Why Food Matters

I realize that for a blog that is dedicated to understanding and alleviating the sources of poverty, I talk quite a bit about food.  This is mainly because I think food, at it's best, can help people rise up out of poverty; and at its worst, contribute to diet-related health problems and force farm laborers to live an undignified life of poverty and despair.

Many times in the realm of poverty work, it seems as though food is addressed only in the most simple of terms: do people have enough of it, or not?

But there are so many other reasons why food, both producing and eating it, matters to those less fortunate than most of us.  Here are a few:

1) One of the single greatest indicators of a persons likeliness to become obese is income level.  The rationale is simple: the less money you have available to spend on food, the more likely you are to purchase products that give you the greatest bang for your buck.

With corn subsidized to the umpteenth degree in order to produce high fructose corn syrup and other cheap high-calorie derivatives, many of the affordable products found on grocery shelves are, bluntly, terrible for our health.  However, these products are also usually the cheapest and are the easiest way to fill hungry stomachs with empty calories.

And now there is news that a full one in seven low-income preschoolers are obese, not just overweight.  Even though the report finds that childhood obesity levels are actually stabilizing, "there remains a large racial and ethnic disparity in the obesity epidemic among preschoolers," the report's author notes.

To me, it's a tragedy that a person's income level so strongly determines how healthy of a life they can lead.

And thus, food matters to our health.

2) It has long been claimed--and now evidence is beginning to surface to support this--that children who have access to, and eat, a variety of healthy food do better in school.

Think about it.  What gives you more sustained energy throughout the day, a can of soda or a bag of baby carrots?  Healthy diets are important for students because it helps to improve concentration and the ability to retain a greater amount of information.

One way to ensure students eat well is to offer healthier school meals, because as has been shown, if schools offer better meal choices, kids will embrace them.

And thus, food is important for our ability to learn.

3) Many of the people who produce the food we eat aren't able to actually feed themselves because of the miniscule wages they are paid.

Whether it's paying workers 45 cents for every 32 pound basket of tomatoes or exploiting blueberry pickers in New Jersey or looking the other way as illegal immigrants toil away in slaughterhouses, our food system is largely based on our support of the poor treatment of agricultural workers through our food choices.

The most recent National Agricultural Workers survey found that three-fourths of farm workers earned less than $10,000 annually; over three-fifths of farm worker households live in poverty; and even with wide-spread poverty among farm workers, very few access social service programs (most likely out of fear of having their immigration status questioned).

The food we choose to eat helps support this exploitation.

And thus, food matters in the battle for the fair treatment of farm workers everywhere.

4) Through an agricultural system that respects the labor needed to grow our food, we can create thousands of good paying jobs.

As alluded to above, most of the agricultural laborers in this country are under-paid, illegal immigrants.  It's not so much that Americans are unwilling to do backbreaking farm work (although this is part of the problem), but more that most large-scale farmers are unwilling to pay their workers livable wages.  So they find easily exploitable labor in the hopes of immigrants entering this country dreaming of a better life for themselves and their family.

The answer is not to expel immigrant laborers, but rather, to enforce employment laws that require growers to pay workers a livable wage.   To me, there is no job that commands more respect than growing food, and it is a travesty that so many of the farm laborers we depend on to feed ourselves live in outright poverty.

And thus, food matters to the economic future of this country.

So, in short, food matters A LOT!

(Photo credit: craig.camp on Flickr)