I have no insecurities about food. I love food – eating, grocery shopping, organizing my pantry, planning meals, cooking, reading about food, clipping recipes, entertaining with food, eating at restaurants, taking a cooking class, and watching food shows on TV. Mexican, Thai, Italian, Chinese, (some) seafood, Pan Asian, a little Indian, and good ole’ fashion American food – I love it all! My husband and I have favorite foods and restaurants in towns and cities all over the country, and since our visit to London this past spring, there too. We cook at home together and often head out for a nice restaurant meal. Food glorious food!
My earliest memory of food is not a pleasant one. I was 4 or 5 years old and my mom served lima beans for dinner. I would not eat my lima beans, and I guess I played around with the beans and pushed my dad’s patience too far, because he made me sit at the table and eat an entire serving dish of lima beans. I have not had a lima bean since! But I have some early good memories of food too. When I was a child, my dad would make egg salad every Easter Sunday, out of the hard boiled eggs we colored the night before. The white bread was always fresh, and he put lettuce on the sandwich. To this day egg salad is one of my favorite sandwiches. Dad also used to make pancakes for my sister, brother and me, and he would fashion our initials out of the batter. My dad is something of a perfectionist, and he would make the letter backwards, because the bottom side of the pancake always cooks nicer.
Another early memory is going to my maternal great grandmother’s apartment and finding molasses cookies in her pantry. I don’t know if the cookies were homemade or store bought, but I remember how good they tasted. Curiously, my dad recently told me that his grandmother used to bake molasses cookies, but a written family recipe didn’t survive her. I’ve been on the lookout for a molasses cookie recipe for some time.
Food is a large part of my life, as it might be yours. What will we have for dinner? Where shall we meet for lunch? Want to order an appetizer with our drinks? Shall we get popcorn at the movie? Want to go to Dairy Queen tonight? Honey, will you please stop by the grocery store on your way home from work? We’d love to come over, what should I bring? Nope, no food insecurities for me.
But millions of Americans are food insecure. Here’s the fact: food insecure is defined as being uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food for everyone in the household because of insufficient money or other resources. Don’t be fooled by this terminology. More plainly, food insecure means “hunger.” Dictionary.com defines hunger as “a compelling need or desire for food.” In 2006, the U.S. changed the definitions it uses and eliminated references to hunger, keeping various categories of “food insecurity” instead. You say to-mahto, I say tomato.
In doing a little research for this blog post, I learned that in 2010, 17.2 million American households, or 14.5% of all households, were food insecure, the highest amount ever recorded. I was overwhelmed by all the facts and statistics I read about “food insecurity”, but here’s the bottom line: food insecurity – that is, HUNGER - exists everywhere in America. It does not matter what part of the country you live in, or whether you live in an urban, suburban, or rural setting – hunger has no boundaries. Hunger is not limited to the unemployed, the disenfranchised, or any one ethnic group. Many two-income families are food insecure. In the Twin Cities, where I live, 35% of the families who rely on food shelves are working. There are parents who skip meals or do not get enough to eat so they can make sure their children do. And there are children who do not get enough to eat, who are hungry at school and are hungry at home.
According to the United Way Twin Cities, 1 in 10 in my community is “food insecure.” Because the economic downturn has continued, food shelves have become a regular source of food for hungry families, children and seniors, instead of the emergency support they used to be. Food needs continue to increase, and hunger relief programs are having difficulty meeting the demand.
I live in a nice home in a neighborhood that statistically would be considered affluent. I can see the local high school from our front window. Since the fall of 2010, the school has had a permanent food shelf. It was set up by staff in response to rising poverty among students, and the sense that too many kids were going hungry during the school day. Three other high schools in the area also have food banks, as do several elementary schools. Will this extension into the schools of food shelves continue? What a shame if it must.
I can’t even scratch the surface of this issue with a blog post. I’m just uneasy that in America there are so many people who are hungry, uh, I mean “food insecure?” I will be thinking about what little I can do about that. Maybe you could too?
Just sayin’.
Laurie
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