On the Importance of Smuggling Kale
The U.S. has committed to feeding hungry kids for a long time. From food stamps to free school meals, we spend billions of dollars to ensure access to the basic human right to food — and that’s a very good thing! Yet there remain gaps, troubled spots where those systems are breaking down. Even here in the Bay Area, 1 in 6 children is food insecure (meaning that they don’t have consistent access to the food necessary to live a healthy and active lifestyle).
On Monday evening, Battery Powered hosted Childhood Nutrition Organization Night. Each talk highlighted gaps in our systems — and they all showcased the inventive, surprisingly simple solutions they are implementing to nourish Bay Area children so they can thrive.
Photo Credit: Sarah Sloboda
Students & Schools
Most Bay Area schools offer breakfast and lunch, and some offer dinner. Children from low income families can get free meals at school. But there are logistical and cultural barriers to accessing free food, and not all the food is healthy. Seven organizations focused on solutions in the school setting.
Katie Dooley-Hedrick, of No Kid Hungry California, pointed out that “many of the children eligible for free food aren’t getting it.” This is particularly the case for school breakfast, which is highly stigmatized. No Kid Hungry works with schools to serve Breakfast After the Bell and in the classroom. Katie introduced Camila Barbour, a social worker at REACH Academy, who noted that REACH has seen a 217% increase in students eating breakfast since making breakfast part of the school day.
Then there’s what those students are eating. At Education Outside, James Cleveland believes that “healthy decisions about food greatly depend on what children learn about and value early in life.” So the organization builds “learning gardens” in partnership with Bay Area schools. James told the story of a little boy who learned to garden and cook kale, and who loved it so much that he snuck a kale leaf home. The boy’s mother then came to James and asked, “What is this leaf and how do I find and prepare it?” James now says: "We imagine a future where all kids are sneaking kale leaves home.”
Photo Credit: Sarah Sloboda
REAL Food in Schools Collaborative is also concerned with what students are eating, and Dominic Machi noted that “the school food industry is a $15-25 billion industry that's 90% processed food, and we want to change that.” Led by a chef who formerly worked in high-end kitchens like the Bohemian Club, the Mt. Diablo Unified School District is catalyzing a new food culture with REAL Food certification, cafeterias as learning centers for cooking and nutrition and garden classrooms.
Kitchens are also a focus for San Francisco Unified School District’s Future Dining Experience, whose Angela McKee-Brown described as “redesigning the school food experience to meet the needs of a 21st century student.” They are building cooking kitchens within schools that employ students in a catering training program, so that kids are learning about cooking healthy food for themselves and perhaps as a professional skill, too.
And given these organizations’ location in the design-loving Bay Area, it’s no surprise that Oakland Unified School District Nutrition Services is also looking at design — of cafeterias. Executive Director, Jennifer LeBarre introduced Amelia Mendoza, a senior in high school, who told the audience that her cafeteria has "not been designed after 25 years.” As Jennifer added, “We want them to love the cafeteria space, not dread the space.”
Then there’s community within schools, and that’s targeted by the Edible Schoolyard Project. Olina Scott, another high school student, explained that "Edible Schoolyard provides a relationship with school and community and has pushed me to talk to adults, as well as other students.” She described a peer leadership model: “When I ask another student to drink a smoothie instead of a milkshake with me, it's a different vibe from when an adult forces us to eat healthy.”
Photo Credit: Sarah Sloboda
Finally, there are interventions on the institutional buying level, and that’s where the Center for Good Food Purchasing has set its sights. Alexa Delwiche told us about how the Center is “creating large-scale demand for food produced in a way that reflects our values” — it does that by setting industry standards and supporting school districts to meet them. And that can have huge effects, such as when the CEO of a food manufacturing company was inspired to make his company’s food healthier when a school district told him that it didn’t meet high enough standards.
Family & Community
One of the best places to reach kids is at school, but what about when they go home? The Alameda County Community Food Bank proposed to reach the kitchen table of families, by starting at schools. Allison Pratt explained that 1 in 5 Alameda County residents “rely on us to help put food on the table, and we know we’re missing people.” They plan to expand the bank’s reach by having students design school-based food pantries that attract families to access them and “challenge the boundaries of food banking" in the process.
Distribution can also be changed by improving how people buy food, as with Mandela Marketplace. Trisha Chakrabarti said that Mandela creates a community of support around healthy food by building a better marketplace, with affordable and healthy food as well as other people who care about that sort of food. Oakland resident DeLinda Horton praised Mandela by saying, "I've been in West Oakland for ten years. We’ve asked big stores to come and they won’t, because they can't make any money. Mandela Markets is like having a local Trader Joe's."
Of course, when it comes to buying food, many low-income Bay Area residents need food stamps. But applying for CalFresh (also known as food stamps) is hard: it’s a many-hour process with a clunky user experience. The audience watched as more than five dozen pages of application flicked across the screen. Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code For America, noted there are “2 million people in California eligible for food stamps who aren't getting them” due to the current application process. Their GetCalFresh initiative is creating an “optimized mobile process” that reduces the application process to about seven minutes and follows up with text message rather than snail mail.
SPUR is also helping families with food stamps by giving them more bang for their buck on fresh produce. Eli Zigas described their Double Up Food Bucks coupons, which give people extra money for fruits and vegetables based on food stamps they spend on California-grown produce. Eli also noted that 95% of participants buy and eat more vegetables. It works for grocers, too: although they don’t have to participate, 100% of grocers re-upped, and one grocer added an entire new day of produce delivery because of this program.
There’s another group that cares about how people eat: health professionals. Representing the Food As Medicine Coalition, which operates out of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, June Tester said that “you don't diagnose food insecurity with a blood test, you do it by asking questions.” Under their program, doctors identify kids who are at the highest risk and then prescribe these boxes of healthy food delivered to their home. These children’s health “improves by a degree usually seen in million-dollar clinical trials,” June says.
Photo Credit: Sarah Sloboda
All these organizations are meeting children, and the people who care for them, where they already are: at schools, in stores, in hospitals and homes. But perhaps most moving of all was to see kids themselves stepping up to the plate to make change and improve their own opportunities to thrive.
For more information on our 12 finalists for Childhood Nutrition, check out their project pages here.
On March 13th, Battery Powered members will gather at Allocation Night to decide which organizations will be awarded a grant. Want to be part of the process? Join now here.
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Battery Powered is The Battery's giving program. To learn more or get involved, visit thebatterysf.com/batterypowered or contact [email protected].