Teaching life skills can help with ‘food insecurity’
How do I approach this?  It’s complicated but then what isn’t?    There was an inspiring article in this morning’s paper about Erin’s Angels, an organization in Phoenix, the mission of which is to assist children who receive subsidized lunches at school.
It’s one of the ways that various communities provide extra help to individuals and families who are, as the modern term says, “food insecure.”   From organizations like Erin’s Angels to food pantries, soup kitchens and school breakfast and lunch programs, the community recognizes that so many are at risk.
Just think about this: In a country where people live in mansions with marble floors and gold plumbing fixtures, there are, if estimates are correct, there are 40 million  people who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. And, among those “food insecure,” 11 million are children, whose physical, emotional and educational futures are compromised by an unwillingness to address this problem that has enormous impact on the future of the country – a shameful testament to the value of our future. In many areas there are school programs of various designs to provide food for these children.   In the case of Erin’s Angels, the group puts food into the backpacks of children whose after school access to food is limited.
So, who eats the food that these children bring home?   If there is no food for the kids, is there also no food for the adults?   True, people do run out of food for many reasons. Low wages, high rents and unforeseen difficulties, each can squeeze a limited budget to the point where there isn’t enough money to buy food.  But on the scale that we see?
Something is wrong.
Even in the best budgeted households, low wages can make meeting monthly bills impossible.  Poor education, perhaps the fallout of poor nutrition, leaves few options for so many when it comes to finding sustaining employment that will provide enough income for themselves and their families.  Of course, there are also those whose sketchy lifestyles enter into the picture, but from long experience working for organizations that interact with poor individuals and families, these are far fewer than you would come to believe if you are mesmerized by media hype.   Lack of transportation compounds the problem. Food markets tend to be in areas where there are concentrations of people who can support them. Food pantries are not on every corner and not accessible on a 24/7 basis for such food emergencies. You can live in a large metropolitan area and not have easy access to reasonably priced food.   Rural areas are even worse.
Poor planning is also possible.  Not everyone had a grandmother like I had who could stretch a chicken “10 ways to Sunday.” Beyond that, the concept of thrift as well as the skills that brought families through the hard times of the depression have long been lost.  Mass media and marketing have created the demand for expensive, barely-nutritious foods. Even when supermarkets are available, the pressure to purchase junk is enormous.  Go to any large food store and observe what is on the end caps of the aisles or at seductive eye level along the aisles. It has been my experience working with marginal families that many have little knowledge about food purchase, storage and preparation.
I have worked with Cooperative Extension, church food distribution centers and soup kitchens for years.  I clearly remember several women telling me that they didn’t know what to do with a potato. All potatoes in their house came in boxes.  How do you cook a whole turkey and what do you cook it in were ordinary questions. In our house a turkey was not only a celebratory meal, but many other meals afterwards including soups and sandwiches and pasta that stretched the protein for days. If you haven’t been taught how to manage food, or if you do not have the equipment to do the same, how can you do it?
And yes, there are cultural preferences.  My mother, an immigrant from England, was suspicious of any food that wasn’t something she had eaten as a girl.  She had many recipes for simple, inexpensive if odd-to-me foods, e.g. tripe, chicken feet soup and liver and onions.  A pasty, something we ate to celebrate, was basically a large potato, turnip and onion turnover with about an ounce of meat in each. This list goes on as does my memory of tripe cooked in milk … ugh!  My in-laws, first generation Americans of Italian descent, rarely, if ever, ate any food that wasn’t Italian. Think pasta e fagioli, beans and greens, spaghetti and sauce… all of which are inexpensive, nutritious, filling foods. But tell me, what ethnicity thinks that pizza and potato chips is a nutritious meal or fills up hungry stomachs with boxed macaroni and faux cheese?  In either tradition, food was cheap, nutritious and available. I still can remember buying 25 cents worth of soup greens and skimming the fat off the sop of chicken soup to make biscuits.
If there is little food at home and the only place where you can find sustenance is at school, how does this frame the young mind about food purchase, storage and preparation?  Schools are asked to be substitutes for parents in so many ways … without the portfolio to complete the parental job of education by precept and example.
Should we teach food purchase, storage and preparation?  Why not? It is a basic need among a goodly portion of many school districts and, even for those more privileged, learning these things will be a plus. Yes, we can work on making low wage jobs congruent with the ability to subsist on them, i.e. raise the wages or lower the cost of housing, etc. We can encourage food stores to be located in poorer areas, but these are based on something called political will, often mired in politics.
We can do something about education.
How this is accomplished is open to discussion.  But, in my mind, it should begin as early as possible.  Kindergarten children can “go to the store:” buy groceries, put them away appropriately and make-believe cook.  Cooking lessons can be an interesting way to teach science or social studies. Home Economics, once a required course, might be resurrected as it once was to teach basic living skills to give tools for life to future generations, tools which are not provided at home.
When schools have to provide food for their students, it is time to rethink what else has to be provided.  You know that old saying, “Give a man a fish, you feed him for the day. Teach a man to fish …”
We need to teach how to plan the economical purchase of fish, the storage of fish and the preparation of the same, to give power back to individuals and families through education.

Ann Ferro is a mother, a grandmother and a retired social studies teacher. While still figuring out what she wants to be when she grows up, she lives in Marcellus with lots of books, a spouse and a large orange cat.