Tag: Nutrition

Schools Are Shaming Kids Who Can’t Afford Lunch, but There Are Ways to Stop It

Posted on by robbie

Stephanie Woodard still remembers the weight of a roll of pennies in her pocket, hoping it would be enough to pay for lunch.
The professional learning specialist for Fort Bend International School District recalls sneaking into her father’s bedroom and digging through his green can of spare change.
And when there wasn’t enough money, she remembers being handed a saran-wrapped peanut butter and honey sandwich. 
“I didn’t want to eat peanut butter and honey, and I didn’t want to be the one kid at the table who didn’t have a real lunch,” she said. “It made me feel terrible.”
Woodard didn’t qualify for free or reduced lunch because both of her parents had full-time jobs. But her father struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, and so there wasn’t always money for lunch. 
Decades later, Woodard, who was a middle school teacher from 2005 to 2010 in the same district where she grew up, noticed that schools were still participating in “lunch shaming.” When students hit a negative lunch balance, typically the equivalent of a few lunches, cafeteria workers would print out the balance on a neon sheet of paper and place it on the lunch tray. 
“The kids would hate to get it, and they would hate to take it home,” Woodard said. “When you don’t have money, every little thing is a way to draw attention to the fact that you don’t have money.”
In 2017, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott passed a bill with the goal of ending lunch shaming — this legislation allows for a grace period before students are served an alternative meal. But the practice of lunch shaming wasn’t just happening in Texas. It was, and continues to be, a daily occurrence in school districts across the United States. 
Lunch shaming disproportionately affects marginalized families and goes beyond just hurting a student’s self-esteem. Missing meals hinders children’s development and success, and for many low-income students, lunch might be their only meal of the day.
To address this issue, legislators are proposing bills, nonprofits are launching campaigns, and powerful individuals are speaking up to help end lunch shaming.

THE SHAMEFUL ACT OF LUNCH SHAMING

Lunch shaming is a direct consequence of meal debt. If students have meal debt that’s not paid off, the burden falls on the school to cover it. 
Here’s how meal debt happens: Schools receive federal reimbursement from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for students who qualify and enroll in free or reduced lunch and breakfast. If the total income of a family of four falls below $32,630, the student qualifies for free lunch and breakfast. If it’s below $46,435, the student qualifies for reduced breakfast and lunch. 
For each child who qualifies for free meals, the school receives $3.41 for every one of their meals. For those who receive reduced meals, schools receive 32 cents. Students are automatically certified for free lunch and breakfast if their family receives assistance program benefits, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
“That $3.41 has to pay for not only the food — which is a milk, a fruit, a vegetable, a grain and a protein with every lunch — but it also has to pay for labor, and benefits, and supplies, and electricity, and water and everything,” Diane Pratt-Heavner, director of media relations for School Nutrition Association (SNA), told NationSwell
But the one thing it can’t pay for is meal debt. The USDA forbids schools from using that money to cover what it deems “bad” debt. The agency requires schools to attempt to collect debt for unpaid meals, but if those attempts to recoup the debt do not work, it falls on the school to pay for it. 
Where might this money come from? Perhaps from sales of a la carte items sold in cafeterias, charitable organizations or from the school’s general funds, said Pratt-Heavner. 
But even if schools could use money from the federal government, “there’s just not enough funds available to cover unpaid meal debt,” Pratt-Heavner said.
No one knows how much lunch debt exists, but 75% of school districts reported having some amount of meal debt at the end of the 2016-2017 school year, according to SNA. For smaller school districts, it was less than $10, whereas other districts have reported upward of $865,000. The average amount of debt a district carried was $2,500.
Schools are motivated to get that money back. So they’ve turned to lunch shaming practices like stamping children’s hands with “I need lunch money” or making them clean tables when lunch is over. Schools have even sent debt collectors after families. 

“In our view, school meals are just as important to learning as textbooks and pencils and paper.” – Diane Pratt-Heavner, director of media relations for School Nutrition Association

In 2010, when Congress passed the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, it required the USDA to look at unpaid school meal debt. As a result, the USDA required school districts to create a written policy addressing debt. But that was where the guidelines ended, and as a result, policy varies greatly among districts.
Some policies were two sentences, while others were two pages. 
“There were no minimum standards there,” Crystal FitzSimons, the director of school and out-of-school time programs at the Food & Research Action Center (FRAC) said. “There were no protections for kids. Nothing.”

A student can’t learn if he or she is hungry.

ENDING LUNCH SHAMING

According to school advocates, like FRAC, creating a consistent approach across all school districts is key to ending the practice of lunch shaming. So some government officials are leading the way through legislation. 
In 2017, legislators in New Mexico passed an anti-lunch-shaming bill and became the first state to outright ban lunch shaming. Since then, other states, like West Virginia and California, have followed suit. 
But some politicians want to take that ban nationwide. 
In June, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Tina Smith introduced the No Shame at School Act in Congress, which would set a standard for what schools can and can’t do to a student who carries lunch debt. This follows New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall and New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland’s Anti-Lunch Shaming Act of 2019. 
Omar’s bill is the more comprehensive of the two, and if it were to pass, schools would be required to communicate directly with the parents about any lunch debt. 
That means schools would no longer be allowed to publicly identify students, whether that be stamping their hands or making them wear a wristband. It would also prohibit schools from stigmatizing students, by preventing them from attending school dances, for example. Finally, schools would not be permitted to force the student to perform chores or activities that the general student body isn’t required to do. 
The bill would also require schools to attempt to certify children with debt and allow schools to receive retroactive reimbursement for the meals for up to 90 days. Finally, it would ban debt collectors from seeking overdue fees. 
“Hunger and debt are a national problem,” Omar told ABC. “So, what this bill does is simple, it prohibits the punishment and shaming of children who are unable to pay school meal fees.”

This June, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Tina Smith introduced the No Shame at School Act in Congress, which would ban lunch shaming practices.

If the bill doesn’t pass, the fight isn’t over. FRAC, a leading anti-hunger nonprofit in support of the bill, cites best practices for schools to approach lunch debt and avoid lunch shaming. Through strategic communication about free and reduced lunch, and by using new technology, like text alerts or automated refill programs, the goal is to get the children fed without financially burdening schools. 
FitzSimons said schools should never let students be the messenger. Instead, schools need to communicate directly with parents and guardians. “We recommend not having any practices that overtly identify or stigmatize these kids whose families are carrying unpaid school meal debt,” she told NationSwell. “So that’s the first and most important thing.”
Other communities are working on the problem at the district and individual school levels. Dozens of GoFundMe pages have been launched to collect money, and a few nonprofits have been created as a direct response to lunch debt. 
However, ending school lunch shaming doesn’t end school lunch debt. A few school districts have seen ballooning debt following bans on lunch shaming. For example, when Denver Public Schools announced it would no longer deny hot meals to students, debt rose from $13,000 to $356,000 in a year, partly because families were no longer incentivized to fill out forms for free and reduced lunch or pay for lunch. Thus policy changes are still needed to ensure schools can feed their students without racking up debt. 

HEALTHY, HAPPY CHILDREN

Lunch-shaming bans are steps in the right direction. But it doesn’t address the root cause: Not every student can afford lunch.
“It’s not like it’s just one thing that is driving the debt, and it’s not just one kind of parent,” FitzSimons said. 
There are many factors that can lead to a family acquiring lunch debt. For example, immigrant families might fear filling out the federal form, even though non-U.S. students qualify for free and reduced lunch. Or families may need some financial support but not technically qualify for free or reduced lunch. The application process can be lengthy and cumbersome, so families may fill out the form incorrectly, and unknowingly rack up meal debt. Some families are uncomfortable asking for assistance, while other families might not know they qualify for it.
Students going into debt can often be a flag that something more is happening in the household, FitzSimons said. It’s important schools recognize and quickly address why a student might be accruing debt. FRAC encourages schools to reach out and see if the families are eligible for free or reduced lunch when something like this happens.
Pratt-Heavner’s team at SNA urges Congress to adopt a universal free school meal policy. This policy would eliminate both meal debt and lunch shaming by providing every child with free breakfast and lunch. A universal meal policy has been supported by multiple presidential candidates and has gained momentum, buoyed by recent media coverage.
The only thing currently like a universal free lunch program is the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). This program offers free breakfast and lunch to all students in the nation’s highest poverty school districts. If 40% of students in a district automatically receive free meals, the schools can participate in the program. This makes sure every student eats, while also eliminating paperwork and the potential for school meal debt.
Under CEP, schools are reimbursed using a formula based on the percentage of students who automatically qualify for free school meals, i.e. families who participate in programs like SNAP or Medicaid, for example. 
Schools where that percentage is 62.5% or higher, the government reimburses the school for all meals consumed by any student at that school. If the percentage of students who would automatically be enrolled with free lunch is between 40% and 62.4%, the schools are fully reimbursed for that percentage and partially reimbursed for the meals of students who do not qualify. This will cost the district some money, FitzSimons said, but the district will also save money and time by eliminating paperwork.
“That not only eliminates the unpaid meal debt issue, it also eliminates any stigma with participating in free meals,” Pratt-Heavner said.
Schools hovering slightly above the 40% are more hesitant to participate because the composition of their student bodies could change. “If you’ve been participating in CEP and providing these free meals for families for a few years, and then suddenly you lose your eligibility, then you’re going to have some disappointed parents on your hands,” Pratt-Heavner said. 
Schools are even more hesitant to enroll after Trump’s proposal to cut access to food stamps. This cut would change the number of students who automatically qualify for free lunch, which in turn would impact the school’s CEP eligibility.
However, for schools that hit the 62.5% mark, CEP has been a success. “It is definitely the best solution. It puts everybody on a level playing field, it makes sure that all kids in the school have the nutrition they need to learn and focus and concentrate,” FitzSimons said. School districts in cities like Detroit, Baltimore and New York have enrolled in the program, and report higher school attendance rates with happier and better-focused students. 
Students need to be fed nutritious meals, Pratt-Heavner said. “In our view, school meals are just as important to learning as textbooks and pencils and paper.”
More: A New Funding Model Might Change the Game for Public School Teachers and Students Nationwide

Long Live Good Nutrition, Healthcare and Biology

Posted on by robbie

Recently, I was looking through a book that listed the “most amazing places” to visit around the world. I remember thinking, “Will I really get to see all 35 in the time I have, or will I need to pick and choose?”
It’s scary to think that our time here on earth is limited. Many people, including myself, have a massive list of things they’d like to do or accomplish. If I could have five careers, for example, I would. Although I’m a health and fitness coach and social worker, I’d also love to support my community in other ways. Rehabbing abused animals and working in prison advocacy immediately come to mind.
When I consider the possibility of living to be 100, I can’t help but think, “Why not?” It sounds awesome — just think of how much more time we’ll have! But to enjoy it, we’ll need to take care of ourselves.
People in my family live long, healthy, happy lives. My great-uncle, one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, lived to be 95. We used to spend an afternoon each week together. Mentally, he was very sharp until his last few months. His sister-in-law, my great aunt, lived to 99. She went skydiving for her 85th and 90th birthdays.
Today, the oldest person I’m closest to is my father, who just turned 84. He’s very active, both physically and mentally. He does callisthenic exercises every morning, walks the family dog, and mows the lawn and cleans the gutters on his own. A former judge, he’s still an avid reader and thinker, and actively works to keep his mind sharp. My mom’s only 71, but she’s on the treadmill every day.

Because I was adopted as a baby and don’t know much of my biological history, I’m unsure what I can reasonably expect in regard to my own longevity. But I deeply believe that it will depend on a lifestyle that places value on physical and emotional health.
If people are going to live to 100, healthcare will have to improve. Not only should it become more accessible and affordable (that’s a given), but people should be rewarded for paying attention to preventative care, such as annual exams.
I’d love to see a broader range of medical treatments in everyone’s health plan. Along with prescribing drugs to control symptoms, an emphasis should be put on using nutrition to help people manage issues like high blood pressure. In an ideal world, doctors would receive nutrition counseling to help them discuss it with their patients.
We’ll also need more acceptance and education about mental health issues. They impact large swaths of our society, and yet we continue to behave as if that’s not the case. As a result, more and more people go without getting the support that could help them build meaningful, fulfilling lives.
Staying active is a key part of being physically and emotionally healthy. I fully intend to remain active throughout the course of my life. I currently run triathlons, and I am planning to start yoga soon. Ideally, I’ll still be doing triathlons when I’m 80 — or 100 — but I’ve had three surgeries already on my knee, so I need to be open as to how things play out. If I can’t do a triathlon, then I’ll walk every day — and I’ll be the best walker I can be. Aging isn’t about what you can’t do. It’s about keeping up with your own parameters.
I think gym memberships should be part of healthcare plans. People need to find a way to move their bodies that make them feel good. In the decade I’ve spent in the social work field, I’ve routinely found that older adults who maintain active lifestyles are able to rehabilitate and return home from the hospital far faster than those who don’t.
My understanding is that women generally live longer than men, so I do have some fears about outliving my husband if I were to live to 100. I don’t intend to have children, so I hope I won’t be alone. I have 14 nieces and nephews that I’m close to, who range from newborn to 30 years old. Some I babysit. Others train with me for triathlons. “Will you be on the hook for me when I’m older?” I tease them. (“Is that why you’re spending so much time with us?” one of my nephews asked the other day.)
The answer, of course, is no. At the present time, my vision for living to 100 involves living independently in the Shenandoah Valley, on the acres of farmland I own. I hope to be homesteading and growing my own fruits and vegetables. Whether working or volunteering, I want to still be helping others. And maybe visiting all 35 of those “most amazing places” in the world.

Marianna Johnson has spent her career as a social worker and a certified health and fitness coach supporting people improve their quality of life.  She was raised in Northern Virginia and spent time living internationally with her Foreign Service family. She’s been an athlete throughout her life and is training for her first half Ironman race.
This post is paid for by AARP.

When Food Is Left Unharvested, This Organization Gleans It and Feeds the Hungry

Posted on by robbie

Dotting the Maine countryside are small plots growing more fruits and vegetables than the farmers who work the land could ever pick. But despite this bountifulness, some of the state’s residents forgo buying produce because of tight budgets.
This is where Hannah Semler, the coordinator of the gleaning initiative for the nonprofit Healthy Acadia, steps in. Semler leads a team of volunteers to pick whatever is left after farmers have harvested as much as they can.
In Blue Hill, Amanda Provencher and Paul Schultz of King Hill Farm welcome her regularly to their fields. “We just don’t have time to pick everything we grow, so we’d just till it right back into the soil or feed it to the animals, but it’s still totally good food,” Schultz tells Seth Freed Wessler of NBC News. “Hannah is identifying a resource that we have that otherwise we just would not be utilized because there are not enough hours in the day.”
At King Hill Farm and 18 other Maine farms, Semler and the volunteers for Healthy Acadia glean 30,000 pounds of food a year that would otherwise go to waste. They deliver it to food pantries for the needy and to the Magic Food Bus (sponsored by Healthy Peninsula), which delivers produce to schools and housing complexes for elderly people.
According to Wessler, about 40 percent of American crops are never harvested. Meanwhile, 15 percent of Americans are food insecure (i.e. they don’t have enough healthy food).
Rick Traub, the president of Tree of Life, a Maine food pantry that distributes food that Semler collects, tells Wessler, “Poverty here is everywhere. I go to the grocery store and the person who cashes me out, I see her the next day at the pantry. The problem of hunger in the U.S. has very little to do with a scarcity of food. There’s far more food available around here than people to eat it. The problem is really about access.”
With a team of volunteers using their time and muscle to harvest good produce that otherwise would go to waste, access to nutritious food is expanding in Maine. Let’s hope this practice spreads to other states, too.
MORE: How 40 Pounds of Leftover Broccoli Sparked A Farm-Friendly Innovation
 

While Civil Unrest Rocks Their Community, This Teacher is Working to Prevent Ferguson’s Kids from Going Hungry

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Since police shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed, college-bound teenager in Ferguson, Mo., the violent unrest in the small town near St. Louis has yet to cease. With outrage and confusion coming from all directions, basic safety and calm are at a premium. Families are in danger, and as a result, school has been canceled for at least the remainder of this week.
In Ferguson, a week off from school means more than just missed lessons.
The poverty rate there is almost double Missouri’s average, so unfortunately, many kids don’t get proper nutrition unless they are in school, according to the Huffington Post.
Thankfully, Juliana Mendelsohn, a teacher in Raleigh, N.C., recognized the need to provide food and launched an online campaign to raise money for hungry children in Ferguson. Appealing for donations on the crowd funding site Fundly, Mendelsohn says, “when I found out school had been canceled for several days as a result of the civil unrest, I immediately became worried for the students in households with food instability.”
So far, over $78,000 has been raised by thousands of donors (as of publication), with another two days left to reach the goal of $80,000. Dennis Hu, Fundly’s CEO, was so impressed with the mission and success of the campaign that he personally called Mendelsohn to express his support for her.
All the money raised goes directly to help those in need through the St. Louis Area Foodbank, which says the funds are substantial enough to continue making a difference for the next year.
“Regardless of your opinion on the civil unrest in Ferguson,” Mendelsohn continued, “there is no need for innocent children to go hungry because of it.”
If you’re interested in donating, click here.
DON’T MISS: When School’s Not in Session, NYC Food Trucks Are Serving Hungry Kids

Big Bets: How to Grow Healthy Eaters

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Curt Ellis’ favorite childhood memory is sitting with his father in the family’s garden, watering tomato plants. “There’s something really special that comes from getting your hands in the dirt and doing something that you know how to do,” says Ellis, who co-founded FoodCorps in 2009 with five like-minded friends to give kids across the country that same experience. FoodCorps deploys service members to work with local community organizations in cities and towns in 15 states. They spend a year teaching nutrition, starting school gardens and working with local farms to bring fresh food into school cafeterias.
WATCH: Our Q&A with Curt Ellis and FoodCorps service member Meghan McDermott
We’re partnering with NBCUniversal to support the greatest innovators who are tackling some of the nation’s most critical issues. Tell us who you think the next biggest changemaker in America is by nominating them to be a 2015 NationSwell AllStar.

From Seed to Harvest, These Green Thumbs Nourish Chicago School Gardens

Posted on by robbie

Gardens are a good thing. Period. But in an inner-city school, they’re wonderful. They provide hands-on lessons on how plants grow and encourage kids to eat nutritiously. Plus, the green space beautifies the school.
But starting a school garden and maintaining it turns out to be more complicated than some might think. That’s because everyone is excited to plant one initially, but if teachers are solely responsible for their upkeep, they can become too busy with classroom duties and might not be around over the summer when the plants need tending.
Fortunately, that’s where the nonprofit Gardeneers comes in. It offers a program to plant gardens at Chicago schools and maintain them while also providing lesson plans and a weekly visiting teacher.
Teach for America alumni May Tsupros and Adam Zmick, who founded the Gardeneers, explain on a crowd fundraising website that their model for becoming rotating garden specialists is based on the idea of a visiting speech pathologist, who rotates to a different school each day of the week. The Gardeneers rotate among schools, teaching lessons during school related to the curriculum in such subjects as chemistry, biology, and nutrition, and then enlist the kids’ help to tend the plants in the after school garden clubs.
During the summer, the nonprofit organizes neighborhood volunteers to help keep the plants thriving. The Gardeneers make sure the garden’s produce reaches the children’s lunch plates, coordinating with cafeteria staff to ensure everybody gets to taste the bounty.
According to Cortney Ahem of Food Tank, the Gardeneers offer their services throughout the growing season to schools for a maximum of $10,000, compared to the $35,000 some companies charge for garden installations alone.
Three Chicago schools have jumped at the chance to work with the Gardeneers this growing season, and Zmick and Tsupros hope to expand that to 50 schools during the next five years. They plan to focus on schools where 90 percent or more of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Zmick told Ahem, “School gardens are incredibly important from an educational perspective. There’s so much data about how these gardens can improve academic outcomes, reduce discipline problems, develop job skills, and strengthen the local community.”
Tsupros thinks gardens can be the key to national renewal. “I believe with all my heart that food, nutrition, and community are the foundations on which we need to build and focus our attention regarding education in Chicago and all the United States. One small seed can grow a bountiful harvest, and I hope that Gardeneers can be that seed.”
MORE: Read About The Nonprofit That Grows Not Just Food, But A Community Too
 
 
 
 

Are Food Pantries the Future of Farming?

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There’s a very surprising secret sprouting inside a Brooklyn nonprofit’s food pantry.
Using the amazing technology of hydroponics, social organization CAMBA is able to feed fresh, local vegetables to 5,000 people who face food insecurity a month, Tree Hugger reports.
Their hydroponic farm was constructed right in their pantry’s walls and was completed last August. Already, the farm churns out about 80 heads of lettuce per week.
MORE: From Windowsills to Rooftops, Check Out the Rise of Urban Farming
As we’ve mentioned before, the beauty of hydroponics is that it requires no sunlight, arable land or soil. It also allows city dwellers to have year-round access to fresh vegetables even if they live thousands of miles away from traditional farms. “We are able to grow year round with no natural sunlight inside of our actual food pantry,” Janet Miller, a CAMBA Senior Vice President, told the website. Besides lettuce, they also grow bok choy, spinach, lettuce and herbs.
CAMBA’s very own hydroponic system is also giving the thousands of individuals they serve the opportunity to learn about healthier choices by holding classes on nutrition education and wellness. “It’s going to be a good learning experience, in and out of our pantry service,” said Lucila Santana, CAMBA’s Project Coordinator of the food pantry. “We’ll connect with the community through volunteer opportunities, open houses for school kids, food demonstrations and even free classes on hydroponics.”
With more and more dwellers moving away from farms to the cities, fresh food has to travel a lot farther to end up on people’s plates. But as CAMBA proves, if we can’t live on a farm, why not bring the farm to us?

Read About the Nonprofit That Grows Not Just Food, But a Community, Too

Posted on by robbie

What activity can decrease a low-income family’s dependence on food assistance, promote health, reduce crime, and bring people of different income and education levels together? Gardening can accomplish all this and more.
Since botanist and garden enthusiast Larry Stebbins responded to the lack of community gardens in Colorado Springs, Colorado by starting the nonprofit Pikes Peak Urban Gardens (PPUG) in 2007, hundreds of volunteers have become involved in creating plots in low-income neighborhoods and educating their new owners on how to tend them. “By teaching others how to [garden], you empower them to be more in control of their food supply,” Stebbins told J. Adrian Stanley of the Colorado Springs Independent.
Case in point: Stebbins said that one low-income family participating in the PPUG expanded the garden volunteers had helped them plant and were able to reduce using food stamps by 70 percent during the summer months when tomatoes, zucchinis, and other produce was abundant.
Another benefit to gardening? The nonprofit has learned over the years that when the plots are physically close together in proximity, not only is a feeling of community created, but also an atmosphere in which gardeners learn from and share with each other. Now it plants “pods” of gardens, such as the nine clustered gardens they established in a low-income neighborhood this year with the help of a $3,000 grant from the Colorado Home and Garden Show.
In addition to helping people plant their own gardens, Pikes Peak Urban Gardens has established two urban farms that grow produce for charities; some of the homeless people that benefit from the produce pitch in to tend those crops, alongside volunteers from all walks of life. Stebbins told Stanley that one year, a doctor and a man who lived in subsidized housing struck up a garden-based friendship. “People come in their dungarees,” he said. “You don’t know if they’re rich, poor or whatever. And it’s a great equalizer, and it’s a great way for people to come together.” After all, we’re all united in our quest for that perfect tomato.
MORE: Thriving Gardens Now Grow in a Denver Food Desert

A New Study Yields Surprising Results About Low-Income People and Food Deserts

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Whether it’s a traveling bus full of vegetables or convenience stores stocked with farmer’s market produce, people across this country are coming up with innovative ways to solve the problems caused by food deserts. And these creative programs are having a big impact in some neighborhoods.
More low-income people tend to live in food deserts and have a hard time accessing transportation to grocery stores and farmers markets — exacerbating the problems of obesity-related illness among the poor. Or so the theory goes.
Jerry Shannon wondered if this was true, so during his doctoral program in geography at the University of Minnesota, he studied where 275,366 recipients of SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, once known as food stamps) in the Twin Cities purchased their groceries from 2009 to 2010.
Shannon discovered that SNAP recipients often travel to supermarkets outside their communities. “You can’t just assume people shop where they live,” Shannon told Cynthia Boyd of the MinnPost. These people shop outside their neighborhoods in part “because of perceived better quality and lower prices of suburban stores,” Shannon said.
Shannon’s findings are detailed in “Rethinking Food Deserts: An Initial Report of Findings,” published in Social Science & Medicine. On his website, he offers an interactive map showing where those who receive SNAP benefits live, where they redeem their benefits, and the types of stores they shop at. Shannon isn’t suggesting that communities stop working on the problem of food deserts, but he told Boyd, “We need more sophisticated ways about seeing how people access the food system.” He just might be the researcher to advance these studies.
MORE: This Innovative Idea Brings Produce Directly to Low-Income Communities

Thriving Gardens Now Grow in a Denver Food Desert

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After graduating from the University of Denver in 2007, pals Joseph Teipel and Eric Kornacki headed south, to Guatemala where they participated in a service project.
Inspired by the work they did there, the two returned home to help poor communities here in the United States. Their goal is a lofty one: They want to foster self-sufficient communities nationwide that grow their own healthy food. But for now, they’re starting small by making a difference in one city.
In 2009, Teipel and Kornacki formed  the non-profit, Re:Vision, and launched their first program, Re:Farm, to help low-income people living in a food desert in southwest Denver. Their first project included planting a school garden at Kepner Middle School, designing irrigated backyard gardens for seven families, teaching families how to grow their own food, and mentoring at-risk middle schoolers through gardening. In 2010, their work was rewarded with an $80,000 grant from the National Convergence Partnership to study how gardening can be used to prevent violence and implement programs. From there, they began hiring community promotoras to spread the word about healthy food and teach other people in their neighborhood how to garden.
Much like the gardens themselves, Re:Vision is growing. Last season, 200 families participated in the backyard garden program, producing 28,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables. A hundred families are on a waiting list for a garden, and the organization hopes to meet that demand this year, with the help of a $50,000 Slow Money Entrepreneur of the Year award and a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
They’re also launching a program called “Dig it Forward,” through which people who want to help can hire Re:Vision workers to design and plant gardens. The proceeds from these garden sales will pay for free gardens in low-income people’s yards. Taipel told Helen Hu of North Denver Tribune, “It’s a way of thinking outside the box. We have a lot of expertise, and if people want to start gardens and help others, it’s a win-win.”
Patricia Grado, an immigrant from Chihuahua, Mexico, serves as one of the promatoras, told Hu, “I’ve reaffirmed my understanding about how to grow our own food, about food sustainability, nutrition, and among other things, how to help the community with my knowledge.”
MORE: This Innovative Idea Brings Produce Directly to Low-Income Communities