce for its food-insecure patients. These patients are referred to the Boston Medical Center’s Preventative Food Pantry . There, they gain access to over 25 crops and can take home fresh food for their entire household every two weeks. “The Preventive Food Pantry helps fill the gap for those who would otherwise be unable to...
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Feeding San Diego Announces Free New Technology Platform to Reduce Food Waste (livewellsd.org)
On November 5, 2019, Feeding San Diego , announced the launch of MealConnect TM in San Diego County. This free and innovative technology platform connects surplus food from restaurants and other food service providers to Feeding San Diego’s volunteer drivers and agency partners. Developed by Feeding America, MealConnect is an exciting new way for the community to divert good food from going to waste and increase the availability of nutritious food for the one in eight people facing hunger in...
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Food Aid and Nutrition Education for women reducing rates of domestic violence
What do food insecurity, nutrition, and domestic violence have to do with each other? A study on reducing domestic violence, came out of a study on nutrition in Bangladesh, run by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Did women who were given food (or cash to buy food) improve their household's health when they were also educated on healthy diets? Yes! But the women's status also were improved. This article is not solely about nutrition and food but empowerment of women,...
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‘Food for Thought’ teaches cooking skills (nashuatelegraph.com)
Cius and Sako sauteed garlic, wilted spinach and mixed ricotta for baked ziti Thursday afternoon, as the Family and Consumer Sciences classroom filled with the chocolatey aroma of the brownies they had made earlier. They are just two of the students who have participated in Food for Thought, a program teacher Kate Paraggio started at the school last year “in an effort to provide a positive and empowering experience for students,” an explanation of the program said. “Middle school is a...
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Food insecurity can lead to family violence, new UTSA study says
https://www.ksat.com/education/new-utsa-study-links-food-insecurity-to-family-violence?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar link to the journal article mentioned in above article: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1090198118760683?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed&
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Food Insecurity may be Keeping College Students from Graduating
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/04/03/599198739/food-housing-insecurity-may-be-keeping-college-students-from-graduating
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Food Prescription to Treat (Mental) Illness [NPR]
One man's story of improving his mental and physical health with careful use of nutrition. https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2019/06/04/future-of-food-as-medicine?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR00KriXrmSj1Q8Hb0eGYA8mIxwUR4t7AKmOwRcuBencwLfE_hFaIf7Cm_A
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Four Ways to Nourish Happiness with Mindful Eating (mindful.org)
When we tap into feelings of joy and happiness in good moments — like savoring delicious food — it helps us build resilience and emotional strength during challenging times. Everyone wants to be happy. The desire is part of our biology and hard-wired into our brain. But the reason why happiness arises is varied and complex. Many people think that you find happiness; however, happiness isn’t a thing, so it is never lost. Happiness is an experience, and the conditions for you to have the...
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Fruit And Vegetable Prescriptions Encourage Children To Eat Healthy (scienceblog.com)
A new study shows that a fruit and vegetable prescription program can improve access to healthy foods for underserved children. The program, which was implemented in Flint, Michigan, could be replicated in other areas to address food insecurity in children. In August 2015, the Hurley Children’s Center – Sumathi Mukkamala Children’s Center, a residency training pediatric clinic associated with the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, relocated to the second floor of the...
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Grants Available for Policy and Advocacy Efforts Aimed at Native Nutrition and Health
First Nations Development Institute ( First Nations ) is accepting grant proposals through a new effort known as the Fertile Ground Advocacy Campaign under its Native Agriculture and Food Systems Initiative, or NAFSI. First Nations will award up to five grants of $75,000 to $100,000 each to support Native American-led efforts aimed at advancing new policies and innovative policymaking approaches that benefit Native American nutrition and health. These can involve efforts to improve access to...
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Health at Every Size
Linda Bacon, author of Health of Every Size speaks wisely about health, nutrition, social context, well-being and resilience. She says: optimizing diet is not the answer for good health . The podcast discusses: Her relationship to food in childhood, including her firsthand experiences of pursuing weight loss to gain social acceptance How diets and exercise regimens generally stop yielding weight-loss results after a certain amount of time All the ways in which our bodies fight weight loss...
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Healthy Eating Research (funding opportunity - Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)
Good nutrition is important to health at every stage of life. But often people from lower-income communities and communities of color lack access to healthy, affordable foods and beverages and the opportunity to make healthy choices. As a result, low-income families are disproportionately impacted by higher rates of obesity and other poor health outcomes. There are many factors that contribute to this inequity in access to nutritious food items and the ability to make healthy choices,...
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How a federal free meal program affected school poverty stats [hechingerreport.org]
In 2014, schools had a new way to give students free breakfast and lunch, paid for by Uncle Sam. Instead of asking low-income families to apply for the meals, a school district could opt to give everyone free food if at least 40 percent of the student population was already on other forms of public assistance or fell into a needy category, such as being homeless or in foster care. This new “ community eligibility ” option was a policy change by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which...
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How Eating Real Food Combats Depression (wakeup-world.com)
The strong link between sugar and depression. A number of food ingredients can cause or aggravate depression, but one of the most significant is sugar, particularly refined sugar and processed fructose. 12 For example, in one study, men consuming more than 67 grams of sugar per day were 23 percent more likely to develop anxiety or depression over the course of five years compared to those whose sugar consumption was less than 40 grams per day (which is still far higher than the 25 grams per...
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How Nutrition Affects Teens Mental Health
"Once we've sourced our food, the next step is preparing it. This part of the process can also be an avenue for enhancing teen mental health – particularly when young people approach cooking as a creative activity that they enjoy doing with and for others. A recent study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology followed more than 650 young adults. Each day, they reported how much time they spent on creative activities and how they felt that day. The researchers found that the...
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How Students Would Improve Their School Lunch Experience
This story shares how integral improving the school lunchroom experience is to children's nutritional and social-emotional health. ".... Studies have shown that when kids have 20 minutes or less to eat, they will eat less food and skip the fruit. Even if fiber and vitamin-rich foods end up on a kid’s tray, that doesn’t mean the kids have time to eat them, and this food often ends up in the trash. Changing food without addressing the time and conditions needed to eat those foods can get in...
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How the Brain Controls Food Cravings
“For example, aerobic exercise has been shown to enhance it, while lack of sleep and stress can impair it – so there may be a link between these lifestyle factors and overeating via their impacts on the brain.” https://neurosciencenews.com/neuroscience-food-cravings-9598/
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How to Make the Benefits of a School Garden Meaningful in a Child's Life (kqed.org)
Amid the litany of education reforms that emphasize innovation and new methods, school gardens stand out as a low-tech change. In an era where kids' lives are more sedentary, and where childhood obesity has risen dramatically, gardens support and encourage healthful eating as a key component of children's physical wellbeing, which can aid their academic and social success, too. And as the consequences of food deserts and poor nutrition on life outcomes become starker, advocates say that...
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How to Use Mindfulness Meditation to Overcome Emotional Eating [betterhumans.coach.me]
As a teenager, I struggled with bulimia. Not only did I eat to manage my emotional states, but I also binged and then tried to compensate for my dietary transgressions. This never-ending cycle was so draining that I could not think of anything else but food. Stopping binge eating required a shift in my beliefs about my worthiness and my ability to cope with stressful situations. I used food to suppress three negative emotions in particular: powerlessness, anxiety, and emptiness. Fortunately,...
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How Urban Agriculture is Transforming Detroit (dailygood.org)
A city that in the 1950s was the world's industrial giant, with a population of 1.8 million people and 140 square miles of land and infrastructure, used to support this booming, Midwestern urban center. And now today, just a half a century later, Detroit is the poster child for urban decay. Currently in Detroit, our population is under 700,000, of which 84 percent are African American, and due to decades of disinvestment and capital flight from the city into the suburbs, there is a scarcity...
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How Watermelons Became a Racist Trope
Often, when I serve watermelon in a program or workshop, there is at least one African American person who looks askance at this fruit. On many occasions, people have declared definitively, "I don't eat watermelon." I have always known that this food has a racially-charged meaning for the African American community so I never try to convince them to try it. This essay, gets to the difficult and painful history of watermelon and its use, like so many things, in the oppression of African...
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Hunger Moves to the Suburbs [sfchronicle.com]
By Tara Duggan, San Francisco Chronicle, November 4, 2019 Most people think of people lining up at food pantries and soup kitchens as an urban phenomenon. But in Alameda County, which has one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the Bay Area, an increasing number of people living in the suburbs are also having trouble affording food. That includes Livermore, a city in the Tri-Valley area that’s better known for its wineries. “When people think of homelessness and poverty, they don’t...
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INHABIT (documentary - Uplift.tv)
What if we could meet human needs while increasing the health and wellbeing of our planet? This award-winning film explores the many environmental issues facing us today and how permaculture provides solutions that could change everything. To view the film by Costa Boutsikaris , please click here. (from Dana: As a midwest farm girl, Permaculture is profoundly hopeful, uplifting, and honoring our Mother Earth. From suburban backyards to urban rooftops, the banks of rivers and in forests, on...
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Investing in our Roots: How Gardening is Improving Native Health and Food Sovereignty at Standing Rock (indiangiver.firstnations.org)
When we look at history, American Indians are often the canary in the mine. When their health goes, it’s a sign of what’s in store for other populations. This is one of the many reasons behind the work of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s Nutrition for the Elderly program. Here, with the support of First Nations, this community is not only protecting that canary by improving Native health but taking active steps to promote food sovereignty. A food desert The canary metaphor comes from Petra...
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It's not too late to sign up: Second Chance Youth Garden Community Supported Agriculture Program (CSA) program
Hi Everyone, Kristin Kvernland from Second Chance said that that they still have a few open spots left, so if anyone wanted to start next week they could pro-rate their share. Note: They don’t want to add anyone else after Week Two but they will have another season starting in March and will be sure to send the info for those interested in their Spring season. (See details in the original email below.) SIGN UP FOR OUR WINTER CSA SHARE! 1 CSA box = 1 youth employed in our program. The Winter...
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Join the dialogue 1/30/20 at 6:30pm: Our Food While Living Colored
This event was shared by March For Black Women SD and Mid-City CAN: JAN 30 Our Food While Living Colored Public · Hosted by March For Black Women SD and Mid-City CAN (Community Advocacy Network) clock Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM pin 4305 University Ave, San Diego, CA 92105-1601, United States Show Map Hosted by March For Black Women SD Message Host ticket Tickets www.eventbrite.com Find Tickets Join us as we discuss Food as Medicine, Afro-Centric Food Justice, Resistance...
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Listen to ‘Dear Sugars’: Trust Your Body — With Hilary Kinavey & Dana Sturtevantbo
If you aren't already a fan of "Dear Sugars" podcast, now is the time. Billed as "radically empathic advice," this episode takes on the tricky relationship between weight, dieting, body shame, healing and self acceptance. A must listen for women. In this episode: Her doctor categorized her as overweight when she was 5 years old. Her grandmother always introduced her as the “chubby one.” As an adult, she vacillates between moderation and binge-eating, restricting food some weeks, and gorging...
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Low-Income Americans Face a Harrowing Choice: Food or Housing [psmag.com]
Between 1960 and 2016, inflation-adjusted median rents in America increased by 61 percent and median home values increased by 112 percent, according to a recent report from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. Median incomes, meanwhile, increased by only 5 percent for renters, and 50 percent for homeowners. In a new report , Urban Institute researchers Corianne Scally and Dulce Gonzalez look at how Americans are managing these trends. This striking divergence in the growth...
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Low-Income Americans Face a Harrowing Choice: Food or Housing [psmag.com]
Between 1960 and 2016, inflation-adjusted median rents in America increased by 61 percent and median home values increased by 112 percent, according to a recent report from Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. Median incomes, meanwhile, increased by only 5 percent for renters, and 50 percent for homeowners. In a new report , Urban Institute researchers Corianne Scally and Dulce Gonzalez look at how Americans are managing these trends. This striking divergence in the growth...
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Lunch leftovers: How “sharing tables” help Syracuse City schools reduce food waste (syracuse.com)
The Syracuse City School District is not allowed to send leftovers home with students, due to state law. But for several years, the district has adopted a small-scale but creative, scalable approach to minimizing waste: sharing tables. This is how it works: Every student gets a lunch. If he or she doesn’t want a part of the lunch, such as milk, the student can drop off the milk on a designated table in the lunchroom. Another student who wants a second milk, for example, can then pick up the...
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Meet the 18-Year-Old Entrepreneur Fixing Food for Gen Z (civileats.com)
Haile Thomas—activist, health coach, vegan chef, public speaker, and CEO of HAPPY—is on a mission to help young people eat healthier. Haile Thomas is not your typical Gen Z teenager. The 18-year-old activist, health coach, vegan chef, and public speaker became the CEO of her nonprofit organization, Healthy Active Positive Purposeful Youth (HAPPY), when she was just 12 years old, inspired by witnessing her father fight off Type 2 diabetes with healthy eating and exercise. Since then, HAPPY...
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My life as a public health crisis
A young, well-meaning film maker I recently met is doing a documentary on food justice efforts around the country. Great idea. The big problem was his title: it referred to food insecure places as "wastelands." I often talk to people who care about the epidemic of unhealthy and overweight children. But they talk about it as if they and their parents don't know better or don't care. And that their communities are not rich in traditions, love, caring, or knowledge. This essay talks about how...