Speaker 1: Hey, this is a Citizen Chef and I'm Tom Calichio.
Speaker 1: On this episode, we're exploring the history of food and
Speaker 1: education in America. I'm talking to professor and author Dr
Speaker 1: Janet Popadick, who's gonna show us how school lunch has changed,
Speaker 1: you know, our hasn't across the decades, and we'll think
Speaker 1: about what's in store for the future of the lunch
Speaker 1: period in our schools. I was I was kind of lucky,
Speaker 1: you know, when I was a kid going to school.
Speaker 1: I went to a Catholic school and I, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a regulation where if you live close enough
Speaker 1: to school, you can actually walk home and and have
Speaker 1: your lunch at home. And I lived the block away
Speaker 1: from school, and so my brothers and I would we
Speaker 1: would go home for lunch. And also very fortunate that
Speaker 1: my grandmother lived right next door, so we would go
Speaker 1: to her house. And my grandmother, um was uh bipolar,
Speaker 1: and when she was feeling well, she would just go
Speaker 1: to town. You know, we would we would come home
Speaker 1: and they would just be a feastly out and you know,
Speaker 1: she made an amazing grilled cheese sandwich and I still
Speaker 1: or tomato soup that she made everything from scratch, and
Speaker 1: she would roast chicken and always some home bake pie
Speaker 1: or cake or something. We would walk back to school
Speaker 1: kind of full and take our time, and it was
Speaker 1: just always a great memory. And you know, also not
Speaker 1: only the great food, but we got to share a
Speaker 1: lot of time with both grandparents sat during that little
Speaker 1: lunch break. And then later on I went to public school,
Speaker 1: and I had a great fortune of having my mother
Speaker 1: prepare lunch for well not only me, but probably two
Speaker 1: thousand other students. My mother managed a school cafeteria in Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. You know, it was always great that that
Speaker 1: I got to see my mother from time to time.
Speaker 1: You know, I'd pop by and you know, see how
Speaker 1: she was doing. And the downside was that if I
Speaker 1: ever got in trouble, she knew right away. So but
Speaker 1: it was it was a little later on, I think
Speaker 1: I was in my thirties, maybe my father had passed
Speaker 1: away already, and so my mother she started to complain
Speaker 1: that that she was, you know, starting to you know,
Speaker 1: our feet were hurting her. So I, you know, suggested
Speaker 1: that maybe she's thinking about retiring, and you know, she
Speaker 1: said thing that that that was just really profound and
Speaker 1: and and really stuck with me for for a really
Speaker 1: long time. In fact, it was much later on when
Speaker 1: I became an advocate, and especially around school lunch, that
Speaker 1: I remember this story and and I often repeated it
Speaker 1: and if I was talking to members of Congress, are
Speaker 1: anyone else trying to get my point across? When I
Speaker 1: asked her, you know, to retire, she said, no, I
Speaker 1: think I have a few years left. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you why. She said, I know a lot of the
Speaker 1: kids who are coming in and out of my lunch
Speaker 1: room that this is the only meal they're getting all day.
Speaker 1: And I have to fight like hell right now to
Speaker 1: make sure that we have fresh fruits and vegetables and
Speaker 1: that we're cooking a lot of the food from scratch.
Speaker 1: And my supervisor constantly pushing me to go to you know,
Speaker 1: all pre prepared meals. We can cut payroll, and we
Speaker 1: can you know, maybe cut down on some waste and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And she said, you know, I'm fighting
Speaker 1: to make sure that these kids have healthy food. So
Speaker 1: I have a few years left. And you know, again,
Speaker 1: at the time, I didn't think much about it until
Speaker 1: I started to become an activist, and I those words,
Speaker 1: I remember those words. I remember what she said. And
Speaker 1: and you know, now now we're looking at these cafeteria
Speaker 1: workers very differently. I mean, they're on the front lines.
Speaker 1: They are the essential workers. And in fact, in New
Speaker 1: York and I'm sure many other cities and states and
Speaker 1: towns when school, when when the kids went to distance learning,
Speaker 1: those cafeteria workers still had to go to work. They
Speaker 1: put themselves in danger because they still had a community
Speaker 1: to feed. And so I didn't Again, I didn't really
Speaker 1: think much about what my mom was doing. And then
Speaker 1: it was just there was a job, and and but
Speaker 1: now I realized that it was, you know, so much more.
Speaker 1: And then more recently, you know, we've seen the stories
Speaker 1: and the news of these kids who go through the
Speaker 1: lunch line and they they've run out of money on
Speaker 1: their cars, and lunch is taken away from them and
Speaker 1: they're given a cold cheese sandwich. And you know, I
Speaker 1: I talked to my mom about that recently, and she said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that would happen, and I would just let the
Speaker 1: kids go through. And she said, you know, sometimes my
Speaker 1: counts were off, my supervisors would give me a hard time,
Speaker 1: but she said there was no way that I could
Speaker 1: take food away, especially when I know these kids are hungry.
Speaker 1: I couldn't take food away from these kids, and so
Speaker 1: I would just let them go. This is also part
Speaker 1: of the reason why I really truly believed that that
Speaker 1: school should be free for all. It shouldn't be the
Speaker 1: three tiered system that we have. And and I thought
Speaker 1: the best person to have this discussion for for our
Speaker 1: school lunch episode would be the woman who wrote the
Speaker 1: book Free for All, and that is doctor Janet Popendick. Janet,
Speaker 1: how you doing. I'm okay, Tom, How are you well?
Speaker 1: You know, considering we're We're okay, We're okay. The hardest
Speaker 1: thing these days is the distance learning for the kids.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's UH challenging. I'm an older one that's
Speaker 1: a college student, but he's getting by. UM. So we're
Speaker 1: talking with Dr Janet pomit Dick. She is the UH
Speaker 1: Senior Faculty Fellow at the Urban Food Policy Institute at
Speaker 1: the City University of New York and also the author
Speaker 1: of Sweet Charity, Free for All. In breadlines breadlines knee
Speaker 1: deep in wheak, it was a slogan during the Great
Speaker 1: Depression breadlines need deep in We are surely the handiwork
Speaker 1: of foolish men. We we we do know each other. Um.
Speaker 1: When my wife Lorie uh in her partner Christie Jacobson
Speaker 1: um made the film A Place at the Table, Um,
Speaker 1: you were one of the people that we relied on
Speaker 1: to sort of explain uh various issues around hunger, especially
Speaker 1: the school lunch program. And so I think that's where
Speaker 1: I want to start. Um. Uh. You know, most people
Speaker 1: who are um uh you know, don't don't sort are
Speaker 1: aren't steeped in hunger and hunger related issues, and um
Speaker 1: uh in in some ways to to alleviate hunger, they
Speaker 1: don't think in terms of school uh, school breakfast, school lunch. Um.
Speaker 1: You know the lunch room is one of those things
Speaker 1: when you were a kid, you you kind of it
Speaker 1: broke up your day. Um. You know you try to
Speaker 1: avoid the food fight in most cases. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: had access to outside, you you spent as little time
Speaker 1: as possible as you can so you can run outside.
Speaker 1: But you know, there are thirty million children who use
Speaker 1: our school lunch program and a good amount of those kids,
Speaker 1: UM that's the nutrition they get for the for the
Speaker 1: entire day. So I just want to ask you briefly,
Speaker 1: so how did the school lunch program start? Why did
Speaker 1: it start, and then we'll talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: about the challenges that we see today in school lunch
Speaker 1: program So, school lunch programs in the United States date
Speaker 1: back to the early years of the twentieth century UM,
Speaker 1: when compulsory education began to be the norm UM in
Speaker 1: the United States. UM. Many very poor families UM had
Speaker 1: relied on the work of their children to help meet
Speaker 1: the family budget, and when kids were required to be
Speaker 1: in school, UM, poor families found themselves even less able
Speaker 1: to meet their food needs. And so schools began providing
Speaker 1: meals because kids were coming to school hungry. But this
Speaker 1: was not a federal program in any way a perform
Speaker 1: This was typically started by a charitable organization or a
Speaker 1: voluntary group of some sort, and in large cities rapidly
Speaker 1: taken over by municipal government. So there was a network
Speaker 1: of these programs throughout the United States at the time
Speaker 1: that the Great Depression hit, and again at that point
Speaker 1: when children were visibly suffering from hunger and malnutrition and
Speaker 1: families were desperate, school lunch programs expanded in a lot
Speaker 1: of communities. In New York City, UM, the records show
Speaker 1: that the teachers gave money to expand the school lunch
Speaker 1: program to be able to include more children. The federal
Speaker 1: government got involved because they had agricultural surpluses and needed
Speaker 1: a way to dispose of them. UM. In the Great
Speaker 1: Depression of the nineties. The farm economy had been in
Speaker 1: trouble since the end of World War One. You know,
Speaker 1: farmers expanded a bridge and planning during World War One.
Speaker 1: They were getting high prices, there was huge demand. At
Speaker 1: the end of the war, Congress canceled the war credits
Speaker 1: that had enabled our European allies to purchase American farm products,
Speaker 1: and the farm market collapsed and it never really recovered.
Speaker 1: So when the Roosevelt administration came into power, UM, they
Speaker 1: took steps to try to adjust the farm economy UM
Speaker 1: to remove surpluses from the market, and then they had
Speaker 1: a problem about what to do with them. They were
Speaker 1: a public relations problem for the government because so many
Speaker 1: people were hungry, and so they began donating for farm surpluses,
Speaker 1: purchasing from farmers and donating for relief through the emergency
Speaker 1: relief agencies, but also through schools and orphanages and other
Speaker 1: institutions that served children. So This was when the federal
Speaker 1: government got involved in UH in school lunch, and when
Speaker 1: War two came along and some of the Depression era
Speaker 1: relief programs were cut back UM, the Department of Agriculture
Speaker 1: lobbied for keeping and expanding UM contributions to the school
Speaker 1: meal programs because they were very worried that at the
Speaker 1: end of the war they would have another post war
Speaker 1: slump in agriculture comparable to what had happened after World
Speaker 1: War One. So so essentially this wasn't about nutrition. This
Speaker 1: was about finding a market for commodities. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it was about both. For the schools, it was very
Speaker 1: much about nutrition. The products they got from the federal
Speaker 1: government enabled them to serve far more nutritious lunches than
Speaker 1: they otherwise could have done. How's how's the school lunch program? How?
Speaker 1: How has it changed since then? UH? Over the years?
Speaker 1: If you can kind of walk through some of the
Speaker 1: big changes that you've seen UM in the school launch program,
Speaker 1: breakfast and lunch program over the years. The first sort
Speaker 1: of big change, I guess you would say, was the
Speaker 1: creation of a permanent program in the National School Lunch Act,
Speaker 1: and that was lunch only until the mid nineteen sixties. UM.
Speaker 1: Think about the sixties, think about the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: calling attention to poverty in America. UM. After Kennedy's assassination, Johnson,
Speaker 1: looking for UM a new theme in a sense for
Speaker 1: his presidency, declared the War on Poverty. And that was
Speaker 1: a point at which people began paying some attention to
Speaker 1: what was happening to poor children, and educators argued that
Speaker 1: school lunch came too late in the day for a
Speaker 1: lot of kids. The morning hours are crucial for learning UM.
Speaker 1: And that's when the breakfast program was begun in the
Speaker 1: mid sixties as a pilot program. By the early seventies,
Speaker 1: it was available to all schools and any school could
Speaker 1: operate a school breakfast program that wanted to. Then some
Speaker 1: of the energy shifted to state and local advocates who
Speaker 1: began to press states for legislation requiring schools within the
Speaker 1: state to offer the breakfast program. And I know the
Speaker 1: sequence in New York was first they required it in
Speaker 1: cities with a population of more than a hundred thousand UM,
Speaker 1: and gradually we got to school breakfast in almost all
Speaker 1: the schools. So the school lunch program, it is, the
Speaker 1: entire program is subsidizes, essentially a three tier program. Can
Speaker 1: you can you explain? Okay, sure, I can do that.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you want to go back a
Speaker 1: little bit, when the School Lunch Act was passed in
Speaker 1: ninety there was just sort of a vague requirement that
Speaker 1: in order to get the federal contributions, schools had to
Speaker 1: agree that they would feed free of charge any children
Speaker 1: who were too poor to pay. But there were no
Speaker 1: standards as to what constituted being too poor to pay.
Speaker 1: And more importantly, there was no separate federal funding for
Speaker 1: those UH meals that were served free to children. The
Speaker 1: federal government made contributions some money and um commodities from
Speaker 1: that were purchased on behalf of schools, and then it
Speaker 1: was left up to the schools to figure out how
Speaker 1: to cover the cost of the meals that were served free.
Speaker 1: And so you ended up with the situation in which
Speaker 1: schools in middle class communities, those schools that were built
Speaker 1: for the baby booms when we became school age, were
Speaker 1: built with cafeterias and kitchens and had enough paying children
Speaker 1: to cover the meals for children who were too poor
Speaker 1: to pay. But schools in very poor communities in the
Speaker 1: first place. Many of them were old inner city schools
Speaker 1: that had been built without kitchens and cafeterias, and others
Speaker 1: were in rural areas and small towns where nearly everyone
Speaker 1: was poor and there weren't enough paying children who could
Speaker 1: pay enough to cover the cost of the meals for
Speaker 1: children who were too poor to pay. So in the
Speaker 1: mid nine sixties National Women's Coalition did a study UM
Speaker 1: called Their Daily Bread of who was actually benefiting from
Speaker 1: the school lunch program, and they found that only a
Speaker 1: very small percentage of the nation's poor children where actually
Speaker 1: had access to the program, It was primarily benefiting children
Speaker 1: from the middle class UM. So this was the point
Speaker 1: at which there began to be pressure for the federal
Speaker 1: government to pick up the tab on the free meals.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen seventies seventy one it was a whole
Speaker 1: rend what nineteen pieces of legislation that addressed school meals.
Speaker 1: But within those were legislation to guarantee reimbursement to the
Speaker 1: schools for the meals served free UM if they were
Speaker 1: served to children who qualified UM and nash a standards
Speaker 1: for who qualified. So this is where you began to
Speaker 1: get a three tier. As you said, system of free
Speaker 1: lunches for children with incomes below a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: percent of the poverty level and reduced price lunches which
Speaker 1: were very cheap. UM four children between a hundred and
Speaker 1: pent of the poverty line, and at that point it
Speaker 1: was a hundred and nine of the poverty line. Later
Speaker 1: that got pushed down at the outside of the Reagan
Speaker 1: administration two hundred and eight. But a group that we
Speaker 1: might think of as near poor um qualified for the
Speaker 1: reduced price and then all other children paid a full
Speaker 1: price that was determined by their local school system. There
Speaker 1: wasn't a national price. So in your book Free for All,
Speaker 1: you you you uh make an argument for why school
Speaker 1: launch should be free. Uh stigmas part of that, part
Speaker 1: of that, But what what other arguments you lay out
Speaker 1: in the book for making free school lunch avault to
Speaker 1: all thirty million children who use school lunch rooms. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, we have about thirty million children have
Speaker 1: been eating the school lunch, but we have fifty five
Speaker 1: million children in school um, so part of the question
Speaker 1: is okay, so what's happening to the other million children?
Speaker 1: And we know that a lot of them are getting
Speaker 1: by on a a package of chips and a soft
Speaker 1: drink that they bring from home or pick up at
Speaker 1: the corner store. That they're eating unhealthy foods in lieu
Speaker 1: of a balanced, nutritious meal. UM. We know that a
Speaker 1: lot of kids just forego lunch altogether, especially in um
Speaker 1: situations where lunch may be scheduled towards the end of
Speaker 1: the day or at the last period of the day.
Speaker 1: They just get out early. UM. So, so that's one
Speaker 1: reason to make it free for all, is so that
Speaker 1: it can begin to reach the kids who have UM
Speaker 1: not been participating. Secondly, the issue of stigma that I mentioned,
Speaker 1: even for the kids who who needed the meal and
Speaker 1: wanted it and decided to to eat it, even if
Speaker 1: they were cheesed, that's no way to eat lunch. Lunch
Speaker 1: in a school should be something that brings us together. Um.
Speaker 1: Did you ever go to summer camp? Um? I did
Speaker 1: not go to summer camp, but I uh, I did
Speaker 1: eat lunch in the cafeteria most days if I wasn't
Speaker 1: eating it in my coach's office. UM. But I also
Speaker 1: would go to lunch room for another reason, and that
Speaker 1: that would be to say hello to my mother who
Speaker 1: managed a school cafeteria. Lunch program. Well, the reason I
Speaker 1: asked you about lunch at summer camp is because if
Speaker 1: for those was who did have the pleasure of summer
Speaker 1: camp UM as children, meal time was something that everybody
Speaker 1: looked forward to, it was a great kind of unifier.
Speaker 1: And school meals could be that way to school meals
Speaker 1: can be appointing the day when when people look forward
Speaker 1: to seeing their friends and sharing a meal. But that's
Speaker 1: not going to happen if people have been kind of
Speaker 1: classified as you know, poor enough to eat free, reduced
Speaker 1: price and full price. So that's a second kind of
Speaker 1: reason for UM that I argue for universal free school meals.
Speaker 1: Third is that I think it's our responsibility. The children
Speaker 1: are in our care during those hours, we should feed them.
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess the other I guess the other
Speaker 1: argument one can make is is and this is not
Speaker 1: for just feeding them, but for feeding them healthier foods
Speaker 1: and mandating healthier foods. We saw under the Obama administration
Speaker 1: the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act change some of those
Speaker 1: standards in the school lunch program. And even though the
Speaker 1: bill passed and it increased uh you know, took sugar
Speaker 1: out of the school lunch program, and increased the amount
Speaker 1: of whole weeks in the school lunch program, got rid
Speaker 1: of vending machines. Uh. You know, in some cases, school
Speaker 1: cafeterias are just an extension of uh fast food operations. UM.
Speaker 1: And yet the whole time, UM, the president and and
Speaker 1: and and Michelle Obama, they were under assault from the
Speaker 1: right uh um sort of essentially saying we don't need
Speaker 1: a nanny state, we don't need we don't need adults
Speaker 1: to tell children how to eat, which I thought was
Speaker 1: kind of strange, because I tell my children what they
Speaker 1: should eat. Um. If I didn't tell them what they eat,
Speaker 1: they eat candy all day and junk food. And in fact,
Speaker 1: if I didn't tell them to take a shower at night,
Speaker 1: they probably go, you know, weeks without showering either. So
Speaker 1: you know, I think we are the adults in the room,
Speaker 1: and we do have an obligation to our our children
Speaker 1: to too. Yeah, you know, have standards and and and
Speaker 1: make sure that they are getting the proper nourishment and
Speaker 1: especially for uh, for kids who aren't getting that proper
Speaker 1: nourishment at home. UM. So absolutely, And it's also a
Speaker 1: matter of I I believe very strongly in the idea
Speaker 1: of food education a much broader concept than just nutrition education,
Speaker 1: because we have a lot of food miseducation that goes
Speaker 1: on in our economy all the time, the advertisement of
Speaker 1: of foods to children. So we are as a society
Speaker 1: up against a lot of disinformation and misinformation and misleading presentations,
Speaker 1: and we need our schools to be able to to
Speaker 1: teach children not only what the nutrients are and what
Speaker 1: they do for you and why you need them, but
Speaker 1: to enjoy um a variety of healthy foods, and school
Speaker 1: meal programs are one way to do that. And you
Speaker 1: can't really integrate school food with the curriculum unless it's
Speaker 1: available to everybody. And so that's another reason that I
Speaker 1: think we really need to move to a universal model.
Speaker 1: We're making making progress in New York. We are a
Speaker 1: little by little. Um. It's funny. I was at a
Speaker 1: panel discussion recently and there was a converse Um Collers
Speaker 1: from from New York, who um uh started going on
Speaker 1: and on about how bad school lunch was in New York,
Speaker 1: and I kind of stopped him. I said, actually making
Speaker 1: some pretty good progress here. It's not as bad as
Speaker 1: you think it is. Um and um, But yeah, New
Speaker 1: York is making some progress, but there's still um uh
Speaker 1: you know, right, there's definitely a ways to go. But
Speaker 1: we hear the news stories all you know, all the
Speaker 1: time of kids who uh their money is run out
Speaker 1: of their account and they get a cheese sandwich. Then
Speaker 1: they get taken that a line and then they're really ostracized. Um.
Speaker 1: And then and I wanted to ask you about this
Speaker 1: because the reaction to that is there almost seems to
Speaker 1: be a charl response where there are are various charities,
Speaker 1: are are are people who are looking to do good,
Speaker 1: who who think that they should just fund those accounts
Speaker 1: for kids and and and then again we have h
Speaker 1: a a charity uh response to an issue that we
Speaker 1: shouldn't have in the first place. Um. And I know
Speaker 1: this is something else that you you often write about
Speaker 1: as well, is whether or not we should deal with
Speaker 1: some of the these issues around hunger, um, you know,
Speaker 1: through charteral response or a governmental response. Well, we could
Speaker 1: get to that in a moment. But the the issue
Speaker 1: you raise of the so called school lunch shaming, it's
Speaker 1: really a fascinating one because in that case, the stigma
Speaker 1: is attached not to the kids who get the free
Speaker 1: lunch because their accounts don't run out. It's kids in
Speaker 1: the reduced price lunch category and the full price lunch category.
Speaker 1: And you know those standards of a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: percent of the poverty line, and it's the top for
Speaker 1: reduced prices of the poverty line. We're established back when
Speaker 1: the poverty line was a little more realistic, a little
Speaker 1: closer to reality. The poverty line gets adjusted every year
Speaker 1: for the cost of living, but it doesn't ever get
Speaker 1: adjusted for changes in the way we live. So if
Speaker 1: you think that was actually based on a study that
Speaker 1: was done in the mid nineteen fifties that found out
Speaker 1: that families spent about a third of their income on food.
Speaker 1: So the idea was, if by allocating a third of
Speaker 1: your income you couldn't um by a minimally adequate diet,
Speaker 1: then you were officially poor. And now families on the
Speaker 1: whole spend less than ten percent of their income on food.
Speaker 1: So the whole way we spend our income has shifted.
Speaker 1: Think about all the things that we need to spend
Speaker 1: money on now that didn't exist in the mid nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Those aren't luxuries, those are necessities. Right now, if you
Speaker 1: want to be a participant in the economy if you
Speaker 1: want to be able to get a job or you
Speaker 1: need those things. So we have a situation in which
Speaker 1: a lot of the kids who are not financially eligible
Speaker 1: for UM for free or reduced price meals if they live,
Speaker 1: especially if they live in high cost of living areas
Speaker 1: where rents and mortgages are high, they don't always have
Speaker 1: the money for ME for the meals. So another reason
Speaker 1: to go with a universal approach is to make sure
Speaker 1: those kids get included, but also to get out of
Speaker 1: this situation where they're being, as you say, pulled out
Speaker 1: of line and given a cheese sandwich or otherwise shamed
Speaker 1: UM because their council brand. Yeah, that's that's the first
Speaker 1: time I've heard that, because I think the average person,
Speaker 1: even I mean I spent little time thinking about these things.
Speaker 1: UM always sort of uh went to these are the
Speaker 1: poorest of the people who are not UM funding their accounts.
Speaker 1: But that's that's not the case because of the poorest
Speaker 1: of the students are already getting free lunch. So UM,
Speaker 1: that's something I didn't thought of. So we've we've enlarged
Speaker 1: the pool of people who get to feel shame associated
Speaker 1: with school lunch now and they're not just the kids
Speaker 1: seating for free. But anyway, it's a it really is
Speaker 1: a counterproductive, educationally, completely unsand situation. One of the things
Speaker 1: you always hear from school principles is how much they
Speaker 1: value parent engagement, how important it is for parents to
Speaker 1: attend parent teacher conferences and come to events at the school.
Speaker 1: If your account is in the red and you know
Speaker 1: you're going to show up at school and be asked
Speaker 1: to pay up, you know you're not coming to parent
Speaker 1: teacher conferences or exhibit night or what have you. It's
Speaker 1: it deters parents from engagement with the school. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the charity model and dealing
Speaker 1: with hunger. I know, and sweet charity. This is something
Speaker 1: that that you wrote about. I TH's a book that's
Speaker 1: on my bookshelf. Um uh, why is the charity model
Speaker 1: inadequate to deal with with issues of hunger and elnutrition
Speaker 1: in America? Well, you know, there's both a kind of
Speaker 1: moral philosophical argument and um reality and do the math argument.
Speaker 1: When when we think of food charities, most of us
Speaker 1: think of food banks and food pantries and soup kitchens,
Speaker 1: and certainly Now food banks are are greatly in the news.
Speaker 1: But at the height of the Great Recession, UM advocacy
Speaker 1: organization called Bread for the World did some calculations and
Speaker 1: calculated that if we think of assisted meals meals that
Speaker 1: are served at soup kitchens or that are prepared from
Speaker 1: groceries that are donated through a food pantry, out of
Speaker 1: four meals that are assisted by the federal government through
Speaker 1: the SNAP program or through school meals or the WICK program,
Speaker 1: one in four assisted meals was assisted by private charity
Speaker 1: and the other twenty three were provided through federal programs.
Speaker 1: As the reliance on federal programs declined after the recession resolved,
Speaker 1: that went down to about one in twelve. We we
Speaker 1: provide about twelve times as much assistance through the federal
Speaker 1: programs as we do through the private charity. Private charity
Speaker 1: makes a difference. UM. If you're in need and you
Speaker 1: turn to a food pantry, you in our system, you
Speaker 1: definitely needed to be there, but they have had a
Speaker 1: disproportionate share of the public consciousness. UM. If we want
Speaker 1: to make sure that people eat, we need to increase
Speaker 1: the SNAP benefit. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known
Speaker 1: as Food stamps. UM. We need to reduce the barriers
Speaker 1: to accessing SNAP that have been created, particularly the wounds
Speaker 1: over the last several decades. UM. We need to get
Speaker 1: over the idea that work requirements UM are the best
Speaker 1: way to enable people to to UM start careers and work,
Speaker 1: because work requirements in a program like SNAP don't work.
Speaker 1: Very many people who work cannot document in a way
Speaker 1: that's acceptable to a welfare office that they are working
Speaker 1: twenty hours a week. But we have a a fascination
Speaker 1: with the charitable approach. It's kind of romantic, and particularly
Speaker 1: when it's tied to food that might otherwise go to waste. UM.
Speaker 1: I have been very struck by the accounts in the
Speaker 1: press of milk being poured out in the fields UM,
Speaker 1: vegetables being plowed under or left unharvested, and the outcry
Speaker 1: saying we need to get this food to the food banks,
Speaker 1: and certainly infrastructure to do that. Yeah. No, I mean
Speaker 1: we're not set up. Federal government has food purchasing infrastructure UM,
Speaker 1: and they can expand it, and they have expanded it UM.
Speaker 1: But the current Secretary of Agriculture seems to be hung
Speaker 1: up on the idea of these prepacked boxes what's now
Speaker 1: being called the Farmed a Family program, But it's very
Speaker 1: much the harvest box that he proposed a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. Um, and it's not it's not an adequate response.
Speaker 1: One of the ways in which SNAP is so much
Speaker 1: better than a prepacked boxes that people can reflect the
Speaker 1: needs and preferences of their own families. Well that and
Speaker 1: there's also a system by which you can engage. Um.
Speaker 1: You know what, what's the likelihood of the problem right
Speaker 1: now with with milking thrown out and and eggs being broken,
Speaker 1: is just the market to disappear if you sell into uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a market that that supplies restaurants and hotel
Speaker 1: and in college campuses, you've lost that market. And the
Speaker 1: and the packers can't really turn on a dime and
Speaker 1: start and start, you know, repackaging products for uh, for supermarkets.
Speaker 1: Uh right, and right right going through there, there's two
Speaker 1: kind of food systems in this country. One is one
Speaker 1: goes through supermarkets to feed households and the other one
Speaker 1: goes into institutional feeding and and the two really don't
Speaker 1: work together very well. And and so um, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've read some of the things that you've been writing
Speaker 1: about this and and I've been talking about this as
Speaker 1: well and so but but the Snap program again, if
Speaker 1: you just fund the Snap program, make it easier. I mean,
Speaker 1: one thing I just it makes me crazy is when
Speaker 1: you see all these lines of people lining up for
Speaker 1: food pantry, people who never thought a million years that
Speaker 1: they would need this kind of help. Um, they should
Speaker 1: have people in those lines signing them up for Snap. Uh,
Speaker 1: there should be outreach there. Um. Most of these people
Speaker 1: don't even know there's a Snap program. And I know
Speaker 1: how it works and what that does. Again, there's a system,
Speaker 1: but we have feeding people. It's a supermarket. You you you
Speaker 1: have food, and people go there with money, and the
Speaker 1: system works really really well if you have money. And
Speaker 1: so right now people just need money. Um, are are
Speaker 1: are are Snap? And so we know the system actually works.
Speaker 1: But in terms of getting food that is has to
Speaker 1: be repacked into the marketplace, that that's a little more difficult.
Speaker 1: And I'm concerned that the companies that were rewarded some
Speaker 1: of these contracts actually get the food from the farm
Speaker 1: to a distribution, you know, into into alternative distributions. A
Speaker 1: lot of these companies have absolutely no experience at all
Speaker 1: doing this, and there's a catering company or party planning
Speaker 1: company that got a thirty six million dollar contract. And
Speaker 1: this is what I think happens when you rely on
Speaker 1: UH private sector and charity to take care of some
Speaker 1: of the society's UH problems. When something big like this happens,
Speaker 1: the government is just not prepared to to step in.
Speaker 1: There there is no plan, right. You know. The other
Speaker 1: thing that strikes me there isn't in the farm bill
Speaker 1: a farm to school program UM where communities UH as
Speaker 1: certain percentage of the fool that food that's in the
Speaker 1: school lunch programs should come from local farmers. But it
Speaker 1: always seems to me if there's something missing in between,
Speaker 1: because most school lunch programs that the cooks aren't cooking
Speaker 1: and processing food anymore, they're just reheating food. UM. In fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of school lunch programs, a lot of school cafeterias,
Speaker 1: they no longer have cooking equipment, they have reheating equipment. UM.
Speaker 1: And so that pieces that pieces missing. And it seems
Speaker 1: to me, if we really want to UM, you know,
Speaker 1: create a program where where local farmers can can find
Speaker 1: a market in their in their local schools, there has
Speaker 1: to be a place where that food could be processed,
Speaker 1: especially since so much of that food is grown in
Speaker 1: the summer when school is really not in session, And
Speaker 1: so if there were regional processing facilities that can take
Speaker 1: that food minimally processed, that meaning blanch peas and blanch
Speaker 1: carrots and and freeze them um, then we actually would
Speaker 1: have a true farm to school to school program. Do
Speaker 1: you have any any thoughts on that at all? Well,
Speaker 1: I think that there are very good reasons for schools
Speaker 1: to have the capacity to cook. So if I were
Speaker 1: doing a green New Deal infrastructure investment to create new
Speaker 1: jobs to replace some of the jobs that will be
Speaker 1: permanently gone after the pandemic because of changes in the
Speaker 1: way we live, I think building school kitchens and cafeterias
Speaker 1: might be um a part of my infrastructure project. There
Speaker 1: could certainly be regional processing facilities UM like you just described,
Speaker 1: and they would be better, I think, than the current
Speaker 1: system of relying heavily on you know, orders through distributors
Speaker 1: that can be getting the stuff from anywhere in the
Speaker 1: nation and in some cases outside it. UM. But you
Speaker 1: lose the educational value of the farm to school connection,
Speaker 1: which has been very much part of the farm to
Speaker 1: school projects. Where farmers come into the classroom to speak
Speaker 1: and kids go on field trips to the farm. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was intended as not just a way to
Speaker 1: create local markets for farmers, although that's a big motivator,
Speaker 1: but also a way to help with the food education
Speaker 1: project that I was talking about earlier. Because we are
Speaker 1: so divorced from our food supply most of us, we
Speaker 1: literally don't know where our food comes from. And in
Speaker 1: a future where we had a more ecologically resilient food system,
Speaker 1: I think we would have much shorter supply chains and
Speaker 1: UM the capacity to value farms and farming and the
Speaker 1: contribution of farming two UM to local communities. I think
Speaker 1: that is part of what farm to school programs were
Speaker 1: hoping to teach. Do you think we'll see a time
Speaker 1: when when school is free for all and we have
Speaker 1: healthier food? Uh? This food that goes even beyond what
Speaker 1: was in the Hungry Healthy Kids Food Act, When we're
Speaker 1: seeing the cafeteria is being used not only to feed
Speaker 1: our children uh nutritious food, but also used as a classroom.
Speaker 1: Do do you actually think that can happen? And um,
Speaker 1: do you think that possibly because this this current pandemic
Speaker 1: has really exposed the weaknesses in so many systems. Do
Speaker 1: you think there's an opportunity UM that one day we'll
Speaker 1: see that. So the quick answer is yes, can or could?
Speaker 1: I'm not ready to say will or shall um? And
Speaker 1: do you describe a cafeteria in the east end of
Speaker 1: Long Island where the kids run the the cafeteria. I
Speaker 1: visited one UM in Devonport, California. UM Fixing the school
Speaker 1: lunch Preparing the lunch was a class that kids signed
Speaker 1: up four and it was a very small school, a
Speaker 1: hundred kids and there were about twenty five graders and
Speaker 1: they were divided into five teams of four for the
Speaker 1: five days of the week, and each team planned a
Speaker 1: meal and prepared it and served it, and the fourth
Speaker 1: graders UM set the tables and picked flowers in the
Speaker 1: school garden and decorated them and was absolutely wonderful. UM system.
Speaker 1: The Ross School in Long Island was one that I
Speaker 1: visited before I before I started to write Free for All,
Speaker 1: and it had a profound effect on me. I left thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a private school, but this is what I
Speaker 1: want for all our children. And you know, John Dewey
Speaker 1: was promoting this at the turn of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century having kids tent gardens and
Speaker 1: prepare food and and fix the school meals. So it's
Speaker 1: absolutely possible. Um. It's an issue of our priorities, UM,
Speaker 1: and our vision and the power of the food corporations
Speaker 1: who currently benefit. I mean, we have the system we
Speaker 1: do now in part because of the organizations, the corporations
Speaker 1: that have benefitted from it. UM. So I don't think
Speaker 1: we'll get to a new vision without without a struggle. UM.
Speaker 1: I'd like to read you something that someone sent me, UM,
Speaker 1: and you'll you'll see the relevance in in a moment.
Speaker 1: This is an undutted roy from an upcoming book called
Speaker 1: The Pandemic is a portal. Nothing could be worse than
Speaker 1: a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to
Speaker 1: break with the past and imagine their world anew. This
Speaker 1: one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway
Speaker 1: between one world and the next. We can choose to
Speaker 1: walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred,
Speaker 1: our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas are dead
Speaker 1: rivers and smoky skies behind us, or we can walk
Speaker 1: through lightly with little luggage, ready to imagine another world
Speaker 1: and ready to fight for it. I was very moved
Speaker 1: when someone sent me that, because I think the pandemic
Speaker 1: is such a challenge to all of us, and we're
Speaker 1: all coping with how to maintain our own functioning and
Speaker 1: mental health and the situation of our loved ones. And
Speaker 1: we have this sense that the world will be very
Speaker 1: different once this is behind us. But what are we
Speaker 1: doing now to try to make it the world that
Speaker 1: we want it to be? And I think school food
Speaker 1: is a a profoundly important arena in which to be imagining,
Speaker 1: you know, how we want things to be. On the
Speaker 1: other side of that portal, well, I think there are
Speaker 1: plenty of people like you who are providing the vision
Speaker 1: for what a better world can look like. And hopefully
Speaker 1: now we may have a more receptive government and population
Speaker 1: to uh and you know, hopefully the ground is a
Speaker 1: little more fertile on it was two months ago. Um,
Speaker 1: so I guess we'll leave it there. Um. I'm talking
Speaker 1: to Dr Janet Popendick. She is a senior faculty fellow
Speaker 1: at the Urban Food Policy Institue at the City University
Speaker 1: of New York and author of Sweet charity Free for All.
Speaker 1: Thank you for for for for joining us, and uh
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll we'll we'll find a better way. So thank you,
Speaker 1: thanks bye bye again, a very special thanks to Dr
Speaker 1: Janet Popendick and always a shout out to a place
Speaker 1: at the table. A Citizen Chef is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Media. Christopher Howcyotis is our executive producer, Jesselyn
Speaker 1: Shields is our researcher, and Gabrielle Collins is our producer.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to rate us and we'll we'll see you
Speaker 1: next time. Thank you,